Sloane Heffernan: Feeling the burn

My skin was red and tingling.

It’s that unmistakable feeling you get when you stay in the sun for just a bit too long. I was driving down the road with my three kids chatting in the back of the minivan when I realized that I had a sunburn.

It didn’t make sense. We hadn’t stayed at our neighborhood pool very long.

I thought back to the daunting process of applying sunscreen to the kids from head to toe. They wiggled, squirmed and complained about how long it was taking and then it dawned on me – I forgot to put sunscreen on myself!

I suddenly realized that my sunburn was an analogy for what life sometimes becomes when we have children. We put our kids first and our own needs get pushed aside.

We spend so much time lathering our little ones with love, affection and attention that we often forget to apply the same attention to ourselves.

And sometimes we don’t even notice it until it is too late. Until we get burned out - or in my case literally burned.