The weight no one sees (part 1)

Or: why so many women are on the edge of a silent collapse

Some days, the chaos is louder than any affirmation.

And honestly? It has a point.

Being a woman in 2025 means juggling a thousand invisible tasks while the world expects you to smile, achieve, love gently, feed with care, keep the house running smoothly, bounce back in six weeks, and never ask too much, complain too much, or expect too much.

Just deliver. Just handle it.

But… what if you don’t want to?

And before someone says, “Oh, but my mom, my grandma… they managed it all.

Ten kids, sewing curtains with a baby on the lap…”

Sure. They managed.

But did they have a choice?

The ones who couldn’t were called weak, ungrateful, and unstable.

And honestly, we don’t need to go that far back.

It’s still like that today.

The difference is now we have Instagram videos explaining the difference between “female assertiveness” and being “too much.”

Wow, progress!

If we really look into this, we hit layer after layer:

The survival mode that became standard.

The glamorization of exhaustion.

Big siblings raising the little ones.

Punitive parenting.

No support networks.

The “I’ll just do it” that turned into a life sentence…

And of course, the daydreams we invent to cope.

Don’t tell me you’ve never thought:

“I wish I were that linen-apron, slow-living countryside mom, baking bread with the kids running barefoot while the kettle whistles on the porch.”

I have.

Some days I’ve longed for that.

And some days, I joked about the ones who burned their bras.

Sorry. But haven’t we all?

The truth is: we don’t want to give up our rights.

We just want to rest without giving up our dignity.

We want the bread in the oven, the warm tea AND money in our own name.

The freedom to walk out the door, to exist without permission.

Because this whole tradwife aesthetic might look romantic.

But depending 100% on a husband? That’s not poetry. That’s a risk.

And we know it in our bodies, our histories, our fears.

Now, back to the point.

Mental load doesn’t wear a badge. It doesn’t announce itself.

It just eats up your day. And your body. Your libido.

Even the little peace you had before asking someone to put leftovers in the fridge… and finding a pot half-covered, crooked, leaking. Because it’s never just putting it away. It’s when, where, how, why — and checking later. The classic: if you don’t do it, no one will. But if you do, you have to accept the half-done version someone “helped” with.

You’re not exaggerating. You’re tired.

Mental load is the sum of everything you have to remember to keep life moving — unseen, unacknowledged, undervalued. Even by you, who learned to call it “no big deal.”

And that’s when it gets even harder for mothers.

Because when the baby is born, the world expects a mother to be born fully ready too. But the system offers no support. The partner was never taught to see it, let alone act on it. And society doesn’t treat care as real work.

So who ends up carrying it all?

The one who bled. The one who hasn’t slept. The one whose chest aches while her body is still healing.

Welcome to the club of women who stopped asking for help.

Who gave up because asking means waiting for someone else’s timing.

And even then, the trash still doesn’t get taken out. The obvious gets called “too demanding.”

Mental load, when combined with invisible care, becomes a kind of burnout that feels like personal failure, but it’s structural.

So, what are you silently carrying, thinking it’s just how it is?