So I did a thing.

I wrote a book.

Me. The mom who forgets to eat lunch. The one who has served cereal for dinner more times than I will ever publicly admit. The woman whose idea of “self-care” used to be locking the bathroom door and sitting on the closed toilet lid for three minutes just to exist without someone needing something.

That mom wrote a book. And it’s on Amazon. Kinabahan ako, honestly.

How This Even Happened

For years, I was basically a robot. Wake up. Open laptop. Work until my eyes blurred. Stand up only to cook rice or move clothes to the dryer. Forget to eat. Forget to shower. Forget that I was still a person underneath all the deadlines.

When you’re the sole breadwinner juggling multiple jobs, you tell yourself you can’t afford to rest. So you don’t. Until your body starts sending you memos you can’t ignore. Until your kids look at you with worried eyes and ask when you last took a break.

That’s when I started doing something small. Tiny, actually. Little five-minute things throughout the day to remind myself I was still human. Not a productivity machine. Not the household’s 24/7 customer service hotline. A person.

A locked bathroom door. Three sips of hot coffee while it was actually hot. Sitting still for sixty seconds without apologizing for it.

Those small moments didn’t fix everything. But they kept me from completely disappearing into the work-home blur.

And somewhere along the way, I thought: Baka may iba pang mom na ganito rin.

What the Book Actually Is

The Micro-Moment Reset: 52 Small Practices for Work-From-Home Moms.

52 resets. One per week. One full year. Each one takes five minutes or less.

No “wake up at 5 AM for your morning routine.” No meal prep Sundays. No meditation apps. Just tiny, realistic things you can squeeze into the margins of your already-overflowing day.

Some examples:

The Bathroom Door Lock. Go to the bathroom. Lock the door. Sit on the closed lid for three minutes. That’s it. You’re not even using the bathroom. You’re just sitting behind a locked door where no one can reach you. Revolutionary, I know.

The Guilt-Free Screen Time. Hand your kid a device without narrating your guilt. No “just this once.” No “I know I shouldn’t but.” Hand it over, walk away, use the time. My kids grew up on games and screens with one rule: homework done, sleep on time. They’re adults now. They turned out fine. Relax ka lang.

The Meal You Don’t Cook. Serve takeout or cereal without calling it a “crazy day.” Just serve it. Eat it. Move on. My family used to say “Wow, cereal, yum!” and that enthusiasm is genuinely the only reason I survived the guilt.

The Email Sunset. Close your email at 5 PM. I used to keep mine open until midnight, jumping on every notification. And you know what happened when I stopped? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Who It’s For

If you work from home with kids and you’ve ever:

• Eaten lunch standing up at the counter while answering Slack messages
• Found your coffee cold on the counter an hour after you made it
• Felt guilty for needing five minutes alone
• Said “I’m fine” when you were absolutely not fine

Then this book was written with you in mind.

It’s not a parenting manual. It’s not a productivity system. It’s 52 small permissions to choose yourself for five minutes at a time.

The Part Where I Get Honest

I used AI to help me organize and format the content. I disclosed that on Amazon because transparency matters. But every single story in this book is mine. The cereal dinners. The notification addiction. The years of forgetting to eat. The moment my kids asked me to take a break. All of that is real. All of that happened.

AI didn’t live my life. I did. AI just helped me make the manuscript less chaotic. Kasi let’s be real, my brain is a mess.

Where to Get It

The book is available on Amazon Kindle. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free.

The Micro-Moment Reset: 52 Small Practices for Work-From-Home Moms Get it on Amazon

It’s also the first book in a series. Book 2 is about moms and technology (screen time guilt, AI anxiety, kids who won’t come to dinner because they’re gaming — alam mo na). That one’s coming soon.

Final Thought

I’m not a therapist. I’m not a life coach. I’m not a productivity guru.

I’m a freelance writer, a solo parent, and a mom who once cried in the bathroom because she forgot to buy rice and the kids were hungry and the deadline was in two hours.

If any part of that sounds familiar, this book might be for you.

And if you do read it, I hope it makes you feel the way I wanted it to: like someone finally gets it.

Kaya mo ‘yan, Ma. 💛

Get a copy of the book on Amazon. Now na!

Read other related content

• I Wrote a Book About Being a Work-From-Home Mom (And Yes, There’s a Chapter About Cereal for Dinner)
• How My Kids’ Christmas Lists Evolved From Crumpled Paper to Shopee Links (And Why I’m Never Going Back)
• Soundcore A20i Review: The ₱600 Earbuds My Kids Actually Like (and Don’t Break in a Week)
• How I Learned to Spot Fake Reviews on Shopee and Lazada
• Ergonomic Essentials for a Healthier Work-from-Home Setup