I Used to Think Work-Life Balance Was About Managing My Time

I used to think work-life balance was a scheduling problem.

If I could just manage my time better, delegate more, create stronger boundaries, organize the calendar, meal prep, exercise, answer the emails, remember Spirit Week, make it to practice, build a career, be a present wife, maintain friendships, and somehow squeeze in a little self-care...

Then maybe I could finally achieve it.

Balance.

I wrote about it before.

Before my life changed.

Before grief completely rearranged my understanding of time.

Before I became a widow.

Before careers changed, businesses were built, identities shifted, and my beautifully organized version of life stopped following the plan.

Reading those old words now, I don't think they were wrong.

I just think I understand them differently.

Because today I know something I didn't know then:

You can manage your time perfectly and still have absolutely no control over what life does with it.

The Working-Mom Formula

For years, I approached motherhood and work the same way I approached almost everything else.

Make a plan.

Work hard.

Be organized.

Figure it out.

I believed successful working motherhood required careful time management, a strong support system, communication, good boundaries, and the ability to prioritize.

And technically?

It does.

Lists help.

Calendars help.

Delegating helps.

A supportive spouse helps.

A flexible employer helps.

Childcare helps.

Technology helps.

All of those things make life easier.

But there was an unspoken assumption underneath all of my advice:

That the goal was to figure out how to fit everything in.

I don't believe that anymore.

Maybe We Were Never Supposed to Fit Everything In

Working mothers are constantly told how to become more efficient.

Wake up earlier.

Meal prep.

Schedule your workouts.

Block your calendar.

Automate grocery delivery.

Use an app.

Ask for help.

Set boundaries.

Create routines.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

But at some point, I started wondering why the solution to women carrying too much was always teaching us how to carry it more efficiently.

Maybe the answer isn't another planner.

Maybe sometimes the answer is:

This doesn't fit anymore.

Maybe something has to go.

Maybe the job isn't worth what it's costing.

Maybe the commitment isn't necessary.

Maybe the friendship has become another responsibility.

Maybe the perfectly decorated birthday party doesn't matter.

Maybe your kids don't need Pinterest.

Maybe they need you sitting on the couch.

And maybe you need that too.

I Was Really Good at Functioning

For a long time, I was incredibly good at getting things done.

That skill served me well.

As a police officer and later a sergeant, functioning under pressure was part of the job.

You assess.

Prioritize.

Respond.

Keep moving.

Motherhood didn't exactly discourage that skill set.

Neither did marriage.

Or running a household.

Or eventually working in corporate America.

Or volunteering.

Or building businesses.

I became someone who could hold a lot.

And because I could hold a lot, I often assumed I should.

There is a difference.

I understand that now.

At the time, productivity felt a lot like competence.

If everyone was where they needed to be, the bills were paid, dinner happened, the work was finished, the kids were cared for, and I hadn't dropped anything catastrophic...

Success.

Right?

Except there is another question I didn't ask enough:

How did I feel while I was doing all of it?

The Cost of Being Capable

Being the capable person is a strange trap.

People learn that you can handle things.

So they give you things to handle.

And you become proud of being someone who doesn't fall apart.

I certainly did.

I could work a demanding job.

Raise kids.

Keep a household moving.

Volunteer.

Solve problems.

Show up for other people.

Plan events.

Help friends.

Manage crises.

And then wake up and do it again.

But capability can disguise exhaustion for a very long time.

Sometimes it can even disguise unhappiness.

You tell yourself:

I'm just busy.

This season is hard.

It will calm down after this project.

After this school year.

After this event.

After the holidays.

After the kids get older.

After I get through this week.

There was always another after.

The trouble is that life is happening during all of those weeks you're trying to survive.

I Thought Balance Meant Equal

I also used to imagine work-life balance like a scale.

Work on one side.

Family on the other.

Adjust until they're even.

But life doesn't work like that.

There were seasons when work demanded more.

There were seasons when my kids needed more.

There were seasons when my marriage needed more.

There were seasons when I needed more.

And that's where I think my understanding has changed the most.

Balance does not mean every part of your life receives equal time.

Balance means being honest about what matters most in this season.

Sometimes something gets 80 percent.

Something else gets 10.

Another thing barely survives.

And that may actually be the healthiest possible choice.

Then Life Took the Choice Away

There was a version of me who worried about creating a healthier balance between work and family.

Then there was a version of me who would have given anything to have those ordinary problems back.

After Mike died, time felt different.

Everything did.

Suddenly, conversations about calendars and work-life balance seemed almost quaint compared with the reality of trying to raise children while grieving their father.

There were legal issues.

Financial uncertainty.

Career changes.

Responsibilities I never expected to carry alone.

Questions about our home.

Questions about our future.

Questions about who I was now that a role I expected to hold for the rest of my life—wife—had disappeared overnight.

There wasn't an app for that.

There was no color-coded calendar capable of making it manageable.

No productivity technique was going to organize grief.

And strangely, that season taught me more about priorities than any book about work-life balance ever could.

Time Became Something Different

Loss has a way of changing your relationship with time.

Before, I was constantly trying to create more of it.

How can I save an hour?

How can I get more done?

How can I squeeze this in?

After loss, the question became:

What deserves the time I actually have?

That is a very different question.

I still care about productivity.

I still make lists.

I still like a plan.

I still routinely convince myself I can fit approximately seventeen things into a day designed for six.

Apparently some things survive even major life upheaval.

But I'm much more aware now that time isn't only a resource.

It's a life.

My kids growing up?

Time.

Sitting with someone I love?

Time.

Building something meaningful?

Time.

Resting?

Time.

Having coffee with a friend who matters?

Time.

Going to the game instead of answering the email?

Time.

There is no account where we get to deposit the hours we saved and use them later.

Motherhood Changed Too

Motherhood has always been one of my most important identities.

But becoming the only living parent in my children's home changed the weight of it.

I could no longer think about motherhood only in terms of balancing practices, homework, dinner, work schedules, and activities.

I had two children watching how I responded when life became something none of us had planned.

They were grieving.

I was grieving.

And I began to understand that being a good mother wasn't going to mean protecting them from every difficult emotion.

It was going to mean showing them what it looks like to continue living while carrying one.

That includes letting them see me build.

Letting them see me fail.

Letting them see me laugh again.

Letting them see me love people.

Letting them see me start things that scare me.

Letting them see that grief and joy are not enemies.

That's a very different parenting lesson than anything I wrote in my original work-life balance post.

And Then I Started Building Again

I don't think I deliberately sat down and decided:

Now is the ideal time to reinvent my life and become an entrepreneur.

Life wasn't exactly presenting ideal conditions.

But rebuilding doesn't always wait for ideal conditions.

Broken Arrow Dancewear became one of the ways I started moving again.

It gave me something creative to build.

Something connected to a world my daughter and I already knew.

Something that combined community, business, problem-solving, design, relationships, and my constant desire to create something meaningful out of whatever is in front of me.

Then came The People We Collect.

The blog.

The podcast.

The conversations.

And suddenly my work wasn't just something I was trying to balance against my life.

Some of my work was becoming an extension of the life I wanted to live.

That doesn't mean entrepreneurship creates perfect balance.

Please.

If anything, owning a business is an excellent way to discover seventy-four additional things you could be doing at any given moment.

But there is a difference between being busy building something that feels connected to your purpose and being busy because you are afraid to stop.

I'm still learning that distinction.

I Don't Want Work-Life Balance Anymore

At least not the version I used to chase.

I don't want a perfectly divided life.

I want an integrated one.

I want work that means something to me.

I want room for my kids.

I want room for relationships.

I want spontaneous dinners.

I want football games and dance competitions.

I want to write.

I want to build things.

I want to travel.

I want to sit still sometimes.

I want to be available for the people I love without feeling like every minute I'm not producing something is wasted.

I want ambition.

I also want peace.

And perhaps most importantly, I no longer believe I have to choose between being a woman who loves her family deeply and a woman who still has enormous dreams for herself.

Both are allowed.

Self-Care Means Something Different Now

In my old post, I wrote about exercise, relaxation, therapy, asking for help, and making time for yourself.

I still believe all of those things matter.

But I think self-care has become one of those phrases we sometimes make unnecessarily pretty.

Sometimes self-care is a massage.

Sometimes it's a nap.

Sometimes it's going to therapy.

Sometimes it's exercising.

And sometimes self-care is making a decision that disappoints someone else.

It's saying no.

It's ending a relationship.

It's changing careers.

It's asking for help before you're completely underwater.

It's admitting you're angry.

It's deciding you don't actually want the life you've worked very hard to create.

It's allowing yourself to become someone your old life didn't have room for.

That version of self-care is much harder to put on Instagram.

It's also the kind that has changed my life.

The People Matter More Than the Calendar

The irony of rereading my old thoughts about work-life balance while building The People We Collect isn't lost on me.

Because the answer I was looking for was probably hiding underneath the whole conversation.

The people matter.

Not every meeting.

Not every deadline.

Not every title.

Not every task.

Not every opportunity.

The people.

The kids yelling from the other room while you're trying to finish an email.

The spouse you assume you'll have decades more with.

The friend whose phone call feels inconvenient because your to-do list is enormous.

The coworker who becomes family.

The stranger who shows up during the worst year of your life.

The person who believes in the ridiculous business idea.

The people standing beside you while you build it.

Those are the things I think about now.

I spent years trying to balance work and life.

Today, I think I'd phrase the goal differently.

I want to build a life where my work has a place—

but where the people I love never have to compete with it to prove they're important.

What I Know Now

I don't believe there's a magical work-life balance formula.

I don't think there are enough hacks, calendars, routines, boundaries, or virtual assistants to make everything fit.

And I no longer believe everything is supposed to fit.

Some seasons require us to work harder.

Some require us to slow down.

Some require survival.

Some require reinvention.

Some require us to put almost everything else aside and simply love the people in front of us.

The trick isn't getting everything perfectly balanced.

Maybe the trick is recognizing what season you're in.

And having the courage to let your priorities change with it.

I wish I had understood that earlier.

But perhaps that's another thing I'm learning about becoming:

Sometimes you have to live the first version of the story before you understand what you were actually writing about.

So if you're exhausted from trying to balance everything, maybe ask yourself a different question.

Not:

How do I make all of this fit?

But:

What deserves a place in my life right now?

And maybe even more importantly:

Who does?