In May, I invited you to start listening to yourself again. To slow down, get honest, and notice what was actually going on underneath the busy.

I hope something surfaced. Even something small.

Because here is what tends to happen when capable women start paying attention: they hear things. Important things. Things they’ve quietly known for a while, but haven’t had the space, or the permission, to acknowledge.

And then June arrives. And life doesn’t slow down to let you process any of it.

The diary fills back up. The decisions keep landing. The mental weight doesn’t take a summer holiday just because you’ve had a moment of clarity. If anything, once you start noticing, you notice everything. And that can feel heavier, not lighter.

That is not a sign that something has gone wrong. That’s exactly where we need to go next.

This month, we’re talking about what it means to carry too much and what it actually feels like to put something down.

And if you’re not quite there yet, that’s okay. Take what is useful and save the rest for when you’re ready.

Heather x

You may notice The Spark looks a little different this month. The Shine Brightly brand has had a quiet refresh. It’s the same values, same voice, but a cleaner and more considered look. Deep navy, warm cream, a little gold. The kind of change that feels less like a rebrand and more like finally wearing what was always mine. I hope you like it.

You’ll also find regular reflection questions in the Daily Pause I’ve been sharing on LinkedIn and Instagram. These small moments of reflection, repeated gently, can help turn insight into attention and then attention into action.

Fair warning: what follows in this section might make you feel seen in a way that’s momentarily overwhelming. That’s not an accident. But this is not intending to be about how hard things are. It’s a section about finally being allowed to say so. And then doing something small about it.

We are nearly at the halfway point of the year. If you are feeling a particular kind of tired right now, not sleepy, but depleted, there is a reason for it. And the evidence is increasingly hard to ignore.

A landmark study published in October 2025 by researchers at the University of Bath and the University of Melbourne followed over 2,000 participants and found that successful, high-earning women still carry the majority of the mental load at home - regardless of their income, seniority, or hours worked. The lead researcher, Dr Ana Catalano Weeks, introduced a term I think you will recognise immediately: gendered cognitive stickiness. 

The idea is this: even when women gain economic power, they remain the ones anticipating, planning and coordinating. The cognitive labour (remembering the appointment, noticing the fridge is empty, holding the family calendar in their head) does not redistribute the way the physical tasks sometimes do. It sticks.

But here is what the research also shows: it does not stop at the front door.

At work, the invisible load continues.

Women in senior roles are more likely to absorb the emotional management of their teams. This might be things like the conflict smoothing, the checking in, the holding of others’ anxieties alongside their own. They are also disproportionately asked to take on what researchers call non-promotable tasks: the work that keeps organisations functioning but rarely appears in a job description or performance review. Organising the away day. Mentoring the struggling colleague. Being the one people come to when something feels wrong. 

A separate study found that the more cognitive and emotional labour women carried, the more exhausted they felt at work. For men, the same relationship simply did not appear. 

In their relationships and social networks, the load continues too.

Women are typically the ones who maintain connection. Remembering birthdays, organising gatherings, noticing when a friendship has gone quiet and doing something about it. The emotional infrastructure of most social networks is built and maintained largely by women. It is rarely named as work. It is work.

For those also caring for ageing parents, supporting friends through crisis, or navigating the particular weight of being the person everyone else leans on, it just means the layers compound further.

And then there is the internal load. Perhaps the heaviest of all.

This one I haven't seen in a research paper. I've seen it in the women I've coached. The constant background hum of self-monitoring that so many carry into every professional interaction: Am I coming across as too much? Not enough? Too assertive? Not assertive enough? This kind of vigilance, managing your own presentation while simultaneously managing everything else, is its own form of exhaustion. And unlike the other loads, it has nowhere to go.

In short: you are not imagining it. And you are not failing to cope. You are carrying something genuinely heavy, and probably across every domain of your life. Then, in most cases, doing it without it even being named.

The goal of this month is not to fix all of that. Most of it can’t be fixed in a month because much of it is systemic, and it has been for a long time. But naming it is not nothing. Seeing it clearly is not nothing. And finding one thing to put down? That’s somewhere to start.

And that. The naming it, the seeing it, and the choosing of just one thing. That is exactly what we're going to do now.

Sources

Weeks, A. C., Kowalewska, H., & Ruppanner, L. (2025). Take a Load Off? Not for Mothers: Gender, Cognitive Labor, and the Limits of Time and Money. Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 11 - you can read a summary here

Haupt, A., and Gelbgiser, D. (2024) The gendered division of cognitive household labor, mental load, and family–work conflict in European countries. European Societies 2024; 26 (3): 828–854.

Rosenthal, C.J. (1985) Kinkeeping in the Familial Division of Labor. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 47(4), 965–974.

Babcock, L., et al., The No Club (2022): You can hear an interview with her here on this podcast.

You've just read a lot. Before you move on, this is worth sitting with.

Sit down somewhere you won’t be interrupted. Take a few slow breaths. Then work through these four questions:

What am I carrying that I haven’t consciously chosen to carry?

Responsibilities, worries, other people’s emotions, unspoken expectations. Which of them actually belong to you?

Which decision have I been avoiding the longest?

Not the urgent ones. The one that sits quietly at the back of everything. Why is it still there?

Where am I saying yes when something in me is saying no?

Just one place. What would it feel like to change that, even slightly?

If I put one thing down this month, what would it be?

Not forever. Not dramatically. But what would lighten things enough to let you breathe a little more?

You don’t need to solve all of this today. The point is not resolution necessarily, but it is about honesty. The things you haven’t named have the most power over you.

🌱 Daily Pause

Alongside this newsletter, I share small reflection prompts on LinkedIn and Instagram. Simple questions to create a moment of stillness in the middle of busy days.

This month’s prompts are built around what it means to carry less. Not by doing less, but by deciding more clearly. Here are a few to carry with you this month:

• What decision am I carrying that I already know the answer to?

• What am I spending energy on that doesn’t actually need me?

• Where am I performing competence when I could ask for help?

• What would feel lighter if I simply decided?

• What am I making complicated that could be simple?

A question to take with you on a walk. A thought to return to between meetings. A moment of noticing rather than fixing.

🧠 Coaching Insight

A client came to a session recently and said something I have been thinking about since.

“I feel like I’ve done the work. I know myself better. I know what I want. But I still can’t make the hard decisions any faster. I’m still exhausted. Why isn’t it getting easier?”

It is such an important question. And the honest answer is that clarity does not automatically reduce the load. Knowing yourself better is the foundation for sure, but it does not remove the weight others place on you, or the old habit of absorbing responsibility that was never yours to carry.

What clarity does do when you really use it, is give you permission to say no faster. To trust yourself sooner. To stop deliberating over decisions your gut already has an answer to.

The women in those studies were not struggling because of a lack of intelligence or capability. They were struggling because they were operating in systems that had never redistributed the invisible load and they had quietly accepted that as just how things are.

It is not just how things are. But changing it starts with seeing it clearly.

Why this matters: The goal might be a lighter to-do list. For some women that's exactly what happens. For others the list stays the same but something in them changes. They stop carrying it as though it were their fault, or their failure, or just the price of being them. And that is not a small shift. That is the whole thing.

💬 A Final Thought

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that does not show on the outside. You are still functioning. Still delivering. Still showing up for everyone who needs you. But something underneath is running on low.

If that is where you are right now, I want you to know, that is not weakness. That is information. And it is the most important thing to pay attention to before July arrives.

Because rest is not something you earn by finishing the list. It is something you have to choose. And you can only choose it when you’ve got honest about what you’re carrying.

Next month, we’ll talk about rest as a practice, not a reward. And what it actually takes to stop without guilt.

If this issue resonated with you, feel free to pass it on and encourage anyone who might benefit to subscribe at shinebrightlyconsulting.co.uk.

And if you're curious about whether coaching could support you, you can book a free 15-minute Clarity Call. No pressure, no pitch - just a conversation.

Until next month, Heather x