The Invisible Load.

There’s something so many don’t understand about motherhood. It’s not the daily tantrums. It’s not the hard moments where you want to lock the bathroom door and cry in silence while little fingers sneak their way under the door. It’s the invisible load that we’re all carrying.

It’s the animal hair piling up in the corners. The entryway rug that needs to be vacuumed with the “good vacuum,” not the everyday one. It’s the load of laundry that sat in the machine overnight because you forgot all about it, and now it needs rewashed. It’s the seven loads of laundry waiting for your hands to fold them. It’s three meals a day plus snacks. The demands of the day that become so overwhelming you can’t come up for air.

You wake up tense. You go to sleep tense. Your sleep quality is poor, and you brace for the day, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

But it’s not just the household tasks that pile onto that invisible load. It’s the other tasks too.

In our home, we are a team. My husband and I work together to get all of the things done. But there’s been a major shift here. He was injured at work, and his physical capacity has been greatly reduced. I fell this spring and injured my shoulder, so I have a few physical limitations as well. So the load shifts, and it lands differently now.

Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one seeing the dog hair pile up, the laundry waiting to be swapped, or the bathroom needing a scrub. But I’m sure it’s not really that way. It just feels that way.

Because there’s more underneath it. We have a child with epilepsy. She has seizures in her sleep, so I am continually “on,” all the time. Every weird breath, every strange movement takes me right back to the first seizure. Our family shares a room so we can monitor seizure activity, step in if there’s a need, and support our daughter after they’ve happened. Then I don’t sleep for a week or two afterward, as my body adjusts all over again.

Sharing a room has helped tremendously, though. We’re no longer playing the guessing game of whether or not a seizure happened in the night.

Because here’s the truth. Sometimes the invisible load we carry as mothers isn’t heavy because no one helps. Sometimes it’s heavy because of what your family is walking through together. An injury. A child with medical needs. A second injury. It’s the chores, plus the circumstances we’re walking through.

When you walk this path for such a long time, your body doesn’t know how to respond to its everyday needs, much less recognize what they are. You hit this wall where it’s survival of the fittest.

Why am I grumpy today? Did I eat breakfast? Lunch? A snack? The last few crumbs on the kids’ plates? Did I start my day with a stimulant like caffeine and send myself into a second spiral before 7am?

This is where the body lives. It stays bracing for impact, because it knows that at some point you won’t be able to take it any longer, and you’re going to crash. You’re going to get sick, or cut your finger prepping the third snack of the day. Something is going to happen that sends you crashing into the shore like a tsunami, taking out everything in your path, because you’ve hit your window of tolerance and you cannot handle it anymore. Your body stays stuck in survival while you try to work your mind through it all. But that’s not how this works.

Let me explain what I mean.

Every cell in your body is full of moving energy. Energy we cannot see, and most cannot comprehend. This energy sometimes gets stuck within the body, in your chakras, more specifically. And this is when you start to experience even more symptoms. Sadness lives in the heart centre. Anxiety lives in the root chakra, or the solar plexus. Your ability to believe in yourself, to know that you’re making strong decisions, lives in your solar plexus. Self confidence… solar plexus. When this energy creates a blockage, all of these symptoms start to surface. They often feel unexplained, like they came out of nowhere.

So what helps, you might be wondering?

I wish I could tell you the answer is a better routine, or a chore chart, or waking up an hour earlier. But it isn’t. What really helps is tending to the one carrying it all: you. It’s learning to regulate your nervous system, even in small moments. It’s naming the load out loud instead of holding it silently. It’s letting yourself be supported. And it’s offering yourself the same compassion you so freely give everyone else in your home. You are not failing. You are carrying something real, and you deserve care too.

So if you’re the one seeing the dog hair, holding the mental list, lying awake listening for your child in the night, I see you. You are not alone in this, even when it feels like you are. Tell me about your season. What does your invisible load look like right now? Let’s carry a little of it together, out loud.

xo,,
Lindsay