Mothers are Burning Out – Is Anyone Listening?

By Emma Grey, Director of WorkLifeBliss - www.worklifebliss.com.au and author of 'Wits' End Before Breakfast!'

I can pinpoint the day that I reached ‘rock bottom’ as a burnt-out mum. 

I’d dropped my younger daughter at her first day of day care, and the words ‘Come back, Mummy!’ were still reverberating in my mind when - blinded by tears - I drove right over a metal barricade at the end of my car park at work, reversed, and ripped the bumper bar clean off.

Later the same day, while my Defence colleagues were hard at work, sticking my car back together with duct tape, I was absent-mindedly chewing through a salad while on hold to the day care secretary for a progress report, and I noticed a Lieutenant-Colonel pacing back and forth near my desk. 

Eventually he stopped, and said, in a somewhat confused tone: ‘Are you sure that’s your lunch?’

Nothing prepares you, really, for the moment when an Army officer accuses you, quite rightly, of eating his lunch.  I was unsure of my next move.  Should I hand the salad back, significantly depleted?  Or should I offer him mine as a poor substitute - even though the thought had just had come to me that his wife had delicately julienned the carrots whereas I - in the early-morning chaos that typified my life back then - had merely halved my carrot with a meat clever?

You might ask what state my life must have been in, that I could have become so thinly stretched that I could no longer recognise my own Tupperware, and I’m ashamed to admit that the chaos was largely self-inflicted. 

I was working full-time with two children under five, and I was writing my first book. Then the idea struck me to enrol in a Masters’ Degree part-time, because work would pay for it and, as I said to myself at the time, these opportunities rarely fall in our laps. 

In an effort to assuage my mother guilt and have the best of both worlds, I made sure I attended every school assembly, volunteered on the parents’ committee, helped at the fete, supervised reading groups, refused to outsource birthday parties and bought a Labrador puppy that we could ill afford, either financially or practically. 
I recall staring feverishly at my bedroom ceiling a few months later, stricken with acute glandular fever – publishing contract in one hand, divorce papers in the other – thinking, ‘You know?  Life really doesn’t have to be this hard – I’m making it this hard.’ 

Something had to change.

Six years later, things couldn’t be more different.  I certainly don’t always get it right, but I no longer flail around at both ends of the tug-o-war rope in my life, exhausting myself and getting nowhere.  These days, I’m more likely to put the rope down on the ground, stand well back and make clear-headed decisions about how I will weave each strand together, in the best interests of my health, family and future. 

You might wonder how a person who used to eat other people’s lunches could possibly run a company called WorkLifeBliss, and I’d like to share with you some of the ways that I changed my approach in order to get here.

Step One for me in overhauling the chaos was that I became much clearer about my values.  My family, friends and career are paramount, as they always were, but now there are clear boundaries around what’s most important to me.  This means that I no longer leave the gate wide open to every other enticing opportunity that arises, for two reasons:  I value my physical and emotional health more highly than I used to, and I want to have an opportunity to really enjoy the things that I’m already doing.

Do I feel like I’m missing out?

No.  Letting opportunities pass by became easy when I began to see that we’re all authors, scripting the plot of our lives.  Sometimes, of course, things happen that are outside our control but, for the most part, we’re responsible for our choices.

The best authors spread the action out over the course of the whole book.  They don’t squeeze it all into one chapter, as I think I was trying to do between the ages of about 27 and 32.  I’m liberated by the knowledge that I don’t need to be all things to all people, all the time – no-one can be. 

I’ve learnt that, whatever else is uncertain about life, you can be assured that there will always be another committee, networking event, social obligation, course of study or opportunity to get involved in something new.  Once, I would have grabbed the ‘shiny thing’ with both hands and worked out how to cram it in later.  Now, if my dance card is full when one of these opportunities presents itself, I politely turn it down. 

Years ago, even the thought of refusing someone was quite challenging.  When I say ‘no’ now, I don’t think of it as letting someone down, or risking that they won’t like me as much.  I think of saying ‘no’ as giving meaning to my ‘yes’.  Accepting new tasks is not about pleasing people or taking something on because of a perceived vacuum of volunteers.  How often have you heard yourself say, ‘if I don’t do it, who will?’   Occasionally that’s true – there really is no-one else.  Many times, though, this is our own sense of significance talking – other people could do it, perhaps not to our own high standards, but they’d no doubt muddle through.  Except we don’t let them try, because we like to feel important and needed.  

I used to be afraid of offending people, or of appearing incapable, and I would take things on to avoid this, despite the impact this might have on me personally.  The day I finally summoned some assertiveness and said ‘no’ to something for the first time, I remember the woman saying, ‘that’s fine, I’ve got a list of names here – I just thought I’d start with you because you usually do it...’
If this is you – if you’re the dependable, ‘go to’, YES woman that people turn to because you usually oblige - get into the habit of asking yourself ‘what will it cost me if I take this on?’   Think of your life as a bucket of water that’s nearly full to the top.  Every time you add another spoon full of water, you must take a spoon full out, or your bucket will soon overflow.

Mastering this one skill alone  - the skill of thoughtfully analysing your time, knowing your limits and saying ‘no’ when necessary - will allow you to live ‘deep’ - not ‘fast’.  After a while, your default answer to the question ‘how are you?’ will no longer be, ‘Oh, you know, surviving. Just.’ 

As mums, do we stop and notice the choices we’re making each day that complicate our lives?  Do we tally up the additional roles we’re taking on and consider the implications of this on the load we’re already carrying?  Are the expectations that we have of ourselves realistic?  Do we stop and smell the roses, or does the sight of the roses remind us of yet another domestic burden on the ever-growing ‘to do’ list? 

Many of the women I coach or train in workshops are ‘over-functioning’.  In an effort to prove something, or to make up for what they perceive as some deficit in their performance either at work or at home, they are going the extra mile.  Often it’s a mile too far, and it’s completely unnecessary.  Many times they don’t know what their limits are until they’ve surpassed them.

It reminds me of something Barrack Obama wrote about his wife, Michelle, before he became President and I’m sure many of you will identify with this, as I do.  He said:

"It wasn't just the constant scrambling between her work and the children that made Michelle's situation so tough.  It was also the fact that from her perspective she wasn't doing either job well.  This was not true, of course; her employers loved her, and everyone remarked on what a good mother she was.  But I came to see that in her own mind, two visions of herself were at war with each other - the desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids; and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realise all those plans she'd had on the very first day we met."

Do you feel that you have two visions of yourself – and they’re at war with each other?  In your private moments, are you afraid that you’re not good enough?  Do you worry that you’re always under-performing – just scraping through, at work and at home – with neither area of your life benefitting from your full attention? Do you put in a bigger effort than is required just to make absolute certain that you’ll get over that line? 

Are you taking work home or taking on additional responsibilities at home, at school or in extra-curricular activities to make up for what you see as the impact your role as a mother is having on your work, or the impact your work is having on your role as a mother?

In an effort to prove that you can do it all, are you rejecting offers of help?  Do you avoid cutting corners where it really wouldn’t matter?  Do you take on extra tasks when you’re already stretched, because you want to be a good employee, or a good mum?  Do you refuse to slow down, or stop, in case you can’t get up again?

How can you turn this around?
I’d like to challenge you to change the way you think about the week ahead.  Some time in the next 24 hours, I’d like you to take your diary and ‘pay yourself first’.  Block out some time over the next seven days for just three things:

• A long walk in this beautiful Autumn weather
• A ‘date night’ with your partner or a friend (even if this is at home, with a special dinner and a DVD)
• A one-hour fun activity with your children, away from home, regardless of whether or not the housework has been done.

I’d also like you to sit down with your family calendar and block out your next holiday.  It might be in a fortnight, or it might be several months from now.  It might be a camping trip or it might be a trip to Europe.  Whatever it is, it will never happen unless you and your partner select the dates now, ask for leave from work soon, and start direct debiting a small amount into a holiday account each pay day. 
I recently polled a group of people in a corporate workshop that I was running, and asked ‘who here took a proper holiday in the last twelve months?’  About one third of the people in the room put their hands up.  Every one of them booked the holiday, asked for leave and began saving several months in advance.  The remaining participants had to re-think their claims that ‘there wasn’t time’ and ‘we couldn’t afford it’ when they saw that they simply hadn’t chosen it. 

As soon as you start to see yourself as the architect of your own lifestyle, things will start to change.  Take a large blank page and create a blueprint for the lifestyle you want to create for you and your family.  

Create room for the things that matter most, and let go of all of those activities, behaviours, thoughts and responsibilities that break the camel’s back for you.   I’m thinking here not just of positions you hold, or extra tasks you take on, but of the extra burdens you place on yourself by clinging to limiting notions along the lines of, ‘no-one else does this as well as I do’. 

We often examine the ways in which our lives as mothers are made more difficult than they should be by other people.  I encourage you also to consider how you’re holding yourself back from a more balanced life, to get out of your own way and to make some small changes in your favour.

An ex-CEO of Coco Cola once compared life to a game in which we are juggling five balls in the air. We name them work, family, friends, health and spirit.  Work is a rubber ball, he said – if you drop it, it will bounce.  The other balls are made of glass.

What are you doing with the glass balls in your life?   

Emma Grey provides corporate training and individual coaching on life balance, stress management and time management.  Visit our website at www.worklifebliss.com.au