30/09/2026
It feels like we’re constantly surrounded by shoulds.
What we should be prioritising.
What should matter to us.
What being a good parent should look like.
What being a good professional should look like.
What success, productivity, health, relationships and even happiness should look like.
And we’ve been absorbing these ideas, like sponges, for most of our lives.
There are so many social constructs around what it means to be a woman, a parent, a professional, a successful human.
Often they’re so deeply embedded that we don’t even recognise them as constructs.
They just become the measuring stick we hold our actual lives against.
And increasingly, I wonder how much of our dissatisfaction comes from that gap.
The gap between our real, messy, human experience and the version we’ve been taught it should be.
Of course, dissatisfaction is also incredibly profitable.
There will always be another product, strategy, system, course, routine or way of doing life that promises to make us more organised, productive, attractive, regulated, successful or fulfilled.
Some of these things might genuinely help us, but the underlying message that we are somehow falling short is the issue.
Because not everything needs fixing.
We need to be able to stop trying to make our lives look the way we think they’re supposed to. Instead, perhaps a more useful question is..
Does this actually work for me?
Maybe your parenting looks different (to most).
Maybe the way you work, rest, organise yourself, connect, communicate or structure your days doesn’t look like everyone else’s.
Different isn’t a moral failing.
There’s no prize for doing life in the most socially acceptable way.
We’re allowed to find what works for us, in all areas of life.
And we’re allowed to let that be enough. Actually, more than enough - it’s well worth celebrating breaking free of the status quo.
Who’s with me?
