The Many Roles We Perform — And the Invisible Load We Carry

There is a moment many competent women recognise.

Life looks fine from the outside.

You have built a career.
You take care of your family.
You manage the household, the planning, the responsibilities.

Everything works.

And yet, somewhere along the way, something quietly disappears.

For years I showed up every day as someone.

A mother.
A partner.
A professional.

Planning meals.
Making doctor’s appointments.
Dropping the kids off early in the morning.
Preparing lessons.
Trying not to make mistakes.

It felt normal to carry that much.

At one point I was building a career, raising three children, studying for a master’s degree and renovating a house at the same time.

Looking back, it seems almost impossible.

But when you are in the middle of it, you simply keep going.

Because you are capable.
Because people count on you.
Because stopping feels irresponsible.

Until something shifts.

Not always dramatically.

Sometimes it shows up as irritation.
Or exhaustion.
Or the quiet feeling that you are slightly absent from your own life.

Life works.

But you don’t always feel present inside it.

What I realised much later is that the real challenge was not the amount of work.

It was that my identity had slowly become built around performing roles and carrying responsibility.

Sitting down and doing nothing felt uncomfortable.

A cup of coffee in the sun felt unproductive.
Taking a walk in the middle of the day felt almost wrong.

Productivity had quietly become the measure of worth.

It took time to learn something very simple again.

To sit.
To breathe.
To notice the seasons changing.
To listen when someone tells you about their day.

To be present in my own life.

And something surprising happened.

The work still got done.
Life did not fall apart.

But the invisible load became lighter.

One of the most powerful shifts was learning the difference between responsibility and ownership.

There are things we care deeply about that are not ours to control.

When we slowly give back what does not belong to us, something changes.

We begin to treat our time differently.

We notice small moments again.

A quiet cup of coffee.
A walk outside.
A conversation without rushing to the next task.

These moments may look small.

But they reconnect us with ourselves.

In my work with women, this is often where the real transformation begins.

Not by doing more.

But by creating space to step out of the roles we have been performing for years and rediscover the person behind them.

Sometimes the most important question is a simple one.

Who are you when you're not performing a role for someone else?

Kaat

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Reflections on identity and responsibility

From time to time I write essays about identity, motherhood, responsibility and reconnecting with yourself.

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