When the biggest barrier to relaxing is logistics

For a long time, I thought everyone was coping better than me. I thought they were more capable, more organised, more resilient. I thought that if I could just find the right system – cleaning, toy rotation, meal planning, laundry – things wouldn’t feel so hard.

I looked around at other women who appeared to be doing it all – and not just doing it all, but doing it all effortlessly – and thought, “Surely, if I’m struggling, the problem must be me.”

And then I started speaking with those same women who appeared so together and realised they too carry the same invisible weight, the same impossible expectations, the same quiet guilt. They too struggle to stay on top of the laundry, to work out regularly, to get eight hours sleep, to reply to messages, to keep the kitchen-floor crumb free.

I began to see that so many of us feel like this – exhausted, overwhelmed, secretly full of rage – because we were never meant to carry this much. We haven’t evolved to raise children without a village, to answer emails whilst eating lunch, to hold so much, for so long, with so little support.

And sometimes, knowing this helps. But on other days, like today, when I’m almost eight months pregnant, anaemic, running on five hours’ sleep, and the laundry still needs doing and the dinner still needs cooking and the toddler still needs caring for, knowing that this exhaustion is partly structural doesn’t ease the reality.

It does soften the self-criticism. But it doesn’t wash the dishes or chop the vegetables or bath the toddler or give me another hour’s sleep. On days like these, being told “It’s not your fault” almost seems beside the point. When you’re trying to cook dinner with a tired toddler clinging to your leg and a long to-do list running through your head, knowing why it’s hard, doesn’t make it any less hard.

So many of the barriers to relaxation are psychological and neurobiological – rooted in beliefs, nervous system patterns and coping strategies that once kept us safe – but, for many of us, these barriers are very practical too. Sometimes the biggest barrier to relaxation isn’t guilt, it’s logistics. If we don’t do the laundry, pack the lunches, empty the bins and wash the dishes, it simply won’t get done.

What I’ve slowly come to realise is that there are different kinds of days.

There are abundant days when I have the energy to batch cook, do a workout, declutter a kitchen cupboard, do a couple of loads of washing, bake banana bread with my toddler and take care of my future self.

Then there are the ordinary, normal capacity days where I’ll do what keeps life ticking – make eggs for breakfast, cook something nourishing for dinner, run the hoover around, water the plants, answer a few emails, go for a walk with my toddler, wash, dry and fold a load of laundry and put it away.

And then there are survival days. Days when I do the bare minimum. Days when we eat fruit and toast and reheat frozen food for dinner. Days when I only reply to urgent emails, wash only what we need and leave it in the laundry basket instead of putting it away. Days when I only do what truly needs to be done, when I simply make sure everyone is fed and loved and more or less clean by bedtime. Days when the only thing that really matters is carrying us, gently, to tomorrow.

Like many of us, for years I expected myself to live as though my capacity was constantly abundant. I believed that anything less than perfect consistency with work and exercise and home-cooked meals was laziness.

But capacity isn’t consistent. It ebbs and flows with sleep and grief and illness and hormones and children and stress. And we need to meet ourselves where our nervous system actually is, rather than where we wish it was.

I am learning that a relaxed woman doesn’t expect the same version of herself to show up every day. She doesn't expect abundance from herself on a survival day. She doesn’t expect herself to bloom in every season. She knows when to do less and trusts that tomorrow's version of herself may have more to give.

These days, instead of only asking, “What do I need to do today?”, I’m beginning to ask, “Who is the woman doing it today?”

Is she well-rested? Is she sleep-deprived? Is she anxious? Is she grieving? Is she heavily pregnant? Has she been awake since 4am? Does she feel loved? Does she feel held? Does she feel supported?

The answers change what I expect of myself each day. And I have begun to notice, the more life asks of me, the less I need to ask of myself.

There are days for thriving, days for tending and days for gently carrying ourselves through to tomorrow.

May you be as gentle with yourself as life is demanding of you.

May you honour the woman you are today and treat her as someone worthy of tenderness.

May you learn to expect less from yourself on the days life asks more of you.

May you relax into the wild and sacred rhythm of your life.