Someone Else Made It Look Easy
Nobody meant to prove my point. They did it anyway.
I was sitting by the pool after my daughter’s swim lesson when I started chatting with another dad. Just the kind of conversation parents who don’t know each other have while trying to entertain themselves as their kids splash around in the water.
“How’s swim been going?” he asked.
“It’s been a lot. Getting her here every day is really hard.” I admitted.
He nodded. “Oh, it really hasn’t been too bad for me.” Then, without missing a beat, he added, “My wife brings her most days.”
I smiled. “Well, of course it’s been easy for you.”
We both laughed.
A few minutes later, I mentioned how terrible the registration platform was.
He nodded again. “Yeah, my wife complains about it a lot, but I haven’t actually looked at it.” Then he paused. “Maybe I should look at it sometime.”
I looked at him, smiled, and said, “I think that’s a great idea.”
I remember thinking, “Well, there it is again.” I had to resist the urge to say, Thank you for making my point for me.
Not because he had said anything wrong. But because, in less than two minutes, he’d unintentionally described something that so many mothers spend years trying to explain.
Months earlier, I found myself having a completely different but eerily similar conversation with a man at an airport bar. At least, I thought it was a completely different conversation.
He was telling me about his career. The opportunities he’d had. The places he’d traveled. The life he’d built. As he talked, another story quietly emerged. His wife had stayed home with their children.
I remember saying how much his wife did to make his career possible. “She made a lot of your career possible.”
I have a feeling he thought we were going to have one of those easy, carefree airport conversations you have with strangers you’ll never see again, while drinking an overpriced drink at the bar.
Instead, we (well, more me) ended up talking about gratitude. Not just for the career. But for the person whose work made that career possible, in his case, his wife.
After chatting with the dad at the pool, it got me thinking about both of these conversations. Not because either man upset me. Neither did. It’s not a new pattern.
What stayed with me was how ordinary both conversations were. No one was arguing. No one was trying to prove a point.
Two men simply described their lives, the way they saw them. And in doing so, they revealed something neither of them meant to say.
Easy is often just a story we tell about work we never had to see.
The swim lessons felt easy because someone else figured out registration.
Someone else knew which class to sign up for.
Someone else remembered which goggles were preferred this week.
Someone else carried the mental checklist long before anyone got in the car.
The career looked effortless because someone else absorbed countless ordinary days that made extraordinary opportunities possible.
Neither man was taking credit for his wife’s work. They simply couldn’t see all of it.
Because that’s the thing about invisible work. When it’s done well, it disappears.
The registration website gets refreshed.
The right swim level gets chosen.
The goggles somehow make it into the swim bag.
The favorite snacks of the day magically appear.
The calendar somehow works.
Life keeps moving.
And after a while, everyone—including the person benefiting from it—starts to believe that’s just how life works.
As if families simply run themselves.
As if all of those tiny decisions make themselves.
As if easy arrives on its own.
It doesn’t.
Someone makes it look that way.
If you’re the one carrying that invisible list in your head, the one who knows because you have to know, I hope you hear this: You’re not imagining it.
Those little things that don’t seem worth mentioning? They’re often the very things holding everything else together.
I don’t think the answer is keeping score. I don’t think it’s making anyone the villain. Honestly, that’s something I still struggle with.
I think it starts with something much simpler.
Seeing.
Really seeing.
Seeing the registration website you’ve never opened.
The calendar you’ve never had to manage.
The appointments you didn’t have to remember because someone else already had.
Sometimes love looks like doing.
Sometimes it looks like noticing the doing.
And sometimes the clearest explanation of the mental load comes from a perfectly ordinary conversation by a swimming pool.
A dad smiles and says, “It really hasn’t been that hard.”
And every mother reading this quietly thinks the same thing. “Of course it hasn’t, because someone else has been carrying it.”
Easy is often just a story we tell about work we never had to see.
Someone Needs This Today
There’s a mom in your life carrying the invisible list right now. Send her this. Let her feel seen instead of invisible, even for just a minute.
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Gentle Resource
If you’ve ever quietly kept score of the invisible list in your head — the swim goggles, the calendar, the snacks — you’re not imagining the weight of it. My guided journal and Truth Cards exist for exactly that: a place to put down what you’re carrying, even the parts no one else can see.
This is everything I’ve been quietly thinking about in my own life. The mental load of motherhood can be so hard and overwhelming sometimes. Thank you for sharing 🫶🏼
“Sometimes love looks like doing.
Sometimes it looks like noticing the doing.”
Loved this line… it’s so true. When the doing gets noticed it makes a huge difference in lightening the weight of the load.