You don't need permission to rest. But if you're anything like me, or so many of our clients, you're waiting for someone to give it to you anyway. So, here it is.
Let's talk about the pressure first, because I don't think we talk about it enough.
The bar keeps moving. Instagram doesn't just show you other people's lives anymore, it shows you a curated, filtered, color-coordinated version of motherhood, and quietly tells you that's the standard now. Somehow the expectation is to be cleaner than ever, more present than ever, a better parent than any generation before us, while also doing more in our careers than we've ever been asked to do. The economy wants more from us. Social media wants more from us. And the support that used to make all of this possible? It hasn't kept pace. If anything, it's disappeared.
So many of us are living far from where we grew up, away from the family, the neighbours, the built-in village that used to just show up. No grandma popping round on a Wednesday. No sister five minutes away. Just you, the list, and the quiet hum of trying to hold it together.
And no, you're not imagining it. It really is harder than it used to be. Just naming that, just recognising it out loud, is already a huge step.
I know because I lived it.
I'm a US expat. I had two kids and moved to China, where, like so many families there, I had an Ayi. And the first time she walked into our home and just... handled it, I remember thinking: oh my god. This is amazing. I want and need more of this.
So did every other working mother I knew there.
Before that, I thought I just wasn't doing enough. That if I was tired, disorganised, stretched too thin, it was a personal failing I needed to fix by trying harder. I wasn't struggling. I was surviving. And I told myself that was fine.
It's not fine. That's BS.
You're not meant to do this alone. You never were.
Ayi: more time for what matters