I’ve been sitting with something since yesterday. I was at the Rosewood Holborn for a wonderful lunch with Edwina Dunn of The Female Lead and a roomful of astounding women as we talked to Louise O’Neill about her new book, A Bigger Life, and Louise said something that’s been rattling around my head ever since:
“I stopped arriving at a neat conclusion about what a woman’s life should look like. Do I really want it? Or is it what I’ve been told I want?” She continued to say that I hope that this gives other women permission to ask themselves that. Not as a one-off, dinner-party kind of question, but again and again.
Because even once you know the answer, even once you’re honest with yourself about what you actually want, you still need the time to go and get it. And time is one of the oldest tricks the patriarchy plays on us. It’s not an accident that we don’t have enough of it, it’s by design. Decades of running around after everyone else, and whatever’s left at the end of the day is what we get to call our own.
Hearing other women say that out loud yesterday did something for me, it gave me a sense of relief in someone else just saying it plainly: make the time. 1. These are the things I want. 2. Go and make them happen.
I’m writing this now in the gaps, after the school run, before a meeting I didn’t even get to shape the agenda for, half-planning the weekend in my head while I do it. And my phone keeps showing me ads for AI tools that promise to build the school calendar for me, sort the logistics, lighten the load. Maybe they will, a bit. But no app is going to answer the actual question Louise asked. So this week isn’t about AI. It’s just a few things that have helped lift some of that mental load off me this week — in case they help you too:
Write the actual list. Not the to-do list, the one underneath it. Three things you want from your life right now, today, as you are.
Say no to one thing. Just one. Notice what opens up when you do.
Hand something off, fully. Not “delegate and still track it in your head”, properly off your plate.
Protect one half hour this week that’s just yours. Put it in the calendar like it’s a meeting, because it is one.
Ask another woman what she wants. Then really listen. It’s amazing what it unlocks in you too.
What would you build, if you stopped arriving at the neat conclusion?
Sheena
Any Questions or Tips to add?