Mental load: the right to breathe does not have to be earned

Buy new slippers for daycare. Confirm the paediatrician. Take something out of the freezer for tonight. Reply to the teacher. Remember the present for Saturday's birthday party. It is 6:40 am, Nadia has not yet set a foot on the floor, and her day has already started in her head. The list is spinning. It has been spinning for years.

The mental load is not the sum of the tasks. It is being the one who thinks of them. The invisible organiser, the family's memory, the lookout. To the nervous system, this permanent watch is almost indistinguishable from a state of alert: the brain endlessly scans the horizon for whatever might have been forgotten. The result: shallow breath, light sleep, patience in shreds, and that feeling of never being fully present.

The heaviest part is not always the list. It is what happens when you try to put it down. Five minutes sitting still, and the little voice arrives: "You could use this time to put a load of laundry on." Many mothers no longer know how to stop without feeling at fault. As if rest had to be earned, once everything was finished. But everything is never finished. It is an endless queue, not a finish line.

We will not lie to you: three minutes of breathing will not empty the list. But they change the person carrying it. Slow breathing, a soft belly, a long exhale, brings the body down a few notches. The rest of the day no longer plays out on the same floor of tension. You respond instead of reacting. You are there, truly, in tonight's bath time instead of already being in tomorrow's.

A simple ritual to get started: pick a gesture you already make every day, the coffee machine running, the engine switched off in the car park, the bathroom door closing. Attach three slow breaths to it, hand on your belly. No need for a slot in the diary: the ritual slips into what already exists. And if the little voice of guilt comes back during those three breaths, do not fight it: let it talk into the void and keep breathing out. It tires far more quickly than you would think.

And then there is the next step: one hour just for you, lying down, guided by a voice and carried by sound. One hour when nobody asks anything of you, when there is nothing to organise, nothing to achieve, nothing to prove. Many mothers cry at their first immersion. Not from sadness: from release. If that hour feels impossible to take, it is probably because you need it. Come and experience it at one of our workshops.

Keywords: mental load, mothers' mental load, mom guilt, maternal exhaustion, taking a breather, breathing and stress, making time for yourself