I heard Evelyn before I saw her.

She was in the shower, six years old (six and three-quarters, she will correct you firmly and without apology), belting out something between a lullaby and an improvised pop anthem. The kind of singing that has no audience in mind. No performance, no polish. Just a little girl and a melody and a moment that belonged entirely to her.

I casually leaned against the door and didn’t move.

There’s a specific kind of stillness that comes over you when your child does something so purely themselves that you forget, for a second, that you were on your way somewhere. That you had a thing to do, or a next step already loading.

In this moment, the to-do list paused. The ambient noise of my own thinking went quiet. And for a moment I was just a woman standing by the bathroom, listening to her daughter sing.

The smile came up from somewhere behind my ribs. The kind that reaches your eyes before you’ve decided to smile at all. I didn’t analyze it or document it or even fully think it. I just stood there and let it be exactly what it was — one of those small, unscheduled gifts that motherhood sometimes hands you completely without warning.

And then, because apparently I cannot leave a beautiful thing alone, I started thinking.

When was the last time I sang in the shower?

Not hummed absently. Not let a song play in the background while I ran through the morning agenda in my head. Actually sang. The way she was singing. Like no one was listening, like it didn’t matter, like the point was just the feeling of it.

I can remember it, actually. Standing under hot water, belting out something dramatic and completely overwrought, unself-conscious in a way that feels almost foreign to me now. No reason. No audience. No outcome. Just sound and steam and a few minutes of uncomplicated joy that I apparently used to give myself without a second thought.

And now?

I’ve been researching waterproof voice recorders.

Not for singing. For the shower thoughts. The ones that arrive fully formed and feel so sharp and useful in the moment, and then dissolve somewhere between the water and the towel. I’ve been trying to figure out how to capture them. How to make sure nothing good gets lost.

I sat with that for a minute.

So that’s what I’ve done with the last quiet, unstructured window in my day… I turned it into a productivity strategy. I looked at five minutes of warmth and solitude and decided the highest use was output.

Capture the thoughts.
Don’t waste the clarity.
Stay a little bit on, even here.

I don’t say that with contempt for myself. I understand exactly how it happened. I’m a mother of twins who also runs a business and has a hundred moving parts and a brain that genuinely never fully powers down. Of course I want to catch the good ideas before they disappear. Of course I’m trying to be efficient.

But somewhere between being efficient and being a person, I stopped singing.

And I hadn’t even noticed.

That’s the part that stayed with me, leaning against that door. Not just that I’d stopped, but that I’d let it go so quietly. There was no decision. No morning I woke up and thought, I think I’ll be a little less joyful going forward. It was just erosion. Small and slow and invisible until you’re standing outside your six-year-old’s shower realizing you can’t remember the last time you did something that had no purpose other than feeling good.

I think a lot of us have a version of this story.

The thing we used to do just because we loved it, had somewhere along the way started to feel indulgent. The dancing in the kitchen that became self-conscious. The long bath that turned into a quick shower. The drive with no destination that we stopped taking because who has the time.

We didn’t grieve these things out loud. We just quietly stopped, and then adjusted to the loss so completely that we forgot there was anything missing.

And I want to name that as a real thing. Not a crisis. Not a failing. Just a quiet cost that accumulates in a season like this one, when so much is being asked of you and so much of what you give is invisible and the margins are thin and you’re doing your best.

The joy doesn’t disappear all at once. It just gets postponed, again and again, until postponed starts to feel like permanent.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, though, both from living this and from the work I do: those unguarded, spontaneous little moments of happiness, the ones that arrive without invitation and ask nothing in return, are not frivolous. Your nervous system notices. Your body exhales in a way it doesn’t when you’re “performing wellness” or checking boxes or dutifully practicing self-care.

The absently humming, the eyes-closed smile when no one is looking, the singing just because it feels good. That’s the real thing. And it matters more than we’ve been giving it credit for.

So I did something about it.

I got in the shower. I didn’t sing — there were little ears nearby and some performances are best kept private, or at least saved for a more captive audience. But I planted my feet. I let the music in my head have its moment. And I moved. Not gracefully. Not with any particular intention. Just enough to remember that this body, the one that carries everything, the one I ask so much of, is also capable of just… being. Of taking up space for no reason. Of feeling something simple and good without immediately turning it into something useful.

It felt a little ridiculous.

It felt genuinely wonderful.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe joy doesn’t need to be earned or optimized or scheduled into a wellness routine to count. Maybe it just needs a little room. A few minutes of warm water and no agenda. A decision, quiet and personal, to stop treating every unoccupied moment like a problem to solve.

Evelyn is still singing, by the way. Every shower, every bath, most car rides, occasionally while eating breakfast. She has no idea she started something.

I’ve decided to let her keep teaching me.