For years, I was the mother who always said yes. I put everyone else first, even when I was exhausted and had nothing left to give. But after a painful family vacation in Brittany, my daughter finally realized what she had been doing to me. And at 62, I discovered something I should have learned decades earlier: loving your family should never mean losing yourself.

And perhaps that was the most important lesson of all.

You do not have to disappear to keep your family close.

You do not have to exhaust yourself to prove that you care.

You do not have to say yes to every request to deserve love.

Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is tell the truth.

And sometimes, the most important relationship you need to repair is the one you have with yourself.

I am sixty-two years old.

I cannot go back and change the years I spent putting myself last.

I cannot recover every afternoon I missed, every book I postponed, every trip I never took, or every moment when I smiled and said I was fine when I was anything but fine.

But I can choose what I do with the time I have left.

I can wear the blue shirt.

I can travel to the sea.