Being busy is for wimps. It's the chilled-out who strong.

Take this as an example. In the middle of my three-week stressathon, I needed my two-year-old to take a nap so I could prepare for a session the next day in school.

I cuddled him in front of CBeebies - no joy. I put him in his buggy and took him to the supermarket - he stayed wide awake. I gave him a bath, put his pyjamas on and read soothing stories - he was doing cartwheels around the bedroom.

At 9pm, I handed Arch over to my husband and said I was going to have a multi-tasking bath. (The very notion makes me shudder, but what else can you do?)

Arch, who normally loves time with his dad, seemed to know at some visceral level I was unavailable and screamed: "I want mummy," until his taut little body practically choked. I couldn't work with that going on anyway so I gave in - eventually - and the tasks of my bath extended mopping a toddler's tears as well as washing myself and planning what I was going to do with a class of 30 ten-year-olds.

Never again.

As soon as I had reached the end of my frantic three weeks, I felt happy again. I realised it was May for a start. The grass was lime-green and the Whitsun roses were about to burst into opulent redness.

I walked down the road in the fleeting sunshine with Arch running ahead of me and gratitude swelled in my heart; gratitude that he was here, that he was running, that he was two. When I was stressed I had been wishing these precious years away: "Once he's at school it will all be easier..."

I wrote to a friend whose husband had died five weeks ago. I hadn't even known she was grieving at the time because I had put all my post into a drawer to be opened later. I stopped using alcohol as a short-cut to relaxation and breathed instead.

I had allowed myself to be busy because I needed the money. I don't know what I will do next time my cash flow needs attention but I hope I will have the strength to resist taking on so much in future.

When I am busy, I don't have time to feel gratitude, I run on adrenalin rather than the nourishment of sensuality. To be busy is to squander life. May I never waste my days again.