It Took Me Years to Enjoy a Glass of Wine
For years, I did not really enjoy a glass of wine. It was not about taste. It was about responsibility. What if a client had a crisis? What if a student emailed at nine o’clock at night with an urgent question about an assignment? I needed to be alert. I needed to be ready. Somewhere along the way, I had appointed myself the on-call provider for the entire world. Nobody asked me to. There was no stipend.
Recently, I started tasting German wines. I am new at this. I cannot tell you much about vineyards or vintages yet. What I can tell you is that sitting down with a glass, with nowhere to be and nothing to monitor, felt unfamiliar. Pleasant, and unfamiliar. That told me something.
Please know this is not really an entry about wine. Your version might be a novel in the middle of the afternoon or a phone left in another room. Mine, on a good day, is also a long hot bubble bath or the hammock on my back porch. The question underneath is the same: when are you off duty?
As a clinician, I know what constant readiness does. A nervous system that never receives the signal “you can stand down” stays on alert. Over time, that costs us sleep, patience, and joy. Add menopause, which already asks more of the body, and ADHD, which makes it hard to shift gears, and “always available” becomes a heavy way to live.
We often think of Boundaries, one of my 5 Bs of Self-Care, as something we set with other people. Sometimes the boundary we need most is with our own sense of over-responsibility. Being dependable does not require being reachable every waking hour. My practice has crisis procedures. My students have a syllabus. The world, it turns out, was built to function while I sit down.
Here is your invitation this week. Choose one hour and declare yourself off duty. Tell someone if that helps you keep it. Put the phone out of reach. Then do something for no reason other than enjoyment, and notice what comes up. If guilt arrives, greet it and stay seated. Guilt is often just an old habit.
Your affirmation: “I can be responsible and still rest. The world can hold itself for an hour.”
Now I would like to hear from you. What have you been postponing until everyone else is okay? Name it in the comments, and let’s give each other permission.
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With care,
Dr. Myra Wilkinson, LMFT-S
