Something shifted today. Chris told me he'd been reading about body doubling. On his own. Without me asking. If you're waiting for your partner to "get it," keep going. Sometimes the breakthrough comes when you least expect it. But let me rewind to this morning. I woke up two hours late, mind already in overdrive. Holy shit, I've got so much to do. Chris's family were arriving at two, and you couldn't even walk through the kitchen to the barbecue area without navigating chaos. My brain was going zing, zing, zing, zing. Got to get it tidy. Come on. Let's GO. Then 9:30 hit and I'd promised Chris I'd go for a walk. I did NOT want to go. I needed to tidy. I didn't want to be embarrassed by the state of the place. But we went anyway. Could I enjoy it? Barely. I thought we'd been walking ages. It had been 15 minutes. Quick, quick, quick. Lots to do. So we went around the Rose Gardens, around the lake, saw the fish and the ducks. And the ducks' bums, because they had their heads underwater so all you could see was little legs out and little ducky bums. 🦆 But here's where it gets good. We got home, Chris looked at the mess (and there was quite a bit of mess), and instead of shame or judgment, we just... started. Together. Body doubling. We grouped things, we sorted, we cleared. I felt a little shame creep in, but Chris didn't make me feel shameful. He just worked alongside me. And by the end? I have a living room back. A dining table I can actually see.It feels free and spacious and relaxing and I am SO proud. The dopamine hit was HUGE. 🎉 It's not that I don't want to focus. It's that the overwhelm makes it almost impossible to start. Left to my own devices, Swizzel the squirrel 🐿️ sets me off on tangent, then another tangent (she's a naughty little minx). But having someone beside me, not fixing, not judging, just *present*, changed everything. We've body doubled before in the She Shed, him on his furniture, me on my mosaics. But this was different. This was making calmness out of chaos, side by side.

I'm Riitta from Finland. I've had lot challenges during my life. I was diagnosed while I was on sickleave over two years because of severe burnout. After I returned back to work I have been working part-time. Looking forward to see how this challenge could make a difference. Curious!