I have been ‘away’ from a while. From blogging, from social media, from creating new courses and meditations. The reason being: I had a huge project to focus on: understanding marketing, ‘rebranding’ myself (I know, ‘ugh’), and creating a new website. The point was, I needed to get clearer about what I do exactly: helping people deal with stress in a whole-body, science-based way.
Now of course, anyone can create a website in a week nowadays. But to do it well, to think it through, make it authentic, and future proof, that requires creative energy. Which is, as I have learned, much harder to harvest when you are also parenting a young child and you have to manage on 70% of your prior sleep.
I recently had a conversation with yoga anatomy and nervous system expert Adam Divine, who was my primary editor on The Science and Practice of Breathwork. We were chatting about breathwork, and then he said:
“Your photos and posts are rather uplifting, you look the epitome of health and peace”.
To which I replied:
“Haha, I can tell you, I AM NOT the epitome of health and peace, Running my business and being a mum is a challenge. But I try my best with what I know. Peace is a state I move in and out of depending on a variety of things. I feel healthy and strong on some days, and tired and confused on others. I guess that comes with this life phase and all we can do is surrender and listen to what the body has to say”
The reason I am sharing this, is because just because I have ways to calm myself down, that does not mean I am always at peace and I never experience stress. Jonny Miller recently said in his latest podcast interview with Rangan Chatterjee: You can use breathwork, or yoga, or cognitive reframing to ground yourself, but if you use it to avoid feeling, you are not going to make progress over time. Ultimately, these practices are there to help us come back to our window of tolerance, so we are able to sit with what is. And sometimes, what is, is just challenging.
When things get hard: Honesty and connection matter
And my life, in the past year, has been a challenge. I am not always on top of things. And being honest about that, sitting with it, and being able to share it openly so I don’t have to feel like I have to be on top of things, is the number one thing that calms me down. The huge difference between my previous burnout and the burnout I avoided in the past year, is that I sit with my shit. I name it, and I do not try to uphold and image of myself that is better than just what is.
Because when I share that things are hard, I am not alone. And when I share the actual truth instead of some polished version, you are not alone either. Sharing our moments of shit hitting the fan is what makes us become aware of our common humanity, and that helps us process our feelings, feel safe, and accepted.
So the honest truth is that in the past year, I’ve felt lonely, scared, and stressed. Because I tend to take on big projects. Scientific papers. Courses. This entire rebrand. And it’s not just the scale of the work, it’s the emotional charge behind it. I want to create things that matter. That feel meaningful, real. And when you care that deeply, you will feel big emotions. And when you are on your own creating things, you may be more focused, but you are also less connected. And connection matters.
The Push-Pull of Purpose
There’s this conflict that lives in me. The desire to be an engaged, present parent. And the simultaneous desire to make a more holistic view of stress and health available to more people.
Research has shown shown that role conflict — the collision of meaningful yet competing responsibilities, is one of the strongest predictors of life long stress (Nixon et al, 2011). Being stretched between roles isn’t just tiring. It’s destabilizing.
All the things I designed into my life to make my life flowy and balanced, were gone. No morning routine. No solitude. No yoga. No meditation. No slow cup of coffee before opening my laptop. No boulder dates and long hikes with my partner. Just: wake up groggy after interrupted sleep, go straight into toddler-mode, and somehow later try to channel focus and insight into work I care about.
I have a late chronotype (your genetically pre-determined sleep schedule), which means I function best when I go to bed around 00.30, and get up at 8.30. Doing regular jobs never worked for me because my mind doesn’t function before 11.00.
Having a young child affects late chronotypes (night owls) much more intensely than early risers. While early chronotypes naturally align with a child’s early wake-up schedule, late chronotypes experience a mismatch between their biological clock and daily demands. This misalignment, known as social jetlag, leads to chronic sleep deprivation, reduced recovery, and a higher risk of mood issues and burnout — especially when evenings, their natural peak time, are the only hours left for work or rest. (Wittmann et al., 2006)
Adapting Your Habits
At some point — after enough months of fog and internal yelling at myself — I had to stop trying to “get back to normal” and instead ask:
What kind of normal is possible now?
Because habits and routines are highly contextual. You can design the perfect system, but if the environment changes and the system doesn’t, it will fail. Or worse, you’ll keep blaming yourself for its failure, not realizing it just doesn’t fit anymore.
This is what I work on with so many of my coaching clients who are parents or caregivers or entrepreneurs or people in big, meaning-driven roles. We talk about the anchors, rituals, practices, and structures that help you stay regulated and on track. But when life shifts, those anchors have to shift too.
If they don’t, they just become another stick to beat yourself with. Because not only aren’t you as productive as you think you should be, you are now also not doing the thing you know would help you be more productive! If only you would do your breathwork, you would be better! Aaaaaargh.
What Helped Me (And Might Help You)
So here’s what I did. I had a very real conversation with my partner. I told him:
“I need this. I need headspace at the start of my day. I can’t be the one taking our daughter to childcare. My brain just doesn’t work that way. If I don’t have time to myself at the beginning of the day— for yoga, for a breath, for not talking — I will be a more anxious, distracted, reactive version of myself.
Which means I will have to force myself into work, end up not being able to find the ‘off-button’, I’ll sleep worse. I’ll be less present. I’ll be less creative. And that will affect all of us.” And we adjusted. Not perfectly. Not smoothly. But enough to feel like I have more presence during the day. I carved out new anchors that were smaller — maybe 15 minutes instead of an hour — but still very meaningful.
And I gave myself permission to feel what I needed and surrender to whatever is present— not just try to power through it. This means that creative expression (like dancing, and playing cello) that I engineered out of my life in order to have a strict sleep schedule, was allowed back in.
Now I know I am in a privileged position. I decide on my work hours, I can do yoga in the morning, and I have a very (!) considerate partner. I can make macro changes. But there are other ways to deal with the context you are in, in smaller ways that fit your schedule.
Creating Micro Changes
If you’re also navigating big work, and/or parenting, or multiple roles that all matter to you:
Let this be a gentle nudge. But also: let’s be honest.
Not everyone has the autonomy or support I’ve been able to create. You might have to be at your desk by 8.30. You might have to do daycare drop-off. You might not have a partner who can take over, or a job that allows for flexibility. So instead of asking what else can I do? — the real question becomes:
"How do I create space?"
What can I let go of, delegate, delay, or re-think, in order to create space for a mindful moment or a moment of joyful creative expression? For me, that was the idea of myself being the amazing mum and partner that used her job-flexibility to have connected family moments in the morning, at the cost of my own clarity, creativity, and sanity. That was an idea I needed to let go of.
Sometimes, its our own expectations, or the stories we tell ourselves about what others expect of us, that keep us trapped in spending time on things we could easily replace by a self care routine.
And then, how can you reclaim ten minutes somewhere in your day — not to be productive, but to check in with yourself or just do something for the fun of it?
Maybe it’s:
Ten minutes alone after your child is in daycare, before starting work
- 10 minutes in the office before you start your day (really, no one cares, I promise!)
- A short moment before bed, or after you have had dinner or put your kid to bed
- Playing your favorite music while you make dinner
Not as a luxury. But as a tiny act of maintenance. Of remembering yourself.
Self-care in a season of life where you feel overloaded isn’t about transformation. This doesn’t have to be the other big thing. Huge self care goals can create role conflict, and add to your stress. When you are juggling too much, let self care be about preservation. About daily short check-ins with those parts of you that want to feel, play, and create. Just so you don’t loose yourself while holding so much.
Next Blog: Internal Family Systems Therapy
So yes — this past year has been a lot. Parenting, rebranding, launching a new website… and trying to hold it all together while running on 70% sleep. But what saved me wasn’t pushing through — it was learning to pause. To feel. To surrender.
Because healing from stress isn’t about perfect routines or doing everything right. It’s about listening to what your body is telling you, even when that’s uncomfortable.
We often think stress is the problem, but more often, it’s our resistance to stress that keeps us stuck. Yoga, breathwork, and self-care can become just another way to avoid our emotions if we’re not truly present. But when we surrender, when we allow ourselves to feel and process what’s really there, something shifts (check out this meditation to feel what that is like).
That’s where Internal Family Systems (IFS) came in. This therapy form gave me a way to meet the messy parts of myself with compassion instead of control.
In my next blog, I’ll share how IFS changed the way I relate to stress, and why I’m now training to become an IFS therapist. For now, I’ve added this short 10-minute relaxation exercise where I mixed in some elements of IFS. No elaborate morning routine required.
Let me know how it lands!