No Dinners or Big Moments: What This Week Reminded Me About Showing Up

Week 34: September 2-6 Dinner Count: 0

You would think that after Labor Day we’d get a little breather… but motherhood laughs at the idea of rest. Tuesday hit the ground running with drama club and night football practice. The kids barely saw each other, and dinner happened whenever we were home: not around the table together.

The rest of the week was a blur: dance classes, doctor appointments, football games, and an epilepsy-awareness event. It felt like every time I looked at the calendar, something new had popped up. This season of life is loud and busy, but it’s ours and I’m learning to lean into the rhythm rather than fight it.

A Big Moment: Epilepsy Awareness Night

One of the brightest spots in the week was the Arizona Diamondbacks epilepsy-awareness night. My son loves volunteering at this event. He stands at the table, talks to families, encourages kids who have epilepsy, and shows them, with absolute confidence, that their life is not over.

He’s been seizure-free for 2½ years now. He’s driving. He’s looking at colleges. He’s dreaming about his future. And every single moment of that feels like a gift I never take lightly.

Studies show us that what he does, talking openly about his disability, is actually incredibly good for him. Research shows that when kids can acknowledge and talk about their conditions:

• they feel more confident and less alone,

• they build stronger identities instead of letting a diagnosis define them, and

• they show better emotional resilience over time.

Kids who understand and accept their disabilities tend to cope better, adjust better, and feel more capable because they see themselves as whole, not broken. And that’s exactly what I see in him every single day: wholeness, courage, and a deep sense of “I’m okay.”

Finding Connection in Small Moments

We technically didn’t have a full family dinner this week. Not even one! The only one we managed was counted in last week’s post. But connection doesn’t disappear just because the dinner table is empty.

This week connection looked like:

• car rides

• last-minute thrift store runs

• Starbucks chats

• couch snuggles

• quick check-ins between activities

My daughter loves thrifting, so I make time for that. She crawls into my bed in the morning to talk, and I love it. My son opens up the most while we’re driving from one thing to another. These tiny pockets of connection matter more than the perfect meal.

That’s something motherhood keeps teaching me:Connection isn’t always scheduled. It’s often squeezed in between everything else and that still counts.

The Heart of This Week

Zero dinners together… but so much life.

A week filled with movement, emotions, resilience, and a thousand small moments of being there for my kids in the ways they needed. The goal was never perfection. The goal is presence. Showing up. Trying again. Loving them where they’re at.

Here’s to a dinner-less week that still held so much connection and to all the moms in the thick of it, finding tiny scraps of magic in the middle of the chaos. We’re doing better than we think. 💛