Lately, I’ve been quietly having more and more conversations with women who say,
“I thought it was just me.”
Some are already on the other side of it.
Some are standing right at the beginning, wondering if this is what they are experiencing now.
And almost all of them say the same thing.
“I’m so relieved these conversations are finally happening.”
Because struggling in isolation is heavy.
And we’ve done that long enough.
One thing that keeps coming up again and again is the idea of pushing through.
For most of my life, pushing through was my superpower.
I was productive. High achieving. Fast.
The go-getter.
If something needed doing, give it to Robyn.
Friends used to joke that I was hard to keep up with. I moved at lightning speed. I made sacrifices to achieve. I thrived on momentum. That was a huge part of my identity.
Then, about five years ago, after landing what should have been my dream job, something started to shift.
I felt slower.
My confidence quietly slipped.
My brain felt thick, like it was moving through concrete.
I was surrounded by younger, ambitious teammates, and I could feel the difference, even if no one else said a word. Maybe they noticed. Maybe they didn’t. But I did.
Around the same time, my daughter became extremely unwell.
Once she recovered, my body finally tapped out.
I developed shingles.
That was my body saying something my mind refused to hear.
Pushing through was no longer the solution.
This isn’t a personality flaw. It’s biology.
There’s also a biological piece here that helped me stop judging myself.
Estrogen is often referred to as the nurturing hormone. It supports connection, caretaking, empathy, and that deep instinct to put everyone else first. So when estrogen begins to decline in midlife, it’s not just our bodies that change. Our tolerance changes, too.
Enter Melani Sanders, “We Do Not Care Club”.
Suddenly, our fcks start to disappear.
Not because we’re broken.
Not because we’ve become selfish.
But because our bodies are naturally turning us inward.
That inward pull can feel really uncomfortable, especially when we still have children at home, partners, ageing parents, or people who rely on us. This isn’t about abandoning anyone.
It’s about not abandoning ourselves.
It’s about recognising that doing everything for everyone forever was never sustainable.
Maybe this season is asking us to rebalance
Sometimes this season is an invitation to rebalance.
To empower other people in the household to step up.
To let kids learn responsibility.
To stop cushioning everyone from discomfort at the expense of our own health.
I loved hearing Monique van Tulder talk about her adult gap year. She knew her husband and adult sons knew where the fridge and kitchen were. They were capable. It was time for her.
Most of us can’t take a year off, and that’s real life. But we can start small.
Family meetings around the dinner table.
Honest conversations.
Rejigging who does what.
Letting go of the idea that it’s all on us.
It might feel awkward at first. There might be resistance. But slowly, things shift.
And they need to.
Because pushing through while quietly resenting everyone around us helps no one.
Why modern motherhood is burning us out
There’s also a bigger parenting piece we don’t talk about enough.
When the US Surgeon General released data describing modern parenting as a health hazard, one chart stopped me in my tracks. Parents today are working more and spending more time with their children than previous generations. So where is that extra load coming from?
Ourselves.
Our relationships.
Any space we might have had to rest or reset.
We are burning ourselves out trying to be everything, do everything, and be endlessly present for our kids. Often, with the quiet belief that this is what good parenting looks like. That if we just try harder, love harder, show up more, we’ll somehow get it right.
But are we actually doing our kids any favours if it comes at the cost of our sanity?
Maybe we’re trying to parent differently from how we were raised. Maybe we’re chasing a version of perfection that doesn’t exist. And maybe part of pulling back in midlife is realising that modelling balance, boundaries, and shared responsibility is just as important as being constantly available.
It was never meant to all sit on one person.
This chart says it more clearly than words ever could.
Millennial mothers are spending more time with their children than any generation before them. More time than Gen X. More than baby boomers. Even while working more hours than previous generations. When you look at this, the question isn’t why so many mothers are burnt out. It’s how we’re still standing at all.
The extra time isn’t coming from nowhere. It’s coming from us. From our rest. From our relationships. From any space we might have had to recover.
We’re told this is what good parenting looks like. Be present. Be available. Be everything. But when you stack this level of emotional labour on top of midlife hormone shifts, nervous system overload, and years of pushing through, something has to give.
And it usually isn’t the expectations.
It’s us.
There is no badge of honour for burnout
So many women keep showing up because if we don’t, no one else will.
Families still need feeding. Work still needs doing. Life keeps moving.
But the question we rarely ask is
At what cost?
Our health.
Our nervous systems.
Our long term wellbeing.
Something that really stayed with me from the So Hot Right Now menopause events in Sydney last year, listening to local and international experts, was this.
Women live longer, yes.
But health span does not automatically equal lifespan aka quality of life.
Living longer means very little if those extra years are spent exhausted, unhealthy, inflamed, burnt out, and disconnected from ourselves.
Why pushing through backfires for ADHD brains
For me, accepting this required therapy. Regular therapy.
And yes, hello ADHD.
Living with ADHD meant I had spent decades overriding my internal cues. Riding adrenaline. Hyperfocusing. Burning hot, then crashing. Repeating the cycle because I thought that was just how I was wired.
Perimenopause stripped away my ability to compensate.
What I’ve had to learn, slowly and with a lot of unlearning, is that pushing through when I feel good can be just as risky as pushing through when I feel awful.
That part has been hard to accept.
When energy finally comes back, especially after burnout, the instinct is to grab it with both hands. To do all the things. To make up for lost time.
But for ADHD brains, that surge often comes with a delayed price.
Overdoing it during the good days can lead to the next crash.
And recognising that pattern takes regulation, not willpower.
Pulling back is not failure.
Resting is not weakness.
Slowing down is not giving up.
And it is definitely not being a sook.
Sometimes pushing through causes damage we cannot undo.
There is no badge of honour waiting for us at the end of this.
No prize for setting ourselves on fire to keep everyone else warm.
Choosing yourself is not quitting
What I want more than anything is for women to hear this before their bodies force the lesson the hard way.
Please share this with a friend if you think it might land for her.
I never want another woman to feel isolated, dismissed, or gaslit the way I did during my darkest days.
We deserve better than survival mode.
We deserve care too.
If this resonated, this is exactly why I wrote the ebook Choose Yourself on presale NOW.
Not to fix you, but to help you stop abandoning yourself.
I never want another woman to feel isolated, dismissed, or gaslit the way I did during my darkest days.
You may also like…
My fitness plan for Q1 2026
Just over a year ago, I was tiptoeing back into my beloved gym after a long break.
