14/04/2026
💭 They say, “Put your own oxygen mask on first…”
But how are we supposed to do that when we’re the ones:
🍼 Doing the childcare
🍽️ Planning, cooking, and clearing up every meal and snack
🧺 Washing, drying, folding, putting away laundry
🧹 Cleaning the floors that never stay clean
🛁 Running bath times and brushing tiny teeth
🩺 Booking the doctor/dentist/specialist appointments
🚗 Driving to the appointments
📚 Keeping track of school/unschool work, reading levels, progress etc
🛒 Doing the food shop (while remembering everyone’s allergies and preferences)
💊 Remembering who needs what vitamins or meds
📅 Remembering birthdays, family events, and everything that goes hand in hand with them
📞 Handling the calls, the emails, the forms
💔 Being the emotional support for everyone, every meltdown, every anxiety
🧸 Finding lost teddies at 2am
🧠 Holding the mental load of every detail, plan, and worry
💸 Managing the budget
🪫 Running on five hours’ broken sleep
All while trying to not lose ourselves in the noise, the mess, the expectations, and the endlessness of it all.
Putting our own oxygen mask on sounds simple. But it can feel impossible when every moment belongs to someone else’s need.
And yet, we still need it.
Not because we’re “failing” if we’re tired. Not because we’re “bad mums” if we snap or cry. But because we’re human. Because we matter too.
I don’t have the perfect answer. But today, maybe your “oxygen mask” is a coffee you actually get to finish hot. A five-minute sit-down in the sun. Saying “no” to one thing on the list that can wait. Taking one deep breath before you answer the next “Muuuuum.”
To the mums who feel like they’re drowning while holding everyone else afloat: I see you. You’re doing the impossible, every single day, and you deserve to breathe too.
💛 If you needed this reminder, I’m sending love. Drop a 🫶 if you’re in this season too, so we can remind each other we’re not alone.
