Start here 👯♀️
For the mom who's running her life well—and tired of feeling like she isn't.
You’re capable. Maybe a little too capable.
You’re the one who knows the field trip form is due Friday, that the dentist never called back, that somebody outgrew their shoes again. So it all ends up with you. Nobody assigned it to you. You were just the one who could.
And the experts, the scripts, the systems just give you more to manage.
I was on a walk with my second baby, on the phone with my best friend, when I heard myself say I just keep waiting for it to get easier.
Nobody was coming. Not a better system, not a plan, not one more expert. If it was going to get easier, I was going to have to be the one to make it easier. One small thing at a time.
It’s harder than it sounds. Going your own way is more ambiguous than following the plan. But the answer to a capacity problem was never one more thing to add to balance it out.
Despite what we’ve been told, we’re not falling short of a reasonable standard. It’s the standard that’s failing us.
I’m not going to be the expert on your life, and I’m not going to tell you how to do it better. What I can do is tell you what I stopped doing & what happened when I did, in hopes it points you somewhere a little clearer as you figure out your next move.
I don’t think we need more solutions. I think we need to trust ourselves more.
A Little Less is one essay a week. Free in full, every time. No ads, no sponsors, no one selling you a system.
If you want to start reading before the next essay arrives, here are a few places to begin:
This is the essay where I walked away from a publication that promised to give moms answers & started writing one that trusts them to find their own.
This one’s on becoming the default parent without anyone asking & what I’ve been doing about it ever since.
And this one’s my mornings, after I stopped trying to make them productive.
TThere’s a paid tier & a founding tier. Paid gets you the weekly audio note, the comments, and A Little Less Stuck: you send me the thing you can’t get clear on, and I work one through in an essay, anonymized and free for everyone to read. Founding is patronage, plainly. Details are here.
And to those of you who are already paid subscribers—thank you. You’re the reason A Little Less continues to be accessible to all.
Talk soon,
Erin
