I wrote this from Bath.
Five of us have been friends since school, and this year it's our turn. Forty. Two birthdays that weekend, three still to come. It's that time.
We're all mums. And, naturally, we arrived carrying the same emotional hand luggage.
Who's doing bedtime?
Is there enough food in the freezer?
Has anyone packed the right shoes?
Are we actually allowed to leave the country for 48 hours without something catastrophic happening?
Still, we did it.
We booked a weekend away. Properly.
Massages. Rooftop spa. Steam rising off the water. Bath laid out below us.
Basically, the sort of thing you're supposed to do when you've finally decided you're a woman who rests.
Then, on the Saturday morning, an email arrived.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the spa is closed for the weekend.
And within minutes, one of my friends replied:
"Quite relieved actually. I'm a 40-year-old whale these days."
We laughed.
Because obviously we did.
But then I started thinking about it.
She wasn't relieved to miss the rest.
She was relieved to miss the conditions of the rest.
The swimsuit.
The changing room.
The being seen.
And it got me thinking about how many conditions we put on rest before we're allowed to have it.
It has to be booked.
It has to be paid for, preferably in advance, so there's no backing out.
It has to be a birthday. A treat. A reward for surviving the last six months.
It has to happen somewhere else, because if you're at home you can always see something that needs doing.
And apparently, now, it has to happen in a body we're happy to be looked at in.
That's a lot of admin for something our nervous systems would quite like us to do on a regular basis.
So we tried something else.
That night, the clocks went back.
Somewhere in the small hours, five women were handed an entire extra hour.
Free of charge.
No booking required.
No treatment package.
No swimsuit.
Nobody even asked us to earn it.
So the next morning, we walked.
Three miles from Bath Abbey, up to the skyline, then back down again. About an hour and a half. Cold air. Big views. Friends I've known since I was basically feral.
No treatments.
No changing rooms.
No pretending we're relaxed while secretly wondering if we're relaxed enough.
Just walking.
So I'm letting go of the idea that rest has to look like a spa.
Sometimes it looks like a hill.
Sometimes it looks like a coffee you drink while it's still hot.
Sometimes it looks like cancelling the thing you were going to do because you suddenly realise you don't want to.
And sometimes it looks like five women in their forties walking uphill, slightly out of breath, talking absolute rubbish and agreeing that nobody needs anything from them for the next 90 minutes.
What would you do with an hour that came with no conditions?
Whatever it is, you don't have to earn it.
It's already yours.
This first appeared in my Sunday letter about rest. If it landed, there’s a new one in your inbox every Sunday. Get the letter →
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