I shared a shorter version of this on LinkedIn over the weekend… I wanted to use this space to expand on it because I can’t stop thinking about this idea of “balance….”

If you missed it - it starts at 6:47pm….

I had already been a coach, a strategist, a sounding board, a fixer, a calendar, a translator, and a safe person for about nine different people that day. I had answered the Teams message I shouldn’t have answered. I had taken the call I should have rescheduled. I had held space for someone whose week was harder than mine. I had written back to the school’s seventeenth email of the week. I had sent the contributor invitation, prepped for the interview, and remembered to drink water exactly once.

And then I walked in the door and one kid needed help with homework and the other one needed me to find a thing and my husband was mid something hard of his own and asked me a question that, on a different day, I would have answered without thinking.

I didn’t have it.

Not because I don’t love them. Because there was nothing left.

I’ve been building a company while interviewing for jobs while parenting twins while writing a second book while showing up for a community I am personally responsible for while keeping the lights on while watching the people I love most carry their own hard things…..

There is no version of this where I “balance” any of it.

There is a version where I get up at 4:25am because that is the only hour the house is quiet. There is a version where I write a Substack draft in the parking lot before a school pickup. There is a version where I take a consulting call with my hair in the same bun I slept in. There is a version where I am cooking dinner with one hand and answering a recruiter with the other and pretending both of those things are getting my full attention.

None of that is balance. All of it is integration. And integration, when it goes unnamed and unsupported, becomes absorption.

That is the part I need to talk about.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I keep seeing the same two types of posts on my feed lately.

One is some version of: balance is a myth, integration is the truth, choose your hour, make peace with what you can’t do.

It’s correct. It’s also a little tidy. It makes the math of a woman’s day sound like a yoga sequence.

The other is some version of: be a safe person. Hold space. Listen without judgment. Be the one others can turn to.

It’s also correct. It’s also written as if the safe person is a infinite resource.

Neither post says the thing I am actually living. What I suspect a lot of us are living.

The thing is, the woman who is everyone’s safe person all day doesn’t get to come home and be a safe person for the people she loves most. Not because she chose them last but because she was chosen first by everyone else, all day, and there is a finite amount of one person.

That’s not a balance problem. That’s not even an integration problem. It’s a math problem nobody wants to do out loud. Let’s not even add in the neurodivergent part (plus perimenopause?)… That’s a whole additional layer that we will have to table for another day.

If you are a hospital leader, you know exactly what I mean.

You’re the safe person for your technicians who are burning out. You’re the safe person for your associate veterinarians who are quietly thinking about leaving. You’re the safe person for the new grad who cried in the break room. You’re the safe person for the manager above you who is using you as their pressure valve. You’re the safe person for the client who lost their senior dog last week and called to thank you and ended up sobbing on the phone for twenty minutes.

You do this all day. You do it well. You do it because you genuinely care and because it is, in a real way, the work.

But then you go home. And the people at home, who love you the most and have the least information about your day, ask you for the same thing your team asked you for.

Presence. Attention. Patience. The version of you that listens.

You don’t have it. Because there is a finite amount of one person. You only have so many spoons (as they say).

This is NOT a moral failure. It’s not a sign that you don’t love your family. What it is is the predictable result of being the structural support for a system that has not built any structural support for you.

This part? It’s the part I almost cut out and then decided not to.

If the person you come home to doesn’t see what you carried that day, the gap between what you have left and what they are asking of you becomes the loneliest place in the house.

Truthfully, it’s not their fault. They weren’t in your day. They didn’t see the nine people. They didn’t see the call, the message, the email, the cry in the break room, the version of you that held it together for the last person who needed you to.

But it’s also not your job to perform “fine” so that the people who love you don’t have to know how empty you are.

The work, the actual work of self-empathy in a partnership, is being honest before the people you love have to find out the hard way. It’s saying I’m at zero out loud, even when you’ve been trained your whole life to be the one who carries it. It’s letting the person you come home to be a safe person for you, which requires telling them you need one.

This is hard. It’s even harder if your partner is also carrying something. It’s hard if they’ve never been asked to be the safe one. It’s hard if you have built your identity on being the one who handles it. It’s hard if you grew up watching a woman handle it without ever asking to be handled. That’s my life, and maybe yours too.…. it’s hard, but it’s still the work that needs to be done.

Self-empathy is not a bubble bath. It’s not a candle. It’s not an Instagram quote about pouring from an empty cup (though I do tend to like these).

Self-empathy is the willingness to notice you’re at zero before everyone around you has to.

Self-empathy is choosing the hour and then telling the people you love which hour they got, so they’re not standing in a kitchen at 7pm wondering why you are short with them.

Self-empathy is letting the person you come home to learn the difference between a partner who is present and one who is just still standing.

Self-empathy is naming the cost of being everyone’s safe person, out loud, to yourself first, so you can decide what you actually want to keep paying for.

Self-empathy is integration that doesn’t collapse into absorption.

Notice the version of you that walks in the door.

Not the version at the start of the day. Not the version your team sees. The version that crosses the threshold of your home at 6:47pm and is asked to be a person again.

Notice what is left of her (or him). Notice what she/he has. Notice what she/he is being asked for.

And then tell one person who loves you what that walk through the door actually feels like. Not as a complaint. Not as a performance of how much you carry. As information. As the truth of where you are.

You can integrate it all, but you cannot absorb it all.

The difference is whether anyone in the house knows that.

a personal note:

If any of this resonated with you, I want you to know that you’re not alone. The hardest work is looking in the mirror and realizing that you don’t live in a silo. When we are “responsible” for others, we often hold resentment and other feelings for those who “aren’t doing enough” to help us. Thing is… if we don’t communicate what we need, how are they supposed to know? I am constantly reminding myself that I can’t ask for what I’m not willing to do. So this one - this ones for my husband. Who’s had to get less of me at 6:47pm. This one’s also for anyone struggling to see past themselves. You don’t have to carry it all yourself. There are people who love you. Let them know what you need and if that is simply to be clear that you’ll be saying “I’m at zero” so they know to back off… then that’s what you do!

Until next week -

Suzanne

Leading Veterinary Teams | Podcast | Community | Stan Store

Suzanne Thomas is a credentialed veterinary technologist (LVTg, CVTg), MBA (c), and the founder of Leading Veterinary Teams, LLC (www.LVT.vet), a leadership development platform built specifically for veterinary professionals. She is the author of ‘From Competent to Capable: Redefining Success Through Veterinary Technician Utilization and Team Empowerment’, host of the Leading Veterinary Teams On Air podcast, a speaker and consultant focused on organizational design, team leadership, and operational clarity in veterinary medicine.