Let me tell you about last Tuesday.
I was on a call.
Not a casual call — an important one. The kind where you need to sound composed, prepared, like someone who has everything under control.
And in the background, completely unbothered by any of that —
Ayhan and Arad were destroying the living room.
I am not using “destroying” loosely.
I mean there was something on the floor that was not on the floor before. I mean someone was crying but also laughing which is somehow worse. I mean I muted myself four times in three minutes and smiled at my screen like a person who has their life together.
My crumbers.
That is what I call them when they are pushing every boundary I have. When the mess is everywhere and the noise is loud and I am trying to hold two worlds together at the same time.
And then one of them looks at me — just looks at me — and I laugh.
Every single time, I laugh.
Nobody tells you it is going to feel like this.
They tell you it is hard. They tell you it is worth it. They say things like balance and presence and prioritise.
But nobody tells you about the specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being fully needed in two places at once — and never feeling like you are fully enough in either.
Nobody tells you about the invisible load.
Not the tasks — the tasks you can write down and tick off.
The other load.
The one that lives in your head permanently.
The one that is running calculations at all times.
Is Ayhan okay — did he seem quieter this morning — did I pack the right snack — did I remember to follow up that email — is my staff member alright — did I respond to that message — when did Arad last have a proper dinner and not just whatever was fast because I was still working —
That load does not have a list.
It does not switch off when you close your laptop.
It just runs. Quietly. Constantly. Underneath everything else.
I want to talk about the guilt.
Because I think we do not say it plainly enough.
There are days I have chosen work.
Important meetings, deadlines, decisions that could not wait. Days where the business needed me in a way that meant my boys got the version of me that was already halfway somewhere else.
And I felt it.
I felt it in the way Ayhan asked me to sit with him and I said in a minute and the minute turned into an hour.
I felt it in the bedtime routines I rushed because my mind was still solving something.
I felt it in the mornings I was physically present and mentally already gone.
That guilt is real. I am not going to dress it up.
But here is what I have also learned.
There are days I have chosen them — fully, completely, with my phone in another room and my mind actually present.
And I felt that too.
I felt the weight of everything that was not getting done. The emails sitting there. The decisions waiting. The business that does not pause because I decided to be a mother today.
The guilt comes either way.
And at some point I had to accept that the guilt is not a sign that I am doing it wrong.
It is a sign that I love both things deeply.
And loving two things deeply — really, fully — means there will always be moments where one of them is waiting.
What my boys have taught me about why I build.
I started Rotana Health and Wellbeing before Ayhan and Arad came into my life the way they are now.
But they are part of why I keep going.
Not in the polished way people say that.
Not in the Instagram caption way.
In the real way.
In the way that when things have been at their hardest — payments delayed, system pushing back, NT breaking me open in ways I did not expect — I have thought about them.
About what it means to model something for them.
Not perfection.
Not having it all together.
But this — the staying.
The continuing to show up even when it is unclear and uncertain and harder than you expected.
I want them to grow up knowing that their mother did not fold.
That she carried a lot. That it showed sometimes. That she laughed about the crumbers and cried about the hard stuff and kept building anyway.
I want them to know that it is possible to hold multiple things at once —
and that the holding, as heavy as it is, is also the point.
There is one more thing nobody tells you.
The days where it all somehow lines up.
Where the boys are happy and the work is flowing and you sit in the middle of the life you are building and you feel — not just grateful, but clear.
Clear on why you are doing this.
Clear on who you are doing it for.
Clear in the knowledge that the mess and the noise and the invisible load and the guilt and the crumbers and the chaos —
all of it —
is yours.
And you would not trade it.
I know there are other mothers reading this who are carrying the same weight.
Who are building something while also raising someone.
Who feel the guilt in both directions and wonder sometimes if they are doing any of it properly.
I want to ask you something directly.
What are you carrying right now that nobody is asking about?
Not your business update. Not your children’s milestones.
The real thing.
The thing you think about at 11pm when everything is quiet and there is finally space to feel it.
Leave it in the comments if you want.
Or just know that someone else is sitting with something similar tonight.
And that you are not doing it wrong.
You are just doing something very hard.
And you are still here.
That counts for everything.
— Joice Motref