I am writing this surrounded by boxes.
Not the fun kind. The brown kind, stacked three high, labeled in Sharpie in my own handwriting — KIDS’ BOOKS. OFFICE. CLOSET — DO NOT OPEN.
Our house is under construction, so we moved out over Labor Day weekend. The kids started school on August 25th. Which means we packed up a household and started a school year in roughly the same two weeks.
But here’s the moment I actually knew how this September was going to go.
A few days before school started, I pulled out the uniforms.
The ones I bought last year. On purpose. Ahead of time. In a bigger size — while thinking, look at me. So smart. Thinking ahead for next September.
He tried them on.
Too small.
UGH.
I was wrong. I was so pleased with myself, and I was simply wrong.
The new batch is a month out. Until then, my son is rotating the two shirts that still fit. Two. All week. Every week.
And honestly? That’s the whole year in one image. I planned ahead. I was proud of myself for planning ahead. And the plan did not survive contact with an actual growing child.
September is a month of opposition for me.
Every mom I know says the same thing right about now. Isn’t it wonderful — the kids are back, we have our time again. And I agree. I really do. I am not going to pretend I don’t love a quiet Tuesday morning.
But here is the part I don’t usually say out loud.
For me, September is the home stretch. I am in the last quarter of my business year. I am closing out 2026 — counting what we did, what we didn’t, what still has to get done before December takes the pen out of my hand.
For them, September is the starting line. New classroom. New teacher. A friend group that reshuffled over the summer in a way that stings a little.
They are beginning. I am ending.
We are living under the same roof — well, the same rental — on completely opposite ends of the same calendar.
Here’s my confession for this issue.
I overplanned 2026. For the first time, I really did.
I planned this year last year, when my calendar was still theoretical. And from that distance, every yes looked reasonable. Of course I can do that. It’s ten months away. I’ll have the time.
Time is so generous in the abstract.
Then the year arrives — one week at a time, in real hours, in a real body — and you find yourself sitting in the exact hour you sold off a year ago, wondering what you were thinking.
And that’s before the wrench.
Because we can schedule ourselves. We can absolutely over-schedule ourselves. What none of us can plan for is the thing that lands in the middle of a well-built calendar and knocks it sideways.
A fire.
New construction, and a city permit office that moves at its own pace no matter how nicely you ask.
A tournament schedule that nobody consulted me on.
A friend’s milestone birthday I would not miss for anything in this world.
Not one of those was on the calendar in 2025. Not one of them could have been.
So I have to learn to say no again.
I hear that advice constantly. I’ve given that advice. I’ve said it from a stage.
And just when I think I have finally gotten good at it, I find out that saying no isn’t a skill you master and keep. It’s a muscle. It weakens when you don’t use it. Mine has apparently been resting since about last October.
I think a lot of us are built this way. We say yes because we can genuinely see how it could work. We’re resourceful. We problem-solve for a living. We look at a request and our brain immediately starts rearranging the furniture to make it fit — and it does fit, on paper, in the abstract, ten months out.
We book the schedule months ahead. We commit to the CE, the study club, the board seat, the speaking engagement, the volunteer hour, the field trip. We say yes in a season with room in it, and we pay for it in a season that has none.
And then we sit in the middle of the week we created and think, who did this to me.
We did. Kindly, optimistically, with the best of intentions. We did.
To every one of you reading this at 10pm with a school calendar in one hand and a production report in the other — I see you.
I see the mental load that nobody assigned you and everybody assumes you’re carrying. The permission slips. The uniform that doesn’t fit anymore. The team meeting. The tournament three hours away. The thing you promised your own mother you’d handle.
I am a CEO. I run a company. I am closing out a business year and already being asked what 2027 looks like.
And I am a mother, this week, watching two kids start a year I can’t take a single step of for them.
Both of those are true at the same time, and they do not fit inside the same hour. I have stopped pretending they ever will.
And still — I get through it. So do you. That’s not a small thing. That’s the whole thing.
But here’s what I actually want to change. Because it isn’t only about saying no.
I want to say yes more intentionally. Yes to the things that align with where I am and who I am now — not who I was when I booked it.
We are trained to think in ROI. Invest in the conference. Invest in the CE. Ask what it returns.
So let me ask an honest question, and I’ll answer it first: how many clinical CE courses have I sat through and never implemented a single thing?
A lot. More than I want to admit.
And then there are the other meetings. The ones I registered for without even knowing the speaker lineup. No good business reason. I just said yes.
And I walked out of those with a notebook full of things I was implementing by Monday.
Not because of the stage. Because of a conversation. Because another mom dentist sat down across from me and poured into me — because she had already lived the exact thing I was standing in the middle of, and she just told me.
That is ROI. Nobody puts it on a spreadsheet, but that is ROI.
Coming home with a full cup is ROI. Leaving somewhere less stressed than you arrived is ROI. Adding three more women to your speed dial — the ones you can text at 9pm on a Tuesday when the associate contract falls apart or your kid is struggling — that is the highest return I have ever gotten on anything.
So that’s my filter now. Not can I fit this in.
Does this fill my cup? Will I leave refreshed?
Which is exactly why I’m looking ahead to this fall with something I can only describe as anticipation.
There is one weekend every year where I put all of it down. Where I stand in a room full of women who don’t need any of this explained to them, and something in my shoulders finally drops.
I look forward to it all year. And every single year, I meet faces I’ve never seen before and leave with people I can’t imagine not knowing.
The education is excellent — truly, if you sit still and listen and grab the pearls, it’s excellent.
But it has never been the education. It’s the camaraderie. Every. Single. Time.
That part is hard to put into words, and I’ve stopped trying to. Some things you don’t understand until you’re standing in the middle of them.
So here’s where I’ve landed this September, surrounded by boxes and school calendars and a mental load that is going to keep me up for a few more nights.
I’m going to say one no this month. Out loud, to a real person, about a real thing. Not a maybe. Not a let me look at my calendar. A no.
And then I’m going to say one yes that has nothing to do with what it returns on paper.
Because the year is ending for me and beginning for them, and somewhere in that overlap there has to be a little room left over for the woman holding both.
There is. I’m going to go find mine.
I hope you’ll go find yours.
(And if you have a son in a size 14 uniform shirt — call me. I have some questions about how fast this happened.)
Many blessings,
Dr. Grace Yum
Founder, Mommy Dentists in Business
