When Did Having It All Become Doing It All?

For years, we have been asking whether women can have it all.

Can we have a career and a family?

Can we be mothers and still pursue our ambitions?

Can we take care of ourselves while taking care of everyone else?

Can we build a life that feels fulfilling in every direction?

I have always believed the answer is yes.

But perhaps we have misunderstood what “having it all” actually means.

Because somewhere along the way, having it all became doing it all.

And those are not the same thing.

Before motherhood, a woman is simply a woman.

She has a life that belongs to her.

She studies.

She works.

She earns.

She travels.

She builds friendships.

She looks after her body.

She learns who she is.

She falls in love.

She has dreams.

She makes decisions based primarily on what she wants her life to become.

Then motherhood arrives.

And suddenly, another human being enters the equation.

A human being who had no say in being brought into this world and who is completely dependent on her.

Of course she puts that child first.

There is something beautiful and deeply instinctive about that.

You carry a child.

You bring that child into the world.

You feed them.

You protect them.

You teach them.

You become responsible for helping another human being grow into themselves.

Of course they matter.

But here is where things become complicated.

The woman does not disappear when the mother arrives.

The woman who existed before motherhood is still there.

She still has dreams.

She still wants to build a career.

She still wants to travel.

She still wants to look after her body.

She still wants to feel beautiful.

She still wants friendships.

She still wants intimacy.

She still wants to learn.

She still wants to discover who she is becoming.

She still has ambitions that have nothing to do with being a mother.

And suddenly, she is trying to hold all of these versions of herself at the same time.

How many tabs can one person keep open?

Sometimes I think about the human brain like a computer.

You open one window.

Then another.

Then another.

Before long, there are twenty or thirty tabs open and you can no longer remember which one is playing music.

Motherhood.

Career.

Partner.

Children.

Parents.

Money.

Health.

Fitness.

Food.

Sleep.

Skin.

Hair.

Ageing.

Friendships.

Home.

Work.

Personal growth.

Emotional wellbeing.

The future.

And then there is the tab that simply says:

What am I forgetting?

That one never seems to close.

The problem is not necessarily that women are incapable of carrying responsibility.

Women are incredibly capable.

The problem is that human attention has limits.

There is only so much we can consciously hold, manage, anticipate and respond to at one time.

And yet many women are trying to keep every part of their lives running simultaneously.

Not only running.

Running well.

We want to be good mothers.

Good partners.

Good daughters.

Good friends.

Good professionals.

Good businesswomen.

Healthy women.

Fit women.

Emotionally healthy women.

Women who have done the inner work.

Women who understand themselves.

Women who age gracefully.

Women who still look good.

Women who are present.

Women who are ambitious.

Women who are calm.

Women who have boundaries.

Women who have a life.

The list keeps growing.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, we can become overwhelmed by the sheer number of versions of ourselves we are trying to maintain.

The problem isn’t that we want too much

I don’t think women should be told to want less.

I don’t think motherhood should mean abandoning ambition.

I don’t think taking care of children means we should stop taking care of ourselves.

And I don’t think wanting a career, wanting to feel good in our bodies, wanting to travel, wanting financial independence or wanting to pursue a dream makes us any less devoted to our families.

The problem is the idea that everything must happen at full capacity, all at once.

That is where “having it all” becomes “doing it all.”

And doing it all is exhausting.

Sometimes, when we feel overwhelmed, we assume something is wrong with us.

We think we are unmotivated.

We think we are disorganised.

We think we are procrastinating.

We think we have lost our ambition.

We think we should be better at managing our time.

But perhaps we are simply carrying too many open tabs.

Perhaps the answer isn’t to become better at keeping all of them open.

Perhaps some of them are allowed to rest.

We are allowed to have seasons

There was a time when I believed that if I wanted something, I had to keep pursuing it continuously.

That if I stepped away from something, I was falling behind.

But life doesn’t really work that way.

There are seasons.

There may be a season when motherhood needs more of you.

There may be a season when your career takes centre stage.

There may be a season when your body needs more attention.

A season when you need to rebuild your health.

A season when you want to travel.

A season when you want to create something.

A season when you need to simply stop and breathe.

One season does not erase the others.

The woman who steps back from her career for a period of time has not lost her ambition.

The woman who puts her body and health first for a while has not become selfish.

The woman whose children need more of her has not abandoned herself.

She is simply living through a season.

Perhaps having it all was never meant to mean having everything active at the same time.

Perhaps it means having a life that is big enough to contain all the different things that matter to you, even if they do not all have your attention at once.

But what happens when we refuse to let anything rest?

This is where I think many women quietly struggle.

We don’t necessarily want to give anything up.

We want to be a mother.

We want to be a woman.

We want to build the career.

We want to take care of our health.

We want to look after our parents.

We want to be there for our friends.

We want to travel.

We want to grow.

We want to be present for our children.

We want to be present for ourselves.

And sometimes we don’t know what has to give.

Or whether we are willing to give anything up at all.

So we keep everything open.

And eventually, something happens.

We freeze.

We become overwhelmed by where to begin.

We sit with a list of things we know we should be doing and somehow cannot move.

Then comes the guilt.

Why haven’t I done this?

Why am I so tired?

Why can’t I just get myself together?

But perhaps freezing is not a failure of discipline.

Perhaps sometimes it is simply what happens when we have been asking ourselves to hold too much for too long.

You do not have to choose between every version of yourself

Motherhood changes a woman.

It should.

How could it not?

But changing does not have to mean disappearing.

The woman you were before motherhood does not need to be erased.

She may change.

She may grow.

She may become softer in some ways and stronger in others.

Her dreams may change.

Her priorities may change.

She may discover that some things she once thought mattered no longer do.

And she may discover new things that matter more than she ever imagined.

That is not losing yourself.

That is becoming.

Perhaps the goal is not to remain every version of yourself at the same time.

Perhaps the goal is to know that all those versions are still part of you.

Some can be in the foreground.

Some can rest in the background.

Some can wait for their season.

And that is okay.

Because you are not a machine designed to keep every tab open indefinitely.

You are a woman.

A woman with a finite amount of time, energy, attention and emotional space.

You do not have to prove that you can carry everything simply because you are capable of carrying it.

And perhaps having it all does not mean doing it all.

Perhaps having it all means building a life where there is room for all the things that matter to you.

Just not necessarily all at once.

Maybe the question was never:

“Can I have it all?”

Maybe the better question is:

“What matters most in this season of my life?”

And perhaps when the season changes, you can open another tab.

Not because you failed to keep it open.

Because you were wise enough to know when to let it rest.