Music has always been my quiet translator. It reaches places language cannot, steadies my nervous system, lifts me when I am low, and on the hardest days reminds me that there is meaning, rhythm, and a reason to keep going. Music has been the thing that told me, gently but firmly, that I was going to be okay.

Motherhood, especially in the early years, has a way of setting aside many of the things that once felt essential. Not lost, just postponed. Placed on a high shelf for “later,” whenever later decides to arrive.

These days, most of my soundtrack is kid approved. In the car, while making dinner, packing lunches, wiping counters, anything to keep the peace and prevent a full meltdown. Children’s music fills the house because silence feels risky and screaming feels worse. This is not a complaint. It is survival.

And honestly, I have embraced it. I have excellent kid playlists. One of my favorites is reggae versions of children’s songs, yes including The Wheels on the Bus, which somehow keeps all of us moving. We dance. We wiggle. We sing. We even have a karaoke machine with three microphones, one for each boy and one for mama.

But lately, I have been testing the edges.

I have been reclaiming pieces of myself in small, almost invisible ways. An inch here. A moment there. This morning, on the hour long drive to my mother’s house and back, instead of zoning out or surrendering to exhaustion, I played my own music. Not kid music. Not compromise music. Mine.

And my boys were fine.

As the miles passed, something familiar stirred. That old feeling of joy and possibility came rushing back, like a part of me waking up after a long sleep. I felt connected to the version of myself that existed before children, and also to the woman I am now. Tired. Overworked. Doing the invisible labor of a household that never truly rests.

That feeling is not new to me. It lives in The Pace of Nature as well. Lilly feels it too, that deep pull toward music as refuge, as truth teller, as the place where she can breathe without explaining herself. Music is where she remembers who she is when the world asks her to be smaller, quieter, more manageable. In that way, Lilly and I are not so different. We both know what it means to lose ourselves to responsibility and expectation, and how music becomes the thread that leads us back.

It made me wonder why I ever stopped listening to the things that light me up from the inside. The songs that loosen something in my chest, that shake the dust off my spirit, that remind me I am more than a mother, a chauffeur, a cook, a cleaner.

Motherhood asks a lot. Sometimes it asks for everything. But maybe it does not have to ask for this too.

Maybe letting my music back in, even just on a drive, even just for an hour, is not selfish. Maybe it is essential. Maybe it is how I stay aligned with my own pace of nature, how I remember myself, and how my boys get to know me not only as their mother, but as a whole person who still listens to what moves her.

And honestly, that feels like a rhythm worth keeping.