I came across a column by an Australian woman named Monica. The woman is 53 years old, and she did what each of us has dreamed of at least once in moments of deep everyday despair, Ukr.Media reports.
How many times have you looked at a dirty cup left exactly a millimeter away from the sink and considered changing your name and moving?
In Monica's case, the trigger was a full dishwasher. She sat, watching someone from her family calmly walk past, because “mom will unload it,” and at that moment something broke inside her. Or rather, on the contrary, it got better.
At that time, she had the classic set of a woman who was getting old.
The death of a close friend, approaching menopause with all these fogs in his head, a male financier building a career, two lazy students (19 and 20 years old) living at home, and elderly relatives in need of care.
Monica didn’t throw a tantrum. She just went to their family’s beach house (yes, we can roll our eyes here, because not all of us have a spare oceanfront property, but that’s not the point). She went to clean up, poured herself a cup of coffee, looked at the sunrise, and thought: Why the hell would I even go back there?
Next was a letter to a man with the ingenious wording: “I will someday.”
The husband's reaction is a special kind of comedy. Instead of asking his wife if everything was okay, he called his mother-in-law. And she replied that everything was fine with her daughter and offered to come and show him how their own kitchen worked.
In the end, when they did get back on the phone, he didn't yell. He simply said “Okay” and, as the author herself suspects, calmly went off to play golf, rejoicing that there would be no divorce and no division of property.
Thus began her eight-month vacation from her own life.
No “Eat, Pray, Love”-style pathos with finding herself in the beds of hot Europeans. Just a woman who remembered that she is actually a person, and not a 24-hour service for delivering clean socks.
For five months she sat by the sea, swam, pulled iron, and felt her body and mind returning to her. She occasionally visited home to check if the guys had burned down the house (the house was still standing, the weeds were growing, everyone was alive).
And then she closed up shop and went to Europe. London, France, Croatia, the Austrian Alps. In Croatia, a local old man shouted at her to jump off a pier into the water, and she jumped because she remembered that once, twenty years ago, before meeting her husband and having children, she had been just like that—cheerful, brave, and easy to get along with.
The man sent her a photo of himself proudly standing next to a curry he had made himself. He had learned to cook!
The woman writes that she really wanted to ask: “Should I give you a medal? I've been preparing for you for twenty years.” But she restrained herself and praised him. I probably wouldn't have been able to restrain myself, but I'm not 53, I haven't reached that level of Zen yet.
The most interesting thing happened with the children.
When the eldest son had his heart broken, his mother was in Europe. And the world didn't fall apart. The father had to step in and be a father. It turned out that being a good mother isn't always about being the first to rush to the rescue with a Band-Aid and soup. It's also about being able to step back so others can take responsibility.
Then she got fed up. She realized that living solely on cocktails and sunsets wouldn't work. And her husband, suddenly thinking about romance, flew to meet her in Singapore for a couple of days before returning home.
They now live in two houses. She splits her time between Sydney and the beach, her husband comes to visit for a few weeks. He started inviting her to play golf. The kids proudly said, “Mom, you deserve it.”
I read this and thought about how often we trap ourselves in our own indispensability. We think that without our help, the family will starve to death in a pile of unironed laundry. But in reality, everyone survives just fine. They find their way to the frying pan. They learn to make soup. They listen to each other.
Sometimes you just have to let them do it, and physically or at least mentally, step outside to hear your own thoughts. Without that endless background noise of other people's needs.
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What do you think: is such a radical step the only way to “heal” the family or is it pure selfishness?
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💃 I deserve freedom 😤 This is pure selfishness 🤔 I have my own story
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💃 I deserved freedom 100% 😤 This is pure selfishness 0% 🤔 I have my own story 0%
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First new ↕ Bearded Pike 💃 Deserved freedom 03/21/2026 18:32 I once told my son: “Son, my mother and I gave birth to and raised you only so that you could live a good life, exactly the way you want. Don't live your life the way someone else wants you to, even if it's your wife… but remember that your wife deserves exactly the same. So, either “two-way traffic” or respect + Reply