People often ask about stress management, as though there’s some magical technique that will make the demands of life evaporate. Meditate for ten minutes! Take a deep breath! Buy a scented candle!

Sure. But when people’s livelihoods depend on you, and people’s care depends on you, sometimes the scented candle feels like one more thing you have to remember to blow out.

I carry a lot of stress. Every day. So much depends on me that I can practically feel the weight of it sitting on my shoulders. I used to fret more. During COVID, I cried. There are days when the responsibility feels enormous, and pretending otherwise would be a particularly unhelpful form of positive psychology.

So how do I manage stress?

Exercise.

I know. BORING.

I wish I could tell you I eat an entire cheesecake. That I smoke something mysterious on a beach. That I disappear to a spa in Bali and return spiritually enlightened and inexplicably wearing linen.

Alas, lactose intolerance makes the cheesecake strategy medically inadvisable. And, I don’t smoke.

What I do is dance.

At night. Alone. When everyone else has gone to sleep.

I put on music and hunt for the right song. Sometimes it’s something old. Sometimes it’s something with a beat that makes my body move before my brain has had time to file an objection. I dance around the room, accumulating steps and expressing emotions that probably don’t have an appropriate place on a Monday morning executive call.

For those minutes, I’m not the CEO. I’m not the person responsible for budgets, staffing, strategy, or the well-being of hundreds of people. I’m not the one who has to figure out what happens next.

I’m just a woman dancing in her house.

Sometimes I’m graceful. Sometimes I’m ridiculous. Sometimes I’m fairly certain the neighbors would call for a wellness check if they could see me.

And I don’t care.

Because something happens when I dance. The tension loosens. My mind stops rehearsing tomorrow’s problems. My body gets to speak when my professional life requires me to spend so much time thinking, planning, deciding, and containing.

I decompress. I move. I feel.

For a little while, I’m someone else on a dance floor. Someone without a to-do list. Someone who doesn’t have to be responsible for everything.

Maybe it’s my Saturday Night Fever. Maybe it’s an inexpensive form of psychotherapy with a better soundtrack.

Whatever it is, it works for me.

I’ve learned that managing stress isn’t about eliminating it. Some stress comes with caring deeply, carrying responsibility, and doing work that matters. There’s no single cure, no universal prescription, and certainly no scented candle powerful enough to fix a dysfunctional budget.

Sometimes you need a therapist. Sometimes you need a friend. Sometimes you need sleep, a long walk, or permission to admit that today was just too much.

And sometimes you need to turn up the music, move your body, and let the woman who spends all day holding everything together fall apart a little on the dance floor.

Preferably to a really good beat.

Stayin’ alive, people. One dance step at a time.