Balance Is a Myth: Why Mothers Are Meant to Live in Seasons

Every time I close my eyes, I see her. The woman I aspire to be.

Peaceful. Highly Productive. Present. Fit. Grounded. Glowing skin.

You don’t have to close your own eyes to see her, she’s everywhere now. She’s in the scrolls, in the feeds, in the glow of a screen that tells us who we should be and who we are not.

She’s the ghost of balance, haunting every mother who’s just trying to survive.

We keep chasing her.

We keep thinking, if I could just find balance, I’d finally feel like myself again or at least a better version of myself.

But I don’t think balance is the goal, I think it’s the bait.

The myth goes: if we could just be a little more organized, a little more planned, a little more polished, if we could keep every plate spinning: the kids, the marriage, the career, the body, the friendships, the self — then we’d finally feel like we’re “enough.”

But truth is, the “balanced mom” isn’t real. She’s a myth dressed up in matching neutrals and morning routines.

A performance of composure.

A woman who never drops the ball, never loses her cool, never forgets who she is.

The reality is that most of us are just trying our best with what we’ve got and trying not to disappear in the process.

The Myth We Were Sold

Balance sounds so blissful doesn’t it? But in practice, it’s exhausting. It demands that we hold everything at once, every role, every relationship, every expectation and somehow keep them all in perfect proportion.

It turns motherhood into a math equation. Add the chores, subtract the sleep, divide yourself by everyone’s needs, and still, the numbers never add up.

For a long time, I thought that meant I was failing the test. Turns out, it’s not me. It’s the equation that’s misleading, asking for balance in a season that was never meant to be measured.

The Biology of Seasons

Our biology proves we were never meant to live in balance, we were meant to live in rhythm. Motherhood isn’t linear; it moves in cycles…

We expand, we contract.

We create, we rest.

We bloom, we shed.

Our hormones rise and fall like tides. Our nervous systems stretch, then repair. Even our energy, our libido, our will to show up- they all move through seasons.

But somewhere along the way, we started chasing consistency as if it was proof of worth. We called it high-functioning. We called it discipline. We called it balance.

But really, it was disconnection.

I know this because I lived there- trying to fix what was never broken, treating my own biology like a flaw instead of my greatest mentor.

When we chase balance, we live in comparison. When we honor our seasons, we live in truth. One mother might be in her season of growth, launching something new, full of creative fire. Another might be in her season of retreat, tending her body, her mental health, her children’s needs.

Neither is better. Both are part of the same maternal rhythm.

The Invitation to Integration

What if we stopped striving for balance and started practicing integrationinstead?

Integration means allowing all parts of you to belong (the mother, the woman, the dreamer, the human).

It means letting one part rest while another rises. When we live integrated, we stop asking, “How do I do it all?” and start asking, “What needs my energy right now?”

Some days it’s your work.

Some days it’s your marriage.

Some days it’s your body, or your grief, or your joy.

I’ve come to learn that balance is brittle and wholeness was never something to earn, only something to return to. Because when we remember our own natural rhythm, we remember our power. Maybe the quiet revolution is this: to mother from our own rhythm, not our algorithms.

Because when mothers rise in rhythm with themselves, everything around them, the children, the home, the world begins to steady, like stones finding their rightful place.