About this Episode

This episode is Part 2 of my 3-part series, Thrive as a Working Mom.

One of the most important—and most complicated—pieces of thriving as a working mom is learning how to share the load at home. In this episode, I open up about my own journey of building a system with my partner, the progress we’ve made, and the challenges that still come with unlearning gender roles and navigating the mental load

I share three practical strategies that have made the biggest difference for us:

Weekly meetings that take the invisible mental load out of my head and put it on the table.
Clear delegation, ownership, and accountability so no one is left guessing (or quietly resentful).
Adjusting expectations and commitments to match our real capacity, not the unrealistic one society pressures us into.

Protecting your energy and creating equity at home isn’t just about making things easier for yourself—it’s about protecting your marriage, your health, and your ability to show up for your family and your career.

My hope is that this episode gives you both validation and practical tools as you navigate the messy, layered work of partnership, parenthood, and everything in between.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Why sharing the mental load at home is so difficult (and why it’s not your fault)
How weekly partner check-ins can take invisible labor off your plate
The importance of clear delegation, ownership, and accountability in your household
What to do when balls inevitably get dropped—and how to handle it without resentment
Why adjusting your commitments to match your true capacity is an act of self-care
Real examples from my own marriage of what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s still in progress

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you.

Free 4B Self-Care Framework© Guide: A great way to get started on your self-care journey, this guide provides an easy-to-use framework that makes self-care actually supportive rather than another burden on your to-do list. Get the Guide →
Rituals that Replenish: Instant Access Workshop: This DIY 3-hour workshop (1 hour per week) will help you get to know your true wants and needs and will help you develop the habit of practicing one self-care ritual in your daily life. Learn More →
The No Longer Last Journey®: Live Coaching Program: This 12-month program includes monthly coaching & community calls, classes, reflection guides, and weekly self-care reminders to help you overcome obstacles, improve your self-worth, and make self-care a sustainable and supportive part of your life. Learn More →

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, I am Mia Hemstad I'm a wife. I'm a mom of two kids, and I'm a trauma-informed self-care coach. I also live with diagnosed PTSD and depression. I started sharing my mental wellness journey online in 2017 when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. And since then I've heard from hundreds of women who all struggle with the same thing, putting ourselves last.

This is a struggle that's. Keeping so many women burned out and unhappy through no fault of our own. By the way, I've been working on my own healing as an abuse survivor since 2013, but when I became a mom, I really started to do the inner work of figuring out why I was putting myself last, and how to start prioritizing myself for the first time in my life.

This podcast is about sharing. All of those lessons with you. So if you're interested in hearing honest stories, life advice, and inspiration that encourages you to make your health, happiness, and wellbeing a priority, then definitely stick around. [00:01:00] Welcome to your no longer last journey.

Hey everyone.

Welcome back to the podcast. Today is part two in my series, how to Thrive as a Working Mom.

I hope you're enjoying this series so far. I'll link to the first episode down

below. , And if you're new here. Hi, I'm Mia Hemstad. I'm a mom

of two kids. They are elementary school age, and I have worked

from home and in, in office and in a variety

of sectors, since my child was four months old.

So I've been working pretty much throughout my whole motherhood journey. And I've also, I also did three years as a stay-at-home mom as well.

And, sorry, I'm a little out of breath. I was like having lunch, feeding

the kids, rushing back to do this episode, and I can hear them like losing their patients.

So i'm feeling like I need to get this episode done, but at the same time, if my kids come in, this is, this is the life of a working mom.

But anyway, right now I am the [00:02:00] full-time communications director at the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, and I also run my self-care coaching business part-time. So I'm pretty busy and I've had to learn a whole lot of tips and strategies in order to handle being a working mom because it definitely has burned me out.

In the past, and I have learned a lot and I've made a lot of mistakes, and I'm excited to share my best tips with you. So today's episode is all about how to build a system with your partner.

This is a key piece of being a working mom, and it's all about learning how to collaborate with your partner and making sure that you and your partner are sharing the load.

I wanna preface all of this by saying that I am not an expert at this and I don't think anybody is, because there's a lot of layers into why it's so hard to share the load with your partner. You know, I saw this quote that said that feminism taught women how to, you know, take up space in

the workplace, but it didn't teach men how to take up space at home and how [00:03:00] to manage the home. So essentially, and there's been studies done on this, women who work outta the home

still do. Twice as much or more housework than their husband's. And I think this has a lot to do with how we're raised. You know, I was raised to be a housewife and my husband was raised to be a provider, but when he lost his job in the pandemic five years ago, then I became the full-time provider.

But he didn't quite understand how to become the full-time house manager slash default parent.

So as a result, a lot of the mental load and the work of managing the house and being a parent. Was still on my plate even though I was now the full-time breadwinner and bill payer. So.

I felt very frustrated and overwhelmed by this until I started to learn that there's actually studies on this showing that there are hundreds and thousands of women

who were in the exact same position as me, of being somebody that works outside of the home, but still having to carry a majority of the [00:04:00] labor, mental and physical

of running a home and being a parent.So if you are frustrated about this, if you've been dealing with it for a long time, if you feel like everything you've tried isn't working.

I just wanna validate you, first of all, because I have done so much and tried so much with my husband for us to get on the same page, and it has been really hard.

Don't get me wrong, we have definitely seen major progress and strides in our relationship, in our dynamic, in our ability

to, , fairly and equitably share the work that is raising a family and running a home and paying bills in this economy. But there's still a lot

of work to go and I, you know, that's, I wanna start off this episode by saying that, that it's not easy.

And it's not that it's not easy

just because it's your partner or my partner. There's patriarchy involved. There's the way we were raised that's involved, there's societal expectations and pressures that are involved.

Like I remember when I became the full-time worker, like there's a whole dynamic when you're working outside of the home as a woman, as

a [00:05:00] mother, but then when you're the only one working, like when you're, my husband stayed at home and was the full-time dad.

That's a new, that's like a whole nother

dynamic that society has a hard time accepting. And because of that, I remember feeling for a long time that I still

needed to be like. This full-on full-time mom while also being a full-on,

full-time career woman, and that almost killed me. So I just wanna start this episode off by. Naming these issues, okay? Because this is not simple, and I'm gonna share my three best tips with you. But know that there's a lot of inner work that has to be done. There's gender norms to unpack and rewrite and redefine for you and your partner. There's patriarchy that needs to be unlearned and released from your marriage.

There's a lot that has to happen, and my husband and I have even done six months of couples therapy, you know, to work on a relationship. And this piece, like working together as a team. Was definitely a part of that. So, , I don't wanna oversimplify this, but I do believe that the tips I'm gonna

give you are [00:06:00] going to help.So the first tip, getting right into it is weekly meetings. You need to

have weekly meetings, even if it's just for 15 minutes. There has to be an opportunity where you are checking in transactionally on what needs to happen for the week ahead to go smoothly and successfully. So, you know, what does

that look like for me and my husband right now?Weekly meetings. Looks like who's doing pickup, who's doing drop off? Who's responsible for breakfast? Who's responsible for dinner?

Who's responsible for, you know. Are there any appointments coming up? Have they been made? Who's taking the kids to those appointments? Dentist, doctor

allergist, , who's responsible for grocery

shopping? Who's responsible for meal planning? Who's responsible for the dishes? Who's responsible for the laundry? Soobviously these aren't like

determined every week. We know who's responsible for what, but just like in any situation, sometimes. I might have a lot going on at work and I might say,

I have no time

or energy to [00:07:00] do, , the school pickup, so I need you to do that this week.

Or he might be like, oh, I am still recovering from the sinus infection. Like, can you help

out with dinners more so that I can rest whatever it is. Like, it's just

important even though we have. A lot of these chores, like predetermine,

who's doing what? It's good to have the conversation just because something might be going on.You know, a field trip's coming up or a child needs a new pair of shoes, who's getting it? When is it being gotten?

These check-ins are key so that you, the woman,

, Just because you can doesn't mean you should be the one that's always holding everything

in your head. Okay? It's not fair. So these meetings ensure that that mental labor.

Let that, let's be

honest, a lot of times the woman is holding onto is being shared. The second tip is decide who is doing what. There needs to be task delegation, ownership, accountability, and communication. So right now, well, my husband's about to start a. Full-time job in two weeks, and I'm [00:08:00] like

feeling a little overwhelmed because I'm like, oh my gosh, so much is gonna change.

But right now I

work full-time, nine to six, and he does the pickup, the drop off.

He does the breakfast, the dinners, and he orders groceries. I do the dishes most nights of the week.

I also unload the dishes first thing

in the morning when I get up.

That's my routine. I get

up, I go to the bathroom, I unload the dishes, and I put in a little laundry.

And then when I take breaks from work, I hang the laundry and swap it out throughout the day. So I basically do the dishes and I do the

laundry. He does the meals and he does the pickup and drop off.

Okay.

And then when it comes to bedtime, thankfully our kids are like older now and they can initiate brushing their teeth and they can take their own showers, which is amazing.

Because we used to have to be like, okay, who's on bath? Right? But we still have to like floss

a kid's teeth, blah, blah, blah. So we know who's

doing what. But sometimes balls are dropped and if there isn't communication about that, [00:09:00] that can be very frustrating. And

so it's really important that in your relationship you establish that, hey, it's okay to drop balls because we can't all do everything all the time.

We're human, but what's important is to respect your partner and communicate, Hey, I'm not able

to do school

drop off tomorrow because I have a dentist appointment. Can you do it? Rather than waiting till the last minute and just expecting your partner to read your mind. And to do that for you, or when a ball is dropped and it wasn't communicated.

Accountability is super important

here. Being

like I was supposed to do that. I should have communicated that to you. I'm really sorry. Next time I will fill in the blank and I'm aware that I'm telling you this. Most people listening, probably mothers, probably women. And let's be real, like a lot of the women I work with, the husbands are the ones dropping the ball.

The husbands are the ones not communicating, and the husbands are the ones struggling to take ownership and to apologize. And that's one of

the things

that me and my husband have been working on a lot in [00:10:00] therapy. He's going to therapy right now as well, just to kind of work on

like what gets in the

way of his ability to take ownership of his mistakes and apologize and, you know.

Again,

I think a lot of it has to do with just the

fact that like he wasn't raised to

have to be a house manager and he's had to learn that skill over the last five years, and it's been really

challenging. So,

but there's one thing I know for sure is like a relationship cannot thrive if like, there's no ownership, there's no accountability, there's no

apologies happening.

Like

it needs to when someone drops a ball that needs

to happen.

Otherwise frustration and resentment can grow and build. So that's really, really important.

And

then the last tip I wanna share is to not be afraid to adjust your commitments for a season in order to respect your

capacity.

So for instance, like there was a fundraiser happening at my kids' school and I really wanted

to be a part of it, and I said

I would.

And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna bake

these baked goods.

I'll help run the table.

And

then eventually I was just like, this is not gonna work. I have so much work on my plate. I was still battling major chronic fatigue, [00:11:00] still had my pret dysphoric disorder. Not figured out.

My symptoms were

not managed, but I wanted to, you know, be like the other moms.

But the fact of the matter is, I was

comparing myself to

moms who being a full-time mom was their full-time job. They did not work outside of the home, and that's totally fine.

And that

means that they are able to commit their time and energy to those

activities. And I had no business comparing

myself to them and trying to do what they were doing.

And so

I had to adjust my expectations,

decline the

volunteer opportunity, you know,

and just be real with myself that it wasn't the

right season for me to be

committing

to extra tasks at my kids' school.

And just, there's just a variety of ways that you can apply

this tip, you know, I

think.

When

you adjust your expectations to respect your capacity, this could also

look like allowing yourselves to eat

out once a week or twice a week so that you are cooking less or

bringing in more support, like childcare or [00:12:00] household help. You know, I, I

think it's really important to adjust your

expectations in order to

respect the fact that you and your partner are only human and you can't do everything on your own.

And to

remember that in this modern age, we are all raising our kids like in these

siloed, very isolated buckets. And in

reality, we were meant to raise our children all together in villages. And that's just not the way it is.

So I

think instead of just saying, oh, where's the village? I wish had a village, I think we

should acknowledge that we don't

have the village and then adjust.

Expectations and responsibilities accordingly. So,

, Yeah,

I hope those tips can help you to collaborate better with your partner, but especially I think the framing at the beginning of the episode,

I hope that

really got through to you because I find that a lot of people I work with, they

just come

into the work feeling frustrated about why their partner can't seem [00:13:00] to.

, Learn the skill of being the default parent, carrying the mental load and running a home. And I also fell into that trap of feeling really frustrated.

And

I think what I've learned over time is that

it's important to

remember how you were raised and how that

impacts how quickly or

slowly your partner, , can learn this

skill. You know, I

was taught how

to be a

mini mom. And how to run a home since I was eight years old.

Using the, you know, the, the stool that my mom had so that I can be at the counter level and learn how to make food and learn how to do laundry and,

Yeah, my husband wasn't raised that way and he absolutely can learn

these skills and he's learned a lot of skills,

but I have like 20 years.

Experience over him. Like I've been doing this so much longer and I learned a lot of these skills when my brain was still

developing. So

it's really laid into my ,So yeah, I hope that can help. I wish it was easier. I wish there was like a one size fits all solution, but there really [00:14:00] isn't.

And just know that there's a lot of layers to why sharing the mental load and the work of running a home. With your partner is so challenging. , And if you're struggling, it's really not like your fault. So,

That's all I have for you today. The next and last part of this, thrive as a working mom series is about how to expand your village.

I’m really excited about this one.

It's very important. , And I hope to see you in the next episode. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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