We Were Never Meant to Hold It All Together

We were the generation who raised ourselves after school and then turned around and raised everyone else — our kids, our teams, our communities.

We learned early to be capable. To not ask for too much. To smile even when we were unraveling inside. And now here we are: in positions of leadership, juggling a thousand invisible roles, and quietly wondering…

“Why does this still feel so heavy?”

We’re in the Messy Middle — And Nobody Prepared Us for It

We’re not new to leadership. But we’re not fully at the top either — not the kind of top that feels free or respected or whole.

We’re sandwiched between the command-and-control leadership of Boomers and the boundary-rich energy of Gen Z. And we’re tired. Not because we’re doing it wrong — but because the system we were told to succeed in was never built for women like us.

A system that said you had to choose: career or family.

That told us the secret to success was doing more, fixing more, carrying more — and never complaining about it.

That taught us to earn our seat, and then quietly hold it without making a fuss.

We are the ones who swing between hyper-competent hustle and spiritual “just breathe” mantras, hoping something will stick.

The System Is Broken — And Women Are Still Competing With Each Other Inside It

We see it online every day:

• The hustlers grinding until burnout becomes a badge.

• The feminine energy crowd telling us to meditate it away.

• The polished leaders with perfect content, perfect teams, perfect lives.

And under all of it?

Shame.

Shame that we can’t seem to get it all right.

Shame that rest feels like failure.

Shame that the leadership mask no longer fits — but we don’t know who we are without it.

This isn’t just about burnout. It’s about betrayal. We were told we could “have it all.” But nobody warned us we’d have to hold it all too.

We Don’t Need to Lean In — We Need to Lead Different

Brené Brown’s work hit me in the gut the first time I read it. Her call for courage, connection, and heart-based leadership wasn’t soft — it was revolutionary. It gave language to what I’d been feeling for years: that leadership isn’t about proving your worth. It’s about showing up, fully. Mess and all.

And still… something was missing.

Because even with all the mindset work, the coaching, the vision boards — women kept breaking.

So I started paying attention.

I listened to the women in my coaching sessions whispering, “If I stop, it’ll all fall apart.”

I looked at the leaders rewriting staff emails at midnight, holding team accountability on their shoulders like shame.

I sat with my own story — the one where I said yes too often, carried too much, and wondered why freedom still felt out of reach.

And I realised: we don’t just need better habits. We need a new way.

It’s Not About Having It All — It’s About Leading Without Losing Yourself

We don’t want to burn it all down. We just want to stop burning ourselves out trying to hold it up.

We want profitable businesses — and soft mornings.

We want influence — without the exhaustion of performance.

We want teams that thrive — without hovering over their every move.

We want to be able to say: Yes, I lead a million-dollar company. No, I won’t be replying to emails at 9pm.

And we want to believe that it’s not naive to want both success and space. That we don’t have to choose between being strategic or human, assertive or kind, bold or real.

Because here’s the truth: we can build brilliant teams without being the expert.

We can lead with presence instead of pressure.

We can raise the next generation of leaders — and still raise our kids, our voices, and our boundaries.

But we have to stop waiting for someone else to show us how.

A New Era of Leadership Is Coming — But It’ll Be Muddy for a While

We’re not here to tweak the old ways. We’re here to build something new.

That means unlearning what we were taught: that being a great leader means being the smartest in the room. That leadership means control. That trust is earned by doing everything yourself.

We’re shifting from survival-based leadership to sustainable leadership. From reactive to reflective. From martyr to mentor.

And yes — it’ll be messy.

Because we’re writing new rules inside systems that still reward the old ones. But if we can hold each other through the mud, through the recalibration, through the identity shifts?

We’ll rise.

Not perfectly. But powerfully.

This is just the beginning.

Welcome to The Leadership Shift.