Some days I feel like my brain is nothing but lists. School deadlines, sports kits, music practice schedules, household chores ... the list of lists never ends. And that’s before I even add my own health into the mix.
I work full-time, I run a house, I have a child who seems to play more instruments than I can name and has sports training most nights of the week. Then there’s my multiple sclerosis, which has a talent for showing up at the most inconvenient times. If life is a circus, I’m the person frantically juggling while balancing on a unicycle with a flat tyre.
The mental spin cycle
The mental load isn’t about the jobs themselves - it’s about remembering, planning, and anticipating. Like knowing that soccer kit needs to be washed by Wednesday because training is Thursday, or remembering that the piano exam clashes with a football match, or quietly panicking that I forgot to RSVP to an invite.
No one really sees this stuff, and it often falls to mum by default. Sometimes I catch myself thinking: If I went on strike, how long before everything collapsed? Probably about a day.
When MS joins the party
The wild card in all of this is MS. Fatigue, brain fog, and pain don’t exactly fit neatly into a colour-coded schedule. I can be fine one day and flattened the next. It’s not the sort of tired you can fix with coffee; it’s a full-body shutdown that makes even unloading the dishwasher feel like climbing Everest.
But life doesn’t wait. I still have to be on that call. I still have to get my child to her lesson. I still have to think about dinner. And when it feels like I can’t keep up, the guilt sets in - like I’m failing as a parent, as an employee, as a partner, and as someone who’s meant to be “managing” their illness.
Chasing balance (and not quite catching it)
I see people online talking about “balance,” and honestly, most days I feel like I’m not even close. I’m more in the camp of: what can I drop today without everything falling apart?
There are tiny wins though. Using a shared family calendar so I don’t keep everything in my head. Lowering the bar for dinner (beans on toast counts). Letting my child pack her own kit (and if she forgets her socks, it’s a life lesson). Trying, very imperfectly, to schedule rest before my body forces me to stop.
Do I get it right? Rarely. Do I keep trying? Every day.
The ongoing work
I wish I could say I’ve cracked the code, that I’ve mastered balance and found a zen way of living with work, motherhood, and MS. The truth is messier. I’m still figuring it out, dropping balls, picking them back up, and trying not to be too hard on myself in the process.
What I do know is that strength doesn’t mean carrying everything silently. It means admitting it’s heavy, asking for help when I need it, and learning - slowly - that “good enough” really is good enough.
So no, I haven’t achieved balance. But I’m striving for it. And maybe that’s all any of us can do.
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