The wipe-out after a chag is predictable, seasonal, and almost never planned for.
Because you ran a sustained operation — catering, hosting, cleaning, managing children out of routine — usually across weeks, usually while everyone else was off. The exhaustion isn't disproportionate. It's the accurate cost of what you actually did, arriving late because there was no room for it at the time.
Very. The drop after an intense, high-demand stretch is well recognised — the adrenaline that carried you through recedes and everything you postponed lands at once. Add the anticlimax of the house emptying out, and a flat week or two afterwards is the norm rather than a sign something's wrong.
Longer than most women allow for. Cheshvan tends to be the hardest month of the year precisely because it's treated as back-to-normal when the debt from Tishrei hasn't been paid. Assume weeks, not days — and note that going straight back to full pace is what stretches it out.
Broadly three: the run-up to Pesach, the whole of Tishrei, and the long stretch of summer bein hazmanim with children home. They're different kinds of hard — Pesach is physical, Tishrei is relentless, summer is unstructured — but each ends with mothers considerably more depleted than they started.
After the intensity, not during the lull before it. Post-Pesach and post-Tishrei are the two windows where a break does the most work, because you're recovering from something specific rather than topping up generally. Early summer, before bein hazmanim, is the other sensible one.
Book the recovery at the same time you start the preparation, not afterwards. The reason it never happens is that by the time you're free enough to arrange something, you're too depleted to organise it. Putting a date in before the season starts is the single most effective change.
Nothing, and they mostly don't. What you're comparing against is other women's public composure, which is not the same thing as their private state. Ask two or three friends directly how they're doing after Yom Tov and the answers tend to be strikingly similar to yours.
EXHALE
Two nights, women only, and nothing asked of you.
The kashrus, the food and the accommodation are handled. There is no programme you have to attend.
See the retreat