I remember the exact moment I realized something was really wrong. Standing in my kitchen, kids asking me questions, dinner burning on the stove, phone buzzing with texts I hadn’t answered, and I just… stopped. Stood there completely frozen. Not because I was thinking about what to do next. Because I couldn’t think at all. My brain just quit.
Burst into tears over burned spaghetti and my kids looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had a little.
That was burnout. Real actual burnout. Not just being tired, though I was that too. Something deeper. Complete depletion that had been building for months, maybe years, that I’d been ignoring because moms don’t get to be burned out. We just keep going. That’s what we do.
Except sometimes we can’t.
If you’re reading this and something in you is whispering this might be me, I want you to know some things. You’re not weak. You’re not failing. You’re not a bad mom. You’re a human being who has been giving and giving without enough coming back in. And that’s not sustainable for anyone.
Burnout isn’t just being tired. You can be tired and still feel like yourself. Burnout is different. Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Numbness settling in where feelings used to be. Going through motions without being fully present for any of it.
Some signs that might sound familiar:
Exhausted all the time even after rest. Could sleep twelve hours and still wake up drained. Tiredness isn’t just physical. It’s emotional, mental, in your bones.
Everything feels overwhelming. Tasks that used to be automatic now feel impossibly hard. Making dinner. Answering emails. Your to-do list hasn’t changed but your capacity to handle it has shrunk dramatically.
Lost patience for things you used to handle fine. Small annoyances send you over the edge. Kids’ normal noise, normal mess, normal neediness that you used to manage now makes you want to scream. Or cry. Or hide in the bathroom.
Disconnected from your kids. This one hurts to admit. Burnout can make you feel like you’re watching your life from outside yourself. Physically present but emotionally somewhere else. You love your kids but can’t feel it the way you used to.
Stopped enjoying things. Activities that used to bring joy now feel like more items on the list. Hobbies fallen away. Time with friends feels like effort. Even things that should be fun feel like obligations.
Constantly irritable or numb. Either snapping at everyone for everything, or gone the other direction and just feeling nothing. Both are signs something’s wrong.
Physical symptoms keep showing up. Headaches. Stomachaches. Tension in shoulders. Trouble sleeping despite exhaustion. Getting sick more often. Body trying to tell you something.
Fantasizing about escape. Not necessarily leaving your family. But fantasies about being alone. Checking into a hotel by yourself. Being hospitalized for something minor just so you could rest. These thoughts feel shameful but they’re more common than anyone admits.
If you’re nodding along to several of these, please hear me. This is real and it matters and you deserve help.
Understanding how you got here isn’t about blame. It’s recognizing that burnout doesn’t happen because you’re doing something wrong. It happens because the math doesn’t work.
Demands are endless. Motherhood never clocks out. No end to the day, no weekend, no vacation where you’re fully off duty. Even sleeping, part of you is listening for a cry or cough. This relentlessness wears you down.
Mental load is invisible. Not just doing tasks. Tracking everything. Appointments, school events, who needs new shoes, when permission slips are due, what everyone will eat. This invisible management runs constantly in the background using energy nobody sees.
You’ve deprioritized yourself. Somewhere along the way you dropped to the bottom of your own list. Your needs come after everyone else’s. Self-care sounds nice in theory but keeps getting pushed aside in practice.
Support is lacking. Maybe parenting without a partner. Maybe partner’s around but not sharing load equally. Maybe far from family. Maybe surrounded by people but still feeling alone. Isolation accelerates burnout.
Trying to do it all. Be a good mom. Keep house together. Work maybe. Maintain relationships. Take care of health. Look presentable. Be patient. Be present. Be grateful. Expectations are impossible and you’re trying to meet all of them.
Never really recovered. From newborn days. From that difficult season. From the pandemic. From whatever came before. Just kept going because there was no choice and the deficit kept growing.
Society doesn’t help. Parenting now is weirdly isolated compared to how humans raised children for most of history. Less community support, more pressure, constant comparison via social media. It’s genuinely harder than it used to be.
None of this is your fault. System is broken, not you.
What I want you to understand about recovering from burnout. It doesn’t happen quickly. No weekend reset fixes it. Burnout builds over time and heals over time too.
But it does heal. You can feel like yourself again. I did.
First step is hardest.
Acknowledge what’s happening. Stop telling yourself you’re fine. Stop pushing through. Stop minimizing. Say it out loud if you need to. I am burned out. This is real. I need things to change.
Something powerful about naming it. Takes vague feeling of wrongness and makes it concrete. Problem you can name is problem you can address.
Tell someone. Don’t keep this to yourself. Tell partner, friend, your mom, therapist, someone. Not so they can fix it but because carrying this alone makes it heavier. Let someone know what you’re dealing with.
When I finally told my husband how bad things had gotten I cried for about twenty minutes. Then felt lighter. He couldn’t magically solve everything but knowing I wasn’t alone with it helped.
Lower the bar. Way down. Not the time for high standards. Survival mode is acceptable. Frozen pizza is fine. Screen time limits can relax. House can be messy. Whatever you can let go of, let it go. Cannot recover while still maintaining impossible standards.
Cancel something. Look at calendar and find something to remove. Commitment, obligation, social thing you don’t have energy for. Say no. Say you can’t. Create some space.
Once you’ve acknowledged burnout and lowered expectations you can start slow process of recovery. Notice I said slow. Not about adding seventeen self-care activities to already overwhelming life.
Small things. Gentle things. One at a time.
Rest when possible. Actual rest, not scrolling phone while feeling guilty. Lying down. Closing eyes. Sitting in silence. Even ten minutes of genuine rest counts.
Go outside. Fresh air and sunlight do something good for brain. Don’t have to go for a hike. Just step outside. Sit on porch. Small doses of nature help.
Move your body gently. Not intense exercise. Not pushing yourself. Stretching. Slow walk. Some yoga. Movement helps process stress hormones built up.
Do one thing just for you. Something small that brings tiny bit of joy. Hot shower without interruption. Cup of tea. Five pages of a book. Something that’s just yours.
Say no more often. Practice this. No, we can’t make it. No, I’m not able to help right now. Every no protects a little bit of your energy.
Ask for help. Know this is hard. Know you might feel like you should handle it or that asking is admitting failure. But asking is smart not weak. Let someone else do pickup. Let partner handle dinner. Accept offers. Don’t have to do this alone.
Sometimes gentle self-care isn’t enough. Sometimes burnout is tied to bigger things that need to change.
Division of labor at home. If you’re doing most household and childcare work while burned out, this has to be addressed. Real conversation about redistribution. Not you asking for “help” with your responsibilities but genuine rebalancing.
Your workload overall. Something might need to give. Work hours, commitments, activities. If everything is essential nothing can change. But probably not everything is actually essential.
Support system. If isolated, this needs attention. Finding mom group, reconnecting with friends, building community. Humans aren’t meant to parent alone.
Underlying mental health. Burnout can coexist with depression and anxiety. Sometimes what feels like burnout is actually depression needing treatment. If you’ve tried to rest and still feel stuck, talking to professional can help.
Unresolved stuff from past. Sometimes burnout brings up old wounds. Things from your childhood. Grief you haven’t processed. Therapist can help work through this.
Being realistic with you. Recovery isn’t linear. Not like you do right things for few weeks and you’re fixed.
Good days and bad days. Feel better for a while then hit a wall again. That’s normal. Doesn’t mean you’re failing at recovery.
For me recovery looked like:
Slowly feeling less numb. Catching myself actually laughing at something one of my kids said and realizing I hadn’t done that in a while.
Having more patience. Not infinite patience but more than before. Being able to handle normal kid stuff without wanting to explode.
Wanting to do things again. Actually looking forward to something instead of dreading everything.
Feeling more like myself. Hardest to describe but maybe you know what I mean. Just feeling like me again instead of some hollow exhausted version.
It took months. Maybe longer. Not sure when I could say I was recovered because it happened so gradually. But I got there. And you can too.
One more thing. Might be the most important.
Please be kind to yourself through this. You’ve been running on empty while trying to pour into everyone else. Doing incredibly hard job without enough support. Shouldering more than any person should carry.
You’re not burned out because you’re weak or ungrateful or not cut out for this. You’re burned out because you’re human and this is hard and something had to give.
Let that something be perfectionism. Let it be guilt. Let it be pressure to be everything for everyone all the time.
You’re more than a mom. Whole person with needs and limits and a right to take up space and rest and ask for help.
Recovery starts with believing you’re worth recovering for. Not just so you can be better mom for your kids, though that will happen too. But because you, yourself, deserve to feel okay. To feel good. To feel like yourself again.
You do.
Promise you do.
If you’re in the thick of it right now, sending you so much compassion. What’s one tiny thing you could do today to start taking care of yourself? Even smallest step counts.
