I was at the park yesterday, one hand on the swing, one thumb scrolling an email thread that had already gone back and forth four times about a 4:30pm meeting. I typed the reply half-facing my daughter, half-facing the screen: could we do 9:00am instead, straight after drop-off? Then I hit send, pushed the swing again, and immediately felt guilty, I was partly present at work, I was partly present at the park, neither were done properly.
That 9:00am slot isn’t really about preference. It’s the only usable hour in a working mother’s day. It is directly after the school gates close and before the next thing starts pulling at you. By 4:30, you’re not in a meeting, you’re in the crossfire: bags, snacks, someone’s forgotten PE kit, a “can we go to the park” you don’t have the heart to say no to. So we move the meeting. We type it from a swing, from a supermarket aisle with the trolley half-full, from the school car park with the engine still running.
And I constantly come back to Emma Grede, and the sheer scale of the reaction to her saying she’s a “max three-hour mum” to highlight the realistic tradeoffs of balancing intensive careers and motherhood. Grede said the quiet part out loud, that being drained and exhausted isn’t a way to live, that cutting sandwiches into star shapes was never it for her, and the internet did not thank her for it. I understand the instinct behind what she’s saying, totally. I understand the exhaustion. I get it. But not everyone can live up to it. Its about having the support and the village to help you, and also not being ashamed about it. The fabulous Gabriela Hersham posted on her instagram about having help and not being ashamed about it. She said, “I realised I wasn’t embarrassed about having help. I was embarrassed to admit I could afford it. And I think women do this all the time. We’re very comfortable talking about ambition. We’re comfortable saying we want the promotion, we want to build the business, we want to earn more money, we want financial independence. But then we actually start succeeding… and suddenly we get weird about saying what that success has bought us.” It was so helpful to hear this out loud, and a reminder, that we all need a bit of help. We no longer live in safe, open villages where we are surrounded by family and children can run open, carefree, with plenty of people around.
Honestly, some days I oscillate between wanting to walk away from work entirely and devote myself to what I’ve started calling the Power Pause, proper, deliberate, not the collapsed-on-the-sofa kind, but a real, purposeful stepping back and focus on me and my kids (more on that another time, because it deserves its own piece), removing the urge to do it all, properly, all of it, at once. Because here’s the thing nobody tells you about building something: you can’t just rebuild it. You can’t take six or 12 quiet, restorative months and expect the thing you made to be sitting there patiently waiting for you when you get back. Businesses don’t do patient. Bylines don’t do patient. So the power pause stays theoretical more often than I’d like, and instead there’s this little bird that sits on my shoulder, and it never quite shuts up. Ambition, if we’re calling it what it is.
One side of it says: enjoy this. Take the time for the children. Move your body. Eat properly. Sleep. Let something be smaller for a while. The other side says: do it all. Every last bit of it. Don’t drop the ball, don’t let the email sit, don’t let the opportunity go to someone who said yes faster than you did. And of course you cannot actually do both. Something has to give. I’ve just decided, the best I can on any given day, that it won’t be the children, so it usually means sleep, or stillness, or my own patience by 6pm, that is what gives instead.
I have heard so much about Claude sorting out your diary, so I gave it a shot. These are the kids times, these are the errands, these are the appointments, put it all in the diary. And it did. So this week, less about switching off completely, and more about being deliberate with the on:
Name the block, out loud, even just to yourself. “This is work time” or “this is children’s time”, because you deserve to know which one you’re in.
Put the 9:30 in writing. You don’t owe anyone the sentence “sorry, mum life” attached to a perfectly reasonable ask.
Pick one or two activities a week where the phone stays in the bag. Not as punishment, just as proof to yourself that you can.
Batch or outsource (where possible) the invisible admin instead of drip-feeding it all day. Groceries, forms, replies — one sweep, rather than twenty interruptions that all feel like failure. Or if you can, outsource it!
Ask yourself, honestly, what’s actually giving this week. Something always is. Better to choose it than to let it choose itself.
The phone isn’t the villain. The day that requires it to be in your hand at the swing, at the school gate, at the till, that’s the thing worth being undone about. And that little bird on my shoulder isn’t going anywhere either. I’ve just stopped expecting it to.
Sheena
Any Questions or Tips to add?