I spend a lot of time with midlife women, as well as being one myself. When I’m supporting them, there’s a phrase I come back to again and again:
“It’s not that you are broken. It’s that you’ve been carrying too much for too long.”

There’s the mental load for a start — the invisible list you carry inside your head, the list that expands quietly over time. Not because you’re not working through all the things (you are constantly busy), but because over time you’ve become the organiser, the emotional anchor, the planner, the one who remembers everything for everyone.

And no one sees it.

No one sees that the food they get at dinner wasn’t just cooked by you. You had to think of a meal plan (even if that’s day by day, although I’m a weekly planner myself), figure out when to do the food shop, do the food shop, put it away, think of everyone’s schedule and when the best time to do each meal is, then prep and cook around work, appointments, animals, kids, and everything else.
It’s a drain — mentally, physically, and emotionally — just to get that meal on the table.

Woman sitting quietly with a cup of tea, reflecting on her day.

What is the mental load?

You can see how it’s not the tasks themselves. It’s the responsibility and rigmarole of holding the tasks, tracking them, anticipating them, worrying about the consequences if they don’t get done. It’s more than just a list.

I don’t know that there was a single point when it dawned on me that I was holding the mental load of what felt like a billion tasks. I do remember that it was about a year before the second hospital visit that I started to say to my husband, “I’m struggling to cope.”

We had discussed me giving up working with clients other than friends and family. I felt like my time as a holistic therapist was ending anyway, and with the impact of Covid on people’s personalities, I knew that this was a must. I suppose I naively felt like that would cure most of the problem.

I was asking for help that I didn’t know I needed. How was my husband supposed to know if I didn’t?

After my hospital visit, I couldn’t think — more to the point, I couldn’t make any decisions. I’m lucky that he was able to stay off and look after me and the household. He very quickly realised how much mental load we as women carry just with day-to-day tasks, let alone with extra stress.

My brain had time to rest, and I had time to start changing the way I was handling the mental load — delegating and scrapping the things that didn’t serve me. No one else saw the mental load until I was mentally incapacitated.

This invisible load is exhausting. It eats into your emotional and physical resources. You don’t feel this way because you’re weak, but because it’s too heavy for one person.

Have you ever had that moment where you stop and think, “I can’t keep doing this”? That’s not failure, that’s your body asking for relief.

Why midlife makes the mental load peak

There’s a convergence of multiple factors in midlife:

Children becoming teenagers or leaving home
Parents ageing
Career shifts
Hormonal instability
Emotional re-evaluation
Relationship recalibrations
Identity changes

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “I just don’t understand why I’m so tired.” She’s usually working at least part-time on top of all the usual family stuff. Sometimes she has older kids on the verge of moving out, sometimes a younger one still in school.

From the outside, it’s easy to see where the mental load is coming from. But when you’re in it that deep, you can’t see the wood for the trees. The idea of tuning into yourself can feel a bit “hippy-dippy,” but honestly, it’s essential.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “That’s me,” take a breath. You’re not imagining it. You’re holding far more than you realise.

Maybe talk to a friend and ask them what they see that you can’t. It might be more insightful than you expect.

Notebook and pen on a table, symbolising mental load journaling

The culture of self-sacrifice

It’s crazy to me that so many women get to midlife believing that abandoning themselves is normal or necessary.

Saying yes to everything, even when you’re beyond exhausted.
Taking on all the responsibilities because “it’s easier if I do it.”
Always being the reliable one, never wanting to let people down.

Here’s the thing though — the mental load thrives on silence. It quietly demands more and more until you have less than nothing left.

I get that we’re the responsible adults, and sometimes we have to do things that don’t serve us for the benefit of the family. But we need to remember that we are one person, part of a family, not the entire foundation of it.

If you’re a single parent, please know this: letting go of some things isn’t failure, it’s survival. And your family benefits when you’re not running on empty.

The first step to releasing the burden

You can’t fix the mental load by being better organised. You can start to fix it by acknowledging that it’s not all yours.

One gentle step: write down everything you’re mentally holding on to. You can do this in a diary or use AI to help you organise your thoughts.

This isn’t to overwhelm yourself, but to witness yourself. To start observing what’s really going on inside, the things you do on autopilot.

A lot of women cry when they do this activity. Not because they’re sad, but because they’re relieved to see that they’re carrying a lot and not buckling under nothing.

There’s a stoicism drummed into us as women — that we just carry on, it is what it is, and we deal with it.

But what if you didn’t have to carry on like that? What if you could rewrite that story?

Soft morning light through a window, representing calm and clarity

A small 1% shift you can try this week

Maybe you could try asking yourself once a day:
“What am I holding that someone else can carry, even a little bit?”

Here’s a good place to use your Flow Forward Starter Guide and ask AI:
“What patterns do you notice in what I’m holding?”
You might be surprised at what becomes clear.

Toward lightness

Something to remember is that your mental load deserves to be noticed, shared, softened.

That’s why I created the Overwhelm Relief Kit — to give women a gentle way to identify the hidden sources of overload and begin releasing them, one tiny shift at a time. Jump on the waitlist for an exclusive discount when it releases at the end of January.

I want you to know that you don’t have to carry everything. Especially not alone.

Take care until next time

Amber x

Why Midlife Women Carry the Invisible Mental Load