By Aphinya Dechalert 
I love my kids. I really do. But sometimes when they come in for a hug, my whole body tenses. I flinch. Not because I don’t love them back, but because I’m touched out. Fully, completely, and absolutely done with being touched.
There are six little hands in this house. Three kids. A 1-year-old who climbs me like a jungle gym. A 3-year-old who’s constantly draped across my legs or pulling at my clothes. And a 7-year-old who feels the shift, who notices that I’m stretched thin and sometimes chooses to stay on the outside of it all. That last one hurts more than I admit.
From the moment I wake up, someone is on me. Poking my face, pressing their body into mine, needing something. All day. Every day. The baby wants to be carried, the toddler wants to snuggle, the 7-year-old wants my attention in quieter, more complicated ways. I am never alone. My body is never just mine.
By midday, I’m just done. I want affection, but I want it on my terms, in a quiet space, when I’m not already drained. I want a pause button. That doesn’t exist.
Then comes the guilt. The heavy kind that settles in my chest and whispers that I’m a bad mother. Because who flinches when their kids just want love? Who backs away from hugs and snuggles and chubby toddler kisses?
I do. And I hate that I do. But this isn’t about love. This is about overload.
No one talks about how much physical contact you absorb in a day when you have little kids. It’s constant. Sticky fingers. Grabby hands. Legs wrapped around your waist. Heads pressed against your chest when you only want to breathe. And all the while, the mental load never stops. Meals, laundry, school drop-off, big feelings, little tantrums. Every second, someone needs me, emotionally, mentally, physically. There’s no buffer. No quiet in between.
I’m learning to recognize the warning signs. The deep sighs. The slight flinch when I hear “Mom” for the hundredth time that hour. I’m starting to take space when I need it. Even if it’s just five minutes in a bedroom. I remind myself that needing boundaries doesn’t mean I love them less. It means I’m human. It means I’m trying to survive the beautiful, relentless chaos of mothering three small humans who all want more of me than I have to give.
And that 7-year-old? She sees it. She feels the difference. So I’m trying harder to make space for her too. To let her know I still see her. That she’s not forgotten, even when I’m buried under diapers and tantrums and two-hour bedtimes.
Some nights, after they’re finally asleep and the house is still, my heart aches in that quiet way only mothers understand. Not out of regret, but from the slow unraveling that happens when you give all of yourself, over and over, without pause. I lie there replaying the day—the little hands, the flinches I wish I hadn’t made, the moments I was too tired to stretch further, and I feel the weight of loving deeply while needing distance all the same.
I love them more than anything I’ve ever known. And still, there are days when I need room to breathe, to feel like my body belongs to me again, even just for a while. That doesn’t make me selfish or cold or a terrible mother. It makes me human.
This, too, is part of motherhood, holding both the closeness and the space. Wanting to be everything for them, while remembering I am someone too.
by Stephanie Hanrahan 
by Becky Weigel 
