It was about 2 years ago – when I was fully stuck into grad school and wondering if there would be an end in sight – that I found myself sitting across from Chris, looking up from my notes, and saying, “I want to go back to New Zealand. I want to plan on it. I want to start saving for it, put it on the calendar, and for it to be just me and you.”

Chris, to his credit, looked me in the eye and said, “OK. Let’s do it.”

No “but what about paying off your student loan?” or “who would watch the kids?” or “that’s too expensive.” Just, “OK. Let’s do it.” I love him for that.

It wasn’t easy. If I ever get asked to self-rate my anxiety about things like debt, I would probably give myself a 9.5 out of 10. Or maybe 10 out of 10. Or an 11. It depends on the day. Or the hour. I knew then that to plan for this vacation meant siphoning part of our earnings away from re-paying my grad school loan and putting it toward this unnecessary (to some people) thing. Except that to me, this was necessary.

We planned and we saved. Once I finished grad school and had a full-time job again, we put a percentage of (nearly) each paycheck into a “vacation fund” account after first paying our bills, tithe, and (almost always) more than the monthly requirement for my grad school loan. The fact that I work as a NP and Chris is a professor combined with having a small house with a low-for-Williamsburg-VA mortgage, driving used cars (one of which is paid for), and keeping our expenses to a minimum certainly allowed for us to save up for our vacation a lot more quickly than if we were earning less, had higher expenses, or a combination of both of those two.

We reached out to the parents and in-laws, secured commitments from both of them to come to VA for a week to be with the boys, bought plane tickets, and started researching AirBnBs. Reservations were made, plans created, PTO requested (Chris is on sabbatical this year, so I was the only one who needed to use up any annual leave).

And then work blew up. And our oven broke. And in a fit of madness I decided to register for a certification exam and added the stress of studying into my already crazy life. I was at the hospital for 10-11 hours/day, waking up at 3 in the morning thinking about a patient or a patient’s family member, unable to fall back asleep and finally getting out of bed at 5am to shower and get ready for work. I did that so many times in the weeks and months leading up to this trip. I wouldn’t get home till after 6 o’clock. I was hardly seeing the boys. The house was a mess. And then, as I mentioned earlier, the oven broke. That happened 2 weeks before our trip, but not before I’d already started to fill up the freezer with freezer meals to make life easier for the grandparents.

The 2 weeks leading up to our NZ vacation were some of the most stressful that I’d experienced in the last 7 years. On one particular night I ended up telling Chris that it was the most anxious, the most overwhelmed that I’d felt since dealing with postpartum anxiety and depression after Jack was born. In a weird way, it brought some perspective to my life. I felt awful and yet it clearly reminded me of how I’d felt as a mom with a 2 year old and newborn. And I found myself asking, “Why on earth did I think it was normal back then for me to feel that way? Good grief – I was nuts! This is crazy.”

So, I set some limits. I told Chris that I’d reached my limit and that I needed some help around the house. I told my colleagues that I was sorry, but I needed to leave on time. I even put it on the calendar at work. How sad is that? To write in, “Jenny – leaving on time” on the community work calendar? But that’s what it took. Because without it, the expectation was that I would be staying late, like usual.

I, the one who preaches to everyone else at work about setting boundaries, had completely lost hers. Poof. Gone. Preparing for this vacation brought that home to me in a way that little else had.

I was able to leave work early on the day before we embarked on our NZ vacation and got home to dirty clothes, unpacked suitcases, a mother-in-law who had just arrived, and no husband to greet her. I broke out a bottle of wine for her, sat and visited for about 45 minutes, and then excused myself to deal with luggage and laundry. It wasn’t a pretty evening. I ended up laying in the bed for over an hour trying to decompress from some of the trauma and heartache that I’d carried home with me from the hospital. Working in my particular specialty has required a lot more strenghtening of the emotional muscles than I’d realized it would. I definitely cried and told Chris that maybe we should cancel the trip. Maybe I should just cancel my PTO – there was so much to do at work, and I felt tremendous guilt for leaving my colleagues short-staffed. Maybe I should stay home and do more things with the boys. I was dramatic, sarcastic, and willfully unreasonable in my arguments with Chris. And thankfully, he let me be. He let me vent and get it out of my system.

Then I got up, blew my nose, had a glass of water, and dealt with it. I apologized to Chris. I finished some of the packing, told myself that the rest would keep until the morning, and then sat on the sofa with a book. I went to bed and woke up early in the morning (but not 3am early like I’d been unwillingly doing for so many weeks leading up to that day), showered, and made the boys some breakfast. We said our good-byes, got to the airport, and after our first flight from Richmond to O’Hare, I finally started to relax.

Our vacation had begun.