The Weight of August
August just hits differently when you're a mother.
There’s the back-to-school machinery: the lists, the supplies, the logistics of a new routine. There’s the end of something — whatever summer was, even if summer was largely business as usual for you and your family. There’s the beginning of something: the academic year, the fall cadence, the return to whatever version of normal October will eventually become.
And underneath all of it, if you’re paying attention, there’s something that doesn’t fit neatly into the category of either grief or relief.
For mothers who went back to work after parental leave this spring or summer — August is often the month when it all settles into place. The first-day adrenaline has worn off. The trial period is over. The routine is established. And what’s left is a quieter, more sustained question: is this what I wanted?
Most of us don’t pause long enough to actually answer that. The day keeps moving. The pickup is at 5:30. There are dinners and baths and the morning drill and then it starts again. The settling happens — into the routine, into the role, into the version of yourself that shows up for all of it — without you necessarily choosing it. You just find yourself there.
August is also the month that tends to crack open the carrying.
You’ve been managing since you got back. Managing the logistics, the emotional transitions, the professional readjustments, the relationship strain of adding a child to a partnership that was already working to stay connected. Managing the particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t map onto anything you were trained for.
You’ve been managing well. By most external measures, you’ve been “fineeeeeeeee."
August is when the fine starts to show its seams.
This isn’t a crisis. It’s information. It’s your system giving you feedback that it’s been running lean for a while and the reserves are lower than they look from the outside. That feedback is useful. It’s not comfortable, sure… but it is useful.
What I’ve learned helps isn’t an overhaul. Not a bigger solution, a small acknowledgement. A small experiment. One honest conversation about what’s actually hard. One named thing that you need that you’ve been postponing. One acknowledgment that you’re carrying more than the visible load.
And, oh, is the invisible load is real. The mental overhead of the planning and tracking and anticipating. The emotional overhead of managing how you present yourself in professional spaces while also showing up at home. The weight of being the person who notices all the things that need to happen before anyone else notices they need to happen.
You can carry it. You are doing it. However, carrying it, and carrying it well, are not the same thing, and August is often the month when the difference becomes clear.
If this is you — if August is the month the seams are showing — you don’t have to figure out the next step alone. That’s what the Chemistry Call is for. Forty-five minutes, free, no agenda except: where are you, and what might actually help?
Hope to see you there. 💞