You’re Not Failing – Here’s What’s Happening

You wake up early. Like, proper early.

5:15am early.

You lace up your runners in the dark, go for a run before the house wakes, tell yourself "this is good for me". By 6:30am you're home again, coffee in hand, already checking your work emails.

School drop off, except one kid is sick (of course).

You eat a muesli bar in the car and call it breakfast.

At 9am you're on a Zoom call — camera on, makeup on, professional top. Pyjama pants below the desk. Kiddo is calling for iPad in the background and you hit mute, hoping no one noticed.

Your laptop lives on the passenger seat. You reply to Teams messages in the school carpark – one eye on the classroom door, one eye on your inbox.

"Mum, can you help me with this?" back home.

"In a minute, honey."

You keep typing. You don't look up. That minute never comes.

Later, you snap at them for the shoes in the hallway. Your voice is sharper than it needed to be. You see their face fall.

And you hate yourself a little for it.

You're paying a lot for school fees. You need every hour you can bill. But you also need to be at assembly, sports day, parent teacher interviews.

You can't just be adequate. You need to be outstanding – at work and at home.

You know something has to give. But the mortgage won't pay itself. Your kids need their education. Your boss needs you to respond ASAP.

And there are no more hours in the day.

So if this feels familiar...if you're reading this and your chest feels tight, let me say this clearly:

The pattern is the problem – not you.

Your body has been holding a level of pressure that was never meant to be sustained long term. You've been trying to live a "normal" life while your nervous system stays permanently on high alert.

No amount of better planning, tighter routines or earlier alarms is going to fix that.

If you felt seen reading this, that quiet oh… it's not just me feeling...you're not alone.

You don't need to work harder. You don't need to get more organised.

You need a different way of understanding what's actually happening underneath all of this.

I'm going to be talking more about this over the coming weeks – what's really driving this pattern, and what actually shifts it.

For now, bookmark this if it resonated or come over to Instagram for daily inspiration and support x