What if achieving "balance" is a total myth?
And why shooting for alignment and attunement in early motherhood might improve your mental health.
There was a time in my life, about a decade ago now, when the word “balance” was particularly meaningful to me. One day, I even sharpied it across my wrist (except that it was misspelled; it read, “balence”, and it wasn’t until a friend pointed it out that I realized I spelled it wrong). Pretty sure I still kept it written on my wrist, though.
This word was a guide to me during my eating disorder recovery. In my eating disorder, I clung to extremes and rigid rules around food and exercise that I thought kept me safe, healthy even. The word “balance” was a stepping stone, helping me realize that I could move my body and rest it, I could eat kale and ice cream. Aiming for balance helped me climb out of the depths of disorder and inch me closer toward food and body respect and freedom.
Somewhere along the way, my search for balance shifted and somewhat unconsciously became a search for alignment with my values and attunement to my body's ever-changing needs. And as I stand in the throughs of early motherhood, and now toddlerhood, and as life demands more from me than is possible for any human being to attain, I’m recognizing that this idea of “balance” might just be a myth.
Because in this season, there is very little balance. There is no even distribution of “work” and “relaxation” as a new mom. There is no way for me to perfectly proportion self-care, mothering a toddler, working part-time as a therapist, having a clean house, planning meals, grocery shopping for said meals, meal prepping those meals, actually then cooking said meals, moving my body, tending to my marriage, nurturing my mental health, staying connected to my friends and family, walking my dog, dreaming up picture books, making sure Emmy has developmentally appropriate toys and activities, keeping my plants alive, paying bills, keeping up with basic hygiene, occasionally putting on makeup and fueling my body adequately. It’s impossible because it’s impossible in this cultural moment and “balance” - I think - is an especially faulty goal in this particular season of life.
What if “balance” actually creates more stress for us by perpetuating the belief that things should be and can be balanced and if they’re not, something is wrong?
What if aiming for things to be “balanced” in your life actually gets in the way of you living out your values?
What if the idea of achieving balance fails to take into account all the dimensions of our humanness and our ever-changing needs in different seasons of life?
I think we have to change our expectations and instead of aiming for balance, I think we get to consider what it would mean to do two things: to align with our personal values and attune to our body’s needs.
When we are living in alignment with our values, we are thinking about what is important to us in any given moment or day and proceeding accordingly. We recognize that sometimes leaning into one value (let’s say, my value for rest) might mean that I’m not leaning into another value at that given moment (let’s say my value for moving my body or exercising). It doesn’t mean that I don’t value the ladder, it just means that I have many diverse values and sometimes I have to make choices between those values. We also recognize our limits, that we cannot do all the things and do them well, and we do so with grace and self-compassion. We are humans, not robots, living in a world with highly unrealistic expectations of us (especially us mothers).
Attuning to our body’s needs could be considered an example of a value. Not everyone values this but I really do. It has been such a compass for me starting in my eating disorder recovery and has been invaluable as I’ve transitioned into motherhood. When we stop striving for “balance”, we actually have the opportunity to attune to the present moment, to practice having awareness of our emotions and needs, and respond accordingly. When I’m practicing attunement, my life probably doesn’t look balanced at all. Some weeks, I move my body more, and other weeks, I rest much more. Some weeks, I cook more fresh foods and homecooked meals and others, I praise Jesus for the frozen section at Trader Joes. Some weeks, I find myself getting in bed at night with enough time to savor a chapter in a fiction book, and during other weeks, that’s just not attainable. Some weeks, my house is clean-ish (clean enough), and other weeks, I find that I’m busy living out my other values so cleaning the house falls a weee bit to the wayside.
Mamas, we have to manage our expectations of ourselves in this season of our lives, and I’d argue that we need to do so with the utmost compassion and gentleness. Early motherhood is wild and nothing is as it used to be. What might it be like if you stopped searching for balance in your life and instead, you gave yourself permission to consider your values and attune to your unique needs? Would you breathe a little lighter, feel a little softer?
Maybe this idea really scares you, maybe this is totally uncharted territory for you (which might be true if you tend to struggle with black-and-white/all-or-nothing thinking). If that’s you, I want to encourage you to observe that this is hard for you without judgment and with self-compassion, honoring how this way of thinking may have served you in the past and considering how it might be hindering you now.
Because maybe balance is a myth and we’ve all been duped.
With love,
Rachel