and the permission I gave myself to Houdini


Last week I got COVID during the first week back to school and sports. Horrible timing, if there is such a thing as good timing for this. My daughter's anxiety has been heightened lately, so as a family we made the call: I'd isolate until I tested negative. Full retreat to the bedroom, minimal contact, the whole thing.


And here's what I learned. They were fine.


Not just fine, actually. Capable. Flexible. Completely able to run the household without me.


I want to be honest about why that surprised me, because I think a lot of you will recognize this. I'm the planner. The organizer. The one who gets things done. I run the schedules, I know where everyone needs to be and where everything is, I'm the person who quietly keeps the machine running. So when I went into isolation, I braced for chaos. I expected fights. I expected things to fall apart.


They didn't.


Sure, the house looked exactly like it did the moment I disappeared into isolation (nobody was picking up my slack in the tidying department, apparently). But my husband and daughter figured it out. They switched schedules, they helped each other, they adapted. They didn't need me to hold it together.


And if I'm being fully honest, my first feeling wasn't relief. It was a strange kind of hurt. If they don't need me to keep the wheels turning, then what does that mean about my role in this family?


That feeling didn't last long, though. It shifted pretty quickly into something better: pride. They are so capable. Both of them. And somewhere in there I had to admit that the story I'd been telling myself, that I am the glue, that without me it all comes apart, wasn't really true. It was just a story. A comfortable one, maybe, because it made me feel needed. But not an accurate one.


Here's the other piece of this.


My husband has a nickname in our house: Houdini.


My daughter and I gave it to him years ago because of his uncanny ability to disappear out of the blue, a bathroom trip that takes forty-five minutes, a sudden need to check on something in the garage . He pulls a Houdini. It's become a bit of a family joke, and honestly, I don't think there's anything malicious in it. I think it's just how he resets when things get overwhelming.


When I came out of isolation, he told me he missed being the Houdini for a bit. And it landed differently than I expected. Because that's exactly what I had just done. I disappeared.


And the truth is, I don't think anyone really noticed I was gone in the way I thought they would.


Initially that stung. But sitting with it longer, I don't think it's a bad thing at all.


I think it's permission.


Permission to know that the household will survive without me managing every detail. Permission to step back sometimes without it meaning I've failed at something. Permission to pull my own Houdini every once in a while, not to escape my family, but to give myself the same reset my husband gives himself.


I didn't expect a week of COVID isolation to hand me a lesson in letting go, but here we are.