What Single Motherhood Taught Me About Carrying Too Much

Raising two daughters while balancing corporate leadership and providing for my family taught me to question how much I could carry — and what needed to change.

Since I became a mom in 2004, I felt like I had no choice but to run two households in my head at the same time — for years. One tab open for my daughters and all of their activities and needs. Another tab for work. Neither ever disappeared. They were always active.

Since I was the sole provider for my daughters and myself, my income wasn't just a contribution to the household — it was the household. Every time I had to decide whether I had time for something, I always had to ask myself what would happen if I didn't. I couldn't even think about whether I had the capacity. I just had to find it and make it work.

Most people will say this was a mindset problem. It is not. It is the actual pressure of survival — not just for yourself, but for lives you are responsible for. So many parents, male or female, single or married, have faced this and continue to face it while listening to others say they just need to change their mindset.

What are you carrying that was never yours to begin with?

In my corporate career, I was always the one that everyone depended on. I became the default owner of anything and everything that someone else fell through on — while also being the example everyone looked to as a leader. Most of the women I worked with wanted to be in my position one day. No one knew the shoes I was filling until I left corporate and someone else stepped into my role.

We all know how it goes. At every household, at every job, something falls between the cracks — and the person everyone calls "the capable one" picks it up. And just like that, it becomes their responsibility to carry.

I had an employee who regularly stepped in to assist other departments. It was never acknowledged positively by her peers. They saw it as meddling. But to her, what mattered was that the job was done and the work had no errors. She kept showing up that way because she thought it mattered — not realizing what it was costing her.

The problem with overachievers like me is that we do not recognize that being able to help is not the same as being responsible for it. This may sound obvious to many. For me, it took longer than I wanted to admit that I was one of those people — and that I had lived that way for so long. Each extra unplanned commitment thrown my way didn't extend the clock. It took time from something else. From my own time.

Does your job control your whole life or just your scheduled shift?

I want to be clear: I am not talking negatively about jobs, corporations, or bosses. I am talking about self-abandonment.

I never took my career as something negative. I knew I got paid to solve problems and run organizations — and I was good at it. I created a successful career. And while I didn't let it compete with my duties as a mother, I eventually noticed that my kids had started omitting questions or activities because "mom seemed preoccupied with work." My own children noticed before I did that the version of their mom that showed up was the dependable one — always available, always reachable, always handling what others couldn't.

I had become a load-bearing human.

I remember one Friday evening when my daughter asked me to watch her play a new video game. Of course I said yes. But the whole time, my phone wouldn't stop going off. Work. I kept checking it between her turns. I was in the room. I was not in it.

The survival structure that outlives the emergency

The version of burnout I lived wasn't about doing too much. It was a survival structure built during real emergency — when I truly had no option to fall short — that long since outlived the crisis that created it.

I kept operating in emergency mode after the emergency was over. Because it had become automatic. Because it had become who I was.

What shifted for me was finally understanding the difference between the two questions I now ask in every coaching conversation:

Most people who burn out aren't struggling. They're carrying things that were never labeled with their name.

The work is learning to tell the difference — before your children have to tell it for you.