The dynamics Holly first saw in junior high — who's in, who's out, who gets lifted and who gets left behind — followed her into every professional space she's ever worked in. The lunch table just became the conference table. The popularity contest became the promotion cycle. And the choice that defines every woman in that room stayed exactly the same: do you straighten the crown or do you knock it off?

Episode 14 of The Invisible Load is about the most complicated relationship in the professional lives of working women — the one with each other. The women who build you up, the women who tear you down, and the structural reasons the game was designed to make you compete in the first place.

Holly gets honest about all of it — including the woman who used her advancement as a vehicle for her own, the colleague who called her relocation a luxury, and the specific behaviors that tear women down so quietly we sometimes don't notice we're doing them.

We cover:

• Why the professional world was not built for women — and how the scarcity mindset it created keeps us competing instead of collaborating
• The specific, deniable, often unconscious behaviors that tear women down — and how to recognize them in others and in yourself
• The difference between support and strategy — and how to tell when someone's investment in you is really an investment in themselves
• The male colleague dynamic — not hostile, not supportive, just neutral — and why neutral isn't actually enough
• What lifting actually looks like in practice — the specific, un-romanticized choices that change real outcomes for real women
• The limits of the crown-straightening mentality — why lifting women doesn't mean having no limits with individual women
• Why you never step on someone else to get to the top — and what it costs you to become the kind of person who does

This one is for the women who have been torn down by another woman. And for the women who recognize themselves in the tearing. And for every working woman who has ever decided, in a small moment or a large one, to be the one who straightens the crown instead.

The Invisible Load is the working mom burnout podcast for ambitious women carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if this episode made you feel seen — share it with a woman who needs to hear it.

There is room. There has always been room. The game lied.

There is a version of the invisible load that nobody talks about in the leadership books or the productivity podcasts or the professional development seminars.

It is the weight of being the person your team looks to when the thing that happens is unspeakable. Of writing the message. Of coordinating the pink balloon release because it was her favorite color. Of sitting with the woman who is sobbing and not trying to fix it — just staying. Of walking a young team member to the Emergency Department because something felt wrong and you were not willing to wait and see.

Of going home afterward and smiling at your children when they ask if you are okay.

This episode is about what leadership actually costs — not strategically or organizationally, but emotionally and mentally. About the invisible labor of holding other people through unsurvivable things. About the difference between a leader who tries to fix grief and a leader who is willing to sit inside it. About what it means to lead as a human being first — and what that costs you, and what it gives back.

We cover:

• How proximity to loss changes not whether you carry it — but what kind of weight it becomes
• The full, specific, invisible labor of grief leadership — the messages, the balloon release, the live stream, the pet therapy dogs, the coverage coordination, the words that had to be exactly right
• Why women in leadership often hold grief differently — and what it means to sit with someone's feelings instead of trying to fix them
• The cumulative weight of leading through loss more than once — and why experience layers rather than insulates
• What it costs to smile at your children at the end of a day like this — and why protecting the people you love from what you carry is its own invisible labor
• What came back from the week — the email, the hugs, the women who said they knew a female leader made the difference — and what it means to lead from being human first

The Invisible Load is the working mom burnout podcast for ambitious women carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

She deserved more time. And the people who loved her deserved someone willing to make the pink balloons happen.

RESOURCES FOR SUPPORT

If this episode brought up something difficult for you, please reach out for support.

EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (EAP): Most employers offer an EAP as part of your benefits package. Check your employee benefits portal or contact your HR department to learn what is available to you.

COUNSELING SERVICES: If you are experiencing grief, anxiety, or the cumulative weight of caregiving and leadership, speaking with a licensed therapist or counselor can help. Search by specialty, insurance, and location (psychologytoday.com/us/therapists)

CRISIS SUPPORT: If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out immediately.

• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 (US)

• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788

GRIEF SUPPORT: GriefShare (griefshare.org) offers grief recovery support groups

You deserve support. Asking for it is not weakness. It is the best thing you can do for yourself and the people who need you.

This time she found herself standing at the ticket counter. Money in hand. Watching herself hand it over.

Episode 12 of The Invisible Load is a return to burnout — not as a destination, but as a pull. The familiar gravity of a woman who has done the work, built the awareness, named the patterns — and still found herself in two committee meetings in one week, carrying more at home without being asked, and feeling the regret land before the words had even finished leaving her mouth.

This episode is for every working woman who has made real progress and still caught herself mid-slide. Who knows exactly what she's doing and sometimes does it anyway. Who is further along than she was and not as far as she wants to be.

We cover:

• The billboards on the road back to Burnout Central — and what they look like when you're watching for them this time
• The critical difference between volunteering from ego and volunteering from expertise — and why collapsing that distinction is costing working women their voice in the rooms that need them most
• What it looks like to make a loving choice and feel resentment about what it costs — and why both things can be true at the same time without either one being wrong
• Why catching yourself at the ticket counter instead of at the destination is not nothing — it is actually everything
• What to actually do when you find yourself mid-pattern — four specific moves for the moment between the doing and the knowing

The train is still running. It always will be. But you are not the same person who got on without noticing last time.

The Invisible Load is the working mom burnout podcast for ambitious women carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if this episode made you feel less alone, a five-star review takes thirty seconds and helps another working woman find us.

You are not where you started. The knowing is earlier now. And earlier is everything.

The mental load that never stops. The burnout. The over-functioning. The apology reflex. The walls that go up when the boundaries never got set in time. All of it — every single episode — has had something hiding inside it.

This week on The Invisible Load, Holly finally names it: resentment.

Not the dramatic, explosive kind. The quiet kind. The kind that builds so slowly you almost don't notice it until one day you feel it — sharp and specific and completely real — in a bedroom doorway on a Tuesday afternoon while you're still working and someone else is resting.

That resentment is not ugly. It's not petty. It's not evidence that you're a bad partner or a bad mother or someone who can't let things go.

It's a receipt. A printed record of everything that has cost you more than it should have — and that you have been carrying without saying a word.

In this episode we cover:

• Why resentment is not the problem — it's the total at the bottom of ten episodes of invisible labor
• How we were taught to translate resentment into something more acceptable — tired, fine, stressed, dramatic — and what that swallowing has cost us
• The nanny story — what happened when outsourced labor disappeared and one partner absorbed it all without a single conversation
• The internal metrics we run silently — standards we never shared, never agreed on — and why they're driving more resentment than we realize
• The question Holly's career coach asked that stopped her cold — and took a full week to actually land
• Why the belief that rest must be earned — the one from Episode 8 — is quietly fueling your resentment of everyone around you, including yourself
• What to actually do with the receipt — four specific moves that work, including the one most of us skip entirely

If you have ever watched someone rest while you kept moving and felt that specific heat — this one is for you.

The Invisible Load is the working mom burnout podcast for ambitious women carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if this show has made you feel less alone, a five-star review takes thirty seconds and helps another working mom find us.

You do not need to earn rest. None of us do.

That's not a boundary. That's a wall. And there's a significant difference between the two.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly gets honest about the night she came home to a frozen piece of meat and a dirty kitchen after a thirty-minute commute, five hours of sleep, and a full day of work — and instead of having the conversation she needed to have, she went cold and went silent. And why that pattern, as familiar as it is, is costing us more than we realize.

We cover:

• The real difference between a boundary and a wall — and why they can look identical from the outside
• Why women who carry the invisible load are so much better at building walls than setting boundaries
• How childhood conditioning and the apology reflex make self-advocacy feel like betrayal
• Three real places Holly is actively practicing boundaries right now: at home with her husband, at work with her team, and with her kids and their chores
• How to tell whether what you're operating from is clarity or depletion
• What a boundary actually sounds like — real sentences, in real situations, that you can use today

A wall goes up when the boundary didn't get set in time. It's not a character flaw. It's a symptom. And understanding that distinction changes everything about how you move through it.

If you've ever confused shutting down with protecting yourself — this one is for you.

The Invisible Load drops new episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss one. And if this show has made you feel less alone, a five-star review takes thirty seconds and helps other working moms find us.

You are not bad at communicating your needs. You are unpracticed at protecting yourself before you're depleted.

That is a learnable skill.

Not as a joke. As a reflex. Before I even registered what I was doing.

In this episode, Holly gets honest about the specific, persistent, quietly exhausting guilt of doing something completely right — and still feeling like you owe someone an explanation. The laundry wasn't fully put away. She sat down while her husband was still moving. She worked on something she loves instead of filling a silence nobody asked her to fill. And she apologized for all of it. Out loud. Unprompted.

If you have ever said sorry for sitting down, sorry for being tired, sorry for ordering takeout, sorry for taking up space in your own home — this episode is for you.

This episode covers:

• The difference between output guilt and worthiness guilt — and why worthiness guilt is so much harder to shake

• Where the reflex to apologize actually comes from — and why it was a very logical decision for a much younger version of you

• Why the apology isn't humility — it's armor. And what it's actually doing to the people around you

• The specific guilt of doing something completely right and still feeling like you got away with something

• The small, honest, slightly uncomfortable voice that showed up when someone else did everything for once — and why that voice deserves compassion, not shame

• Three things to try when the sorry is already forming before you've decided to say it

Because here's the truth: you are not apologizing for what you did. You are apologizing for taking up space. And you have been doing it for so long you don't even hear it anymore.

The Invisible Load is the podcast for ambitious working mothers carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes weekly.

You delegated something at work this week and felt strategic. You made breakfast food for dinner and felt like a failure. Same week. Same woman. Same behavior.

So why does letting go feel like growth in one room of your life and laziness in another?

In this episode, Holly gets honest about the question she's been sitting with since Episode 5: when you start letting go, how do you know if it's acceptance or giving up? The answer isn't in the behavior. It's in a much older story than that.

This episode covers:

• Why acceptance and giving up are not about what you do — they're about what's driving it
• The childhood reward system that quietly taught you busy equals worthy and still equals suspect
• Why the same letting-go that feels strategic at work feels like failure at home — and what's actually behind that split
• What rest really looks like when stillness has never worked for you
• Three honest questions to ask yourself when you can't tell the difference between acceptance and collapse

Because here's the truth nobody says out loud: you are allowed to stop. Not because you've earned it. Not because you've done enough. Just because you are a human being and human beings need rest.

The Invisible Load is the podcast for ambitious working mothers carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes weekly.

In this episode, Holly gets honest about the identity shift that happens when high-achieving women stop over-functioning. When you've spent years being the capable one, the one who has it handled, the one everyone comes to — that role doesn't just exhaust you. It becomes you. So what happens when you start to put it down?

Holly shares what this looks like in real life right now: navigating a new healthcare director role without becoming everything to everyone again, sitting in the discomfort of her husband adjusting to new responsibilities without swooping back in to fix it, and being a mom with thin patience while trying to become her best self.

This episode covers:

• Why your identity gets so tangled up in carrying the invisible load
• The quiet grief of outgrowing a version of yourself — even one that was hurting you
• What it actually feels like to be in the middle of an identity shift (not on the other side of it)
• Practical ways to move forward when you don't fully know who you're becoming yet

If you've ever asked yourself "who am I when I'm not the one doing everything?" — this one's for you.

The Invisible Load is the podcast for ambitious working mothers carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes weekly.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly gets honest about the part of burnout recovery nobody warns you about — what actually happens to your relationships when you stop doing everything. Because letting go isn't just an internal shift. It changes the ecosystem. It disrupts the patterns. And the people who love you? They didn't get the memo.

We're talking about the real relational fallout of over-functioning — in your marriage, at work, with your kids, and in the friendships you barely have bandwidth for anymore. Holly digs into why your husband might not notice at first (and what that silence actually means), why your nervous system reads imperfection as danger, why being the most reliable person at work is a trap — not a strategy — and why letting your kids experience the gap between what they want and when they get it might be the most important parenting move you make this year.

This is the episode for the working mom who is exhausted, emotionally depleted, deep in decision fatigue, and quietly wondering why doing less feels like so much more.

Topics covered:

• Over-functioning and its hidden cost to your marriage and partnership
• Emotional labor, mental load, and what actually shifts when you stop carrying it alone
• Setting boundaries at work without sacrificing your professional identity
• The mom guilt that comes with letting go — and how to tell the difference between guilt and growth
• Expanding your tolerance for imperfection as an active practice, not a mindset hack
• Why the discomfort you feel when something goes undone is not a signal that something is wrong

The Invisible Load is a weekly podcast for ambitious, full-time working mothers navigating burnout, mental load, emotional labor, and the invisible work of holding everything together. Hosted by Holly Ahnen — wife, mom of three boys, and healthcare leader.

If you've ever Googled: "why do I feel resentful in my marriage," "how to stop over-functioning," "mental load in relationships," "working mom burnout," "how to set limits at work," "letting go of control anxiety," "invisible load in marriage," or "how to stop being the default parent" — this episode was made for you.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Not in theory. Not in a workshop. In real life — in your actual house, with your actual family, in your actual body.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly shares her personal experiment: deliberately loosening her grip on control, stepping back from over-functioning, and trying — really trying — to let other people own things without jumping back in to fix them.

It was uncomfortable. It was also revealing.

We cover:

→ What Holly actually did — and what she noticed

→ Why letting go of the mental load feels physically threatening (it's not in your head)

→ The connection between perfectionism, identity, and control

→ What the discomfort of imperfection actually means — and what it doesn't

→ Why 'being indispensable' is a story we tell ourselves — and what it's costing us

→ The first real signs that something was shifting

If you've tried to let go and it hasn't stuck, this episode will help you understand why — and what to try instead.

The Invisible Load is a podcast for working moms carrying more than anyone can see. New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly goes deeper into how the invisible load leads to full working mom burnout — and how the patterns that look like strength (being reliable, staying in control, doing it all) are often the same patterns quietly destroying your health, your relationships, and your joy.

We cover:

→ What over-functioning really is — and why capable women do it

→ The identity attached to being 'the strong one' and why it's a trap

→ How control and burnout are more connected than most of us realize

→ The physical and emotional signs of working mom burnout that get ignored

→ Why high-achieving women are especially vulnerable to chronic depletion

→ What it costs you — and everyone around you — to keep going like this

If you've been running on fumes and calling it fine, this episode is your permission to stop.

Subscribe to The Invisible Load for honest, zero-hustle-culture conversations about working motherhood, burnout, and the mental load — every week.

Asking for help is still labor. You have to notice the need, frame the request, explain the context, manage the follow-through, and carry the mental weight of the whole thing even after you've delegated it. That's not relief. That's just a different kind of invisible work.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly breaks down the difference between getting help and sharing the mental load — and why only one of them actually lightens the invisible burden working moms carry.

We cover:

→ Why asking is still emotional labor — and why it's exhausting

→ The difference between delegating tasks and sharing mental ownership

→ What 'managing the manager' really means in a household

→ Why good partners still fall into unequal division of labor

→ What shared mental load actually looks like — and how to start building it

This isn't about assigning blame. It's about understanding a system — so you can finally start changing it.

The Invisible Load drops new episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss one.

I’m Holly: wife, mom to three boys, healthcare leader, and fellow carrier of the mental, emotional, and invisible labor that never seems to stop. This podcast exists to name what so many women quietly carry — the planning, remembering, worrying, coordinating, and caretaking that happens behind the scenes of everyday life.

Each week, we’ll talk honestly about motherhood, burnout, mental and emotional load, and what it really takes to survive — and even enjoy — this season of life. There will be laughter, vulnerability, and real conversations that remind you of one essential truth:

You’re not broken.
You’re not failing.
And you’re not alone.

Subscribe and join me as we navigate the invisible load — together.

If rest isn't making you feel rested, you're not doing something wrong. You're experiencing what millions of working moms live with every day: a cognitive load so heavy that physical rest barely makes a dent.

In this episode of The Invisible Load, Holly digs into the mental tabs that never close — and why self-care, sleep, and bubble baths aren't the cure for the kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying the invisible load.

We cover:

→ What mental load actually feels like from the inside

→ Why working moms are exhausted even when nothing looks 'wrong' on the calendar

→ The difference between physical rest and cognitive rest — and why you need both

→ Decision fatigue: what it is and why it hits working moms harder

→ Why vacations don't fix burnout — and what actually does

→ The emotional weight of always being 'on' for everyone

This is not an episode about doing more. It's an episode about understanding why you're tired — so you can finally do something about it.

The Invisible Load is a weekly podcast for working moms carrying more than anyone can see. Subscribe and leave a review — it helps other exhausted moms find the show.

Who are you when you're not the one doing everything?

This week on The Invisible Load, Holly gets honest about one of the most disorienting parts of recovering from burnout and letting go of the mental load: the identity crisis that nobody talks about. When your worth has been tied to your productivity, your reliability, and your indispensability — for years — stepping back doesn't just feel uncomfortable. It can feel like losing yourself.

In this episode we talk about:

→ Why high-achieving women and working moms build their entire identity around being capable

→ What happens to your sense of self when you stop over-functioning

→ The difference between who you are and what you do

→ How to start rebuilding an identity that isn't dependent on carrying everyone

→ Why this is the most important and least discussed part of burnout recovery

If you've ever wondered who you are outside of your to-do list, your job title, and the invisible labor you carry every single day — this one is for you.

You are not your output. You are not your usefulness. And you are absolutely not alone.

New episodes of The Invisible Load drop every week. Subscribe so you never miss one. If this episode resonated, leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it genuinely helps other working moms find the show.