This morning, after another night of feeding Wilder almost every hour (hello 4 month old), Adam quietly took the kids downstairs and told me to essentially disappear for the day. He understands me well enough by now to know that if he simply offers me a break, I’ll spend it capturing content, editing a reel, answering emails, saying yes to partnerships when I’m meant to be on maternity leave (lol if you too are self employed), paying a vet bill, booking the farrier, ordering chicken feed, folding laundry, sorting a wardrobe in house or finally washing my hair. To me, those things somehow count as rest, because they feel impossible to fit into the day with three little humans needing me. But today he was insistent that I did none of those things. He wanted me to do something I find inherently impossible: absolutely nothing.

So naturally, here I am writing instead, which thankfully Adam won’t have time to read, given he’s minding said kids.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with rest, and I don’t think motherhood creates it so much as it exposes it. Long before children, I was someone who only knew how to stay busy; to achieve, to constantly move onto the next project. My twenties were filled with a jam packed social life, work, travelling, events, launching products and constantly moving on to the next launch or collaboration. If I crossed something off my list, I’d immediately replace it with something else. I’m detail oriented to a fault; I’ll spend 20 minutes fixing something no one else would have noticed, then lose sleep wondering if I should’ve spent another five. Achievement became such a familiar rhythm that slowing down almost felt uncomfortable. Looking back, I wonder whether I simply never gave myself enough quiet to notice what was unfolding within me, or whether I was unconsciously avoiding the eruption of a trauma response I was on the verge of unearthing.

When I became pregnant with River, I started therapy quicker than my prenatal vitamins. Not because I wanted to become the perfect mother, but because I desperately wanted to understand myself before I tried to shape tiny humans. Motherhood has a remarkable way of holding up a mirror. It has evoked questions about myself that I didn’t even know were there, and while I don’t have all the answers, I know I’ve become much more aware of the stories I tell myself.

One of those less traumatic, but ever depleting stories is that my needs can wait.

Every single morning after a broken night’s sleep, I feed Wilder before anyone else wakes. My body already feels emptied out before the day has even begun, and then I hear little footsteps and know that Amélie will come looking for me. The first thing she’ll ask for is milk. At twenty months old she no longer needs it nutritionally (for us, it’s comfort, closeness, familiarity, connection and all the other immune benefits). I treasure those moments with her, and yet there are mornings when every cell in my being feels completely drained. Logically I know it would be fine to say, “not now,” but emotionally I find it incredibly difficult. I spend so much of my life teaching my children healthy boundaries, and yet I sometimes struggle to draw even the gentlest boundary around myself.

The same thing happens later in the day. I’ll be sitting feeding Wilder while the other two climb onto the sofa beside me, wrapping themselves around me like I’m a huggable inflatable. They aren’t doing anything wrong. In fact, they’re doing something lovely. They’re seeking comfort in the person they trust most. But there are moments when I’ve been breastfeeding around the clock and my nervous system feels so overstimulated that I can almost feel my skin begging for space. It isn’t that I don’t want their affection. It’s that my body is internally screaming that it has reached its limit – like a car reading 30 degrees in this heatwave. And don’t even talk to me about feeding and babywearing in this heatwave.

For a long time I ignored that feeling because the guilt seems far worse than the pushing through. I’ve started to wonder if perhaps being a healthier mother and leader sometimes looks like saying, “Can you give me five minutes while I finish feeding your brother? Then I’d love the biggest cuddle.” Or more bluntly “mommy doesn’t like the tickly feeling of your hand up her top while I’m feeding, but I would love to hold your hand instead” Not because I want them further away, but because I want to model something I hope they’ll carry with them into adulthood – that their own needs and physical boundaries matter too.

I often wonder where this instinct to override myself comes from. Perhaps it’s simply my personality. Perhaps it’s something I’ve learned through childhood. The constant need to prove I’m good enough. The conditional love I grew up with seeking to gift the unconditional love so desperately. Terrified of making the same mistakes or inflicting damage that seeps in through the cracks when you start your own family.

What I do know is that children learn far more from what we model than what we say. If I want my children to grow into adults who can ask for help without guilt, who know it’s okay to rest before they completely burn out, who can set kind, respectful boundaries around their bodies, their energy and their time, then they need to see me practising those things too. I do not want to raise people pleasers or validation seekers…buzzing for the day I have to answer the “how did you get into influencing mom” question.

The irony is that whenever I refuse myself rest in the name of being a better mother, the opposite usually happens. I become less patient, less playful, less creative and far more overwhelmed. By the end of the day I’m not carrying guilt because I didn’t book the campaign, that the laundry wasn’t folded or that another email went unanswered. I’m carrying guilt because I don’t feel like I’ve shown up as the version of their mum that I want to be.

Maybe that’s because rest was never the reward at the end of productivity. Maybe it’s one of the things that allows us to be who we want to be in the first place.

As I sit here writing this in bed, tense at the thought of life carrying on without me downstairs, I can still feel that familiar pull to get up and “just quickly” scrub the kitchen, film a few pieces of work for later, or simply send off my VAT return. It’s as though the closer I get to burnout, the more I add to my own mental load. As if productivity might somehow save me from exhaustion, when in reality it only buries me deeper.

It’s like pulling on a pair of dirty socks over muddy feet. Nothing is cleaner. Nothing is solved. I’ve just added another layer to what was already weighing me down. The list hasn’t disappeared. The renovation still needs decisions, the ducks house still needs to be cleaned and pool refilled, and life will carry on exactly as it always does. Perhaps the work isn’t finishing the list. Perhaps the work is learning that I don’t have to.

I’m not writing this because I’ve figured it out. Quite the opposite. I’m writing it because I’m right in the middle of learning, and if you’re reading this while feeling equally touched out, sleep deprived, overwhelmed or guilty for needing a moment to yourself, maybe this can be your reminder as much as mine.

We spend so much time teaching our children that it’s okay to say no, to listen to their bodies, to ask for space, to rest when they’re tired and to believe their needs matter. Maybe it’s time we started believing those things about ourselves too.