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By OK Tease Co.
The Song You Turn Off Because the Kids Hate It Your song comes on. The one that used to live loud in your car with the windows down, back when the car w...
Your song comes on. The one that used to live loud in your car with the windows down, back when the car was just yours. You get maybe four seconds into it before the chorus of groans starts from the backseat. "Mom, no." "Not this again." And your thumb hits skip before you even decide to. On goes whatever they want. You didn't even think about it. That's the part worth stopping on.
Because it's such a small thing. A song. Who fights over a song? But that little automatic skip is a thousand of the same small surrenders stacked on top of each other, and you barely notice them going down because each one feels like nothing. The snack you don't like but keep buying. The show playing for the fourth time while yours waits. The playlist you gave up because it's easier than the groaning. None of them matter. All of them together are how a woman looks up one day and can't quite remember what she actually likes.
That song was never about the song. It's a marker. A little flag stuck in the ground that said this is me, this is the version of me who exists outside of being needed. And when you skip it without a thought, you're not just changing the music. You're voting, quietly, for the idea that your preferences are the ones that bend first. Every time.
Here's what I'll stand behind: keeping one thing that's just yours is not selfish. It is the thing that makes getting through possible at all. A woman who has erased every small preference to keep the peace has a much harder time answering the bigger question later, the one that shows up in the quiet after they're asleep. Who am I when nobody needs me right now? If you've kept a few small flags in the ground, that question doesn't feel so much like a cliff.
You do not get to step back from any of it. You keep going as the mom, the one who handles the mornings and the pickups and the whole operation running. Nobody's arguing that. But the version of you that runs the operation and the version of you that has a song, they're supposed to be the same woman. Somewhere along the way we let them split. This is about closing that gap back up, one small stubborn preference at a time.
So the next time it comes on, don't skip it. Turn it up.
They'll complain. Let them. This is not you being difficult, and it is not a lesson you need to sit them down and explain. It's just Mom liking a song in her own car. That's the whole thing. And here is the part that most of us miss in the moment: they're watching. Not the way they watch when you're teaching them something. The other way. The way that sinks in without either of you naming it.
They see a woman who still has things that are hers. Who takes up a little space, out loud, in a place where it would be easier not to. They file that away. Your daughter especially, filing away what a grown woman is allowed to want. You are not managing them and you are not correcting them. You're just being fully yourself in front of them, and that is a thing they will carry a lot longer than they'll carry the memory of one annoying song.
We talk a lot around here about the big rebuild. Getting your body moving again because it's the only one you get, and movement being a stress reliever before it's ever about how you look. Movement helping your head almost as fast as it helps your body. All of that is real, and it starts smaller than most women expect. It starts with a song you refuse to skip. It starts with buying the snack you actually like. It starts with the walk you take because it's yours, not because it's productive.
These are the daily wins nobody claps for. Nobody notices you kept your song on. Nobody hands you anything for taking the twenty-minute walk while dinner sits half-prepped. But those tiny reclamations are you, quietly, deciding you still count. And your kids see the whole arc of it. They watch you come back to yourself, not in one dramatic moment, but in a hundred small ones. That's the full circle. You overcame the slow erasing of yourself, you're better for it, and they were witnesses the entire time.
Some days you won't feel any of this. You'll feel like the song, the snack, and the whole self are somebody else's life. That's the day this matters most, because feeling strong and being strong are not the same thing, and you are far stronger than you feel on your worst afternoon. Movement is one of the honest ways back to your own body, and even a short daily walk counts. If you want a straightforward starting point, the CDC's guidance on physical activity for adults lays out how little it actually takes to make a difference.
And when a woman puts on a tee that says something true about who she is, something about being worthy, about rebuilding, about being a force, she feels it a little. Not magic. Just a reminder stuck to her own skin that says the same thing the song says. This is mine. I'm still in here.
You are. You always were. Now turn it back up.