I had a system.
No snacking between meals. A Kindle full of books: self-help, nutrition, everything I had convinced myself I needed to read to become the person I was supposed to be. A plan for my body. A plan for my mind. A full plan for getting myself back together after having my daughter.
I was breastfeeding. I was exhausted. And I was constantly, relentlessly hungry.
But the plan said no snacking. So I tried.
The books sat in my Kindle, waiting. I’d open one, read a page or two, feel more overwhelmed than when I started, and put it down. Too much information. Too many systems. None of it felt like mine.
By Wednesday, everything had fallen apart.
And every time it did, the same voice would show up.
Why am I like this? I used to follow through. I used to do what I said I was going to do. How is my daughter supposed to be proud of me when I can’t even stick to a simple plan?
That voice was so sure it was a ‘me’ problem.
It wasn’t.
Here’s what nobody told me while I was in the middle of.
Matrescence.
You might have heard me talk about this before, I wrote a whole letter about what it actually means. But understanding the word and understanding what it does to your plans, those are two different things. It took me a while to connect them.
Matrescence is the complete reorganization of self that happens when you become a mother. Not just your body. Your identity, your priorities, your capacity, your sense of who you are and what you actually need, all of it rearranging quietly underneath you whether you were ready or not.
And here’s the part that finally clicked for me:
I was trying to follow plans that were designed for the woman I was before.
It’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem.
Think about it. The no-snacking rule. It is designed for a body that wasn’t making milk around the clock. The nutrition books… designed for someone with quiet mornings and a brain that could actually absorb information. The Kindle full of self-help, most likely designed for a woman with a settled sense of who she was and what she wanted to become.
I was none of those things anymore.
Of course the plans broke. They were built for someone who no longer existed.
It’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem.
There’s a specific memory I keep coming back to.
My daughter nursing, the house still quiet, me reaching for kakanin, my favorite, the thing the plan said I wasn’t supposed to have. I made hot cocoa. Sat down. Actually sat down. And ate it slowly, without rushing, without fighting myself for once.
It tasted like warmth. Like memory. Like something my body recognized before my mind could name it.
Growing up, kakanin meant something special — fiestas, gatherings, days that felt bigger than ordinary. So now, when I have it as a simple dessert on a regular Tuesday, it cheers me up. A calorie counting app would flag it. But I realized that it isn’t just calories. It’s memory. It’s delight. It’s the kind of nourishment that doesn’t show up in any nutrition label.
That morning I started to understand something.
The kakanin was never the problem. A plan so rigid it made me feel guilty for eating something that nourished me — both my body and memory — while I was literally feeding another human being. That was the problem.
I wasn’t failing my health goals. I was breastfeeding and hungry and reaching for something that made me feel like myself again.
That’s not a slip. That’s alaga.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe.
Your health is not decided by your hardest days. It’s shaped by what you do on most days.
And policing yourself — tracking every bite, restricting, fighting every food cravings — that’s not discipline. That’s exhausting. It’s a full-time job on top of the full-time job you’re already doing.
The goal was never to control your life more tightly.
It’s to design a life where you no longer need to police yourself at all. Where the way you eat, rest, and move is so fitted to who you actually are that you’re not managing it anymore, you’re just living it. Adjusting when things shift. Returning when you wander. Living, adapting, living again.
Your life is not a project to finish.
It’s a home you keep returning to.
And every small act of alaga — even kakanin and hot cocoa on an ordinary Tuesday — is you finding your way back.
Your life is not a project to finish. It’s a home you keep returning to.
With love,
Kristen
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