{"id":6139,"date":"2025-11-18T04:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embracinghome.blog\/?p=6139"},"modified":"2025-11-12T13:13:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:13:25","slug":"how-i-stopped-feeling-guilty-for-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embracinghome.blog\/index.php\/2025\/11\/18\/how-i-stopped-feeling-guilty-for-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Stopped Feeling Guilty for Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why getting a lamp and taking my shoes off helps me read. Reading is an act of quiet resistance against hustle culture.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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I have childhood memories of running home from elementary school excited to read my new library book until my parents got home from work. (Yes, I was an 80\u2019s latchkey kid.\ud83d\ude1c)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would toss my backpack in my room, grab some crackers from the pantry, and sit outside under the backyard tree or lounge upside down on the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A book and a quiet house felt healing for my soul. After a day full of people shouting, talking, being crammed in a desk seat, and all the chaos of school I needed space and calm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Matias North<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another reading memory I love to revisit was in my early 20\u2019s when I had just quit teaching to become a stay-at-home mom with my newborn. Jim would leave for work and I would have long days stretched out with not much structure. After feeling a bit unanchored, I decided to pick up a book I had always loved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While nursing, and when the baby was fussy, I would read Anne of Green Gables aloud. Those were precious moments holding my baby, enjoying my coffee, and reconnecting with a book that grounded me in place, home, and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Matias North<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then I somewhere in the midst of raising littles, reading began to feel like a luxury that belonged to other people.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I set aside time to pick up a book, I\u2019d get restless within minutes. Or weighed down by guilt over all the things I \u201cshould\u201d be doing instead. I paid more attention to the standards set by other people (who had many opinions about what my mothering life should look like).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was overwhelmed by comparison instead of listening to my inner voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I was still a reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept collecting ideas and taking in words, just in scattered, distracted ways. Often I would allow myself to read parenting or Christian self-help books because those would make me a \u201cbetter person\u201d. It was a project, not for fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But fiction felt elusive and out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I longed for that feeling of being fully absorbed in a novel with depth and well-written characters, but it always seemed too difficult to make time for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how did I move from frustration to ending each day with a book in my hands?<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Photo by Annie Spratt<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

3 Things That I Changed:<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

#1 \u2013 My attitude and my sense of identity.<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n