Being present at home after a day that took everything
Boundaries • 5 min read
Being present at home after a day that took everything
You pull into the driveway and sit there for a moment longer than necessary. Not because you don’t want to go inside, but because you know the second you do, the next shift starts.
The work day took a lot. Maybe it took everything. Now your kids are going to run at you full speed with a story about something that happened at lunch, and your spouse is going to ask about dinner, and some part of you is going to want to disappear into your phone just to get five minutes of not being needed.
I know that driveway moment. I’ve sat in it more times than I can count. Even dozed off some days, succumbing to the need for an overdue nap. For a long time, I walked through the front door already defeated. I was physically there yet exhausted, mentally still at my desk, emotionally unavailable to everyone including myself.
Here’s what I’ve figured out, slowly and imperfectly, about crossing that threshold.
Presence doesn’t mean having energy you don’t have
The first thing I had to unlearn was the idea that being present meant being “on.” I thought I had to be engaged, enthusiastic, and fully available. Some days, that was simply not possible. Rather than give myself permission to be tired, I felt as though I was failing at home on top of being exhausted from work.
Presence isn’t about energy level. It’s about attention. You can be tired and still present. You can be quiet and still present. You can sit on the couch and not say much and still be genuinely, warmly there if your attention is actually in the room and not somewhere else.
The transition was the problem, so I fixed it
The hardest part of coming home after a draining day isn’t being home. It’s the switching from one mom hat to another with no real buffer in between. Work brain doesn’t just switch off at 5:00. It needs a signal. Similar to what I mentioned in a previous blog when I mentioned clients with sleep problems. The same way the brain needs a signal to notify it that it is time for bed, it needs a signal, a ritual, to take it from work brain to “family time brain.”
I ended up building a transition to signal to my brain that it’s time to let work go until my next work shift. Before I walked through the door, I took a few minutes in the car. I didn’t look through my phone or call anyone. I would close my eyes and allow my body to relax. If I dozed off, so be it. Apparently, my body needed the short nap and I didn’t feel bad about it. I was able to eagerly go into the house and take care of home life business with the energy I needed to get things done. I also started delegating more tasks to my family, but we’ll talk about that another day.
This transition or ritual may sound almost too simple to work, but the transition ritual, no matter how small, tells your nervous system that the context has changed. You’re not at work anymore. You’re home. Those are different places that ask different things of you, and your brain needs a moment to catch up.
I provide therapy mostly from home now, telehealth, and I still have a transition ritual. Instead of running out of my home office as soon as I’m done with my last client, I leave the door closed and put on some music while I close out files and systems. My daughter told me that she can tell when I’m done seeing clients, but knows not to bother me until that office door opens.
Doing your ritual enough signals to your brain AND your family that you need some time before the next thing.
It’s okay to say “I need twenty minutes”
Some days the transition ritual isn’t enough. Some days you may walk in the door and you genuinely have nothing left. On those days, the most present thing you can do is be honest about it.
“I had a really hard day and I need twenty minutes to decompress, and then I’m all yours.” That’s not absence. That’s self-awareness. Kids who see their parents name their needs and take care of them are learning something genuinely valuable about how adults function. Just as I tell my perinatal moms, your baby is watching you and picks up on your energy.
The version of you who took twenty minutes and came back regulated is more present than the version who pushed through on empty and snapped at someone over spilled milk.
You are allowed to arrive gradually
What your family needs isn’t a perfectly present parent every evening. They need a parent who keeps showing up, keeps trying, and keeps choosing them even when it’s hard, even when it’s imperfect, even when all you can offer is sitting quietly on the couch next to them while they watch TV.
That counts. Being in the room, putting the phone down, looking your kids in the eye when they are talking counts, even on the days when it’s all you have.
Do you have a way of transitioning from work mode to home mode? I’d love to hear it in the comments.
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