This International Women’s Day, I want to talk about something real.
Not the kind of celebration that asks you to “rise and shine” and post an empowering selfie. The kind that starts with a simple, honest acknowledgment: being a mom in America right now is hard. Not in the vague, “parenting is tough!” way people post about on social media. Hard in ways that are specific, structural, and relentless.
Consider what you’re navigating on any given Tuesday.
You’re working — or trying to. You’re navigating childcare that costs more than a mortgage payment in most parts of this country, cobbling together coverage during school breaks, and quietly calculating whether it even “makes sense” to keep working once you do the math. (Spoiler: that math is broken, not you.)
You’re absorbing a news cycle that feels like a slow drumbeat of stress and uncertainty — about the future of programs families depend on, about what the world will look like for your kids, about whether the things you counted on will still be there. You’re doing the invisible work: the mental load, the emotional labor, the appointments and forms and permission slips and birthday gifts for the classmates you’ve never met.
And you’re probably doing a lot of this without enough sleep, without enough help, and without anyone asking how you are.
Here’s what I know from our community at SHIFT, and from the research, and from conversations I’ve had with parents and professionals throughout my time as a policy wonk, advocate and (more recently) business owner: the weight you’re feeling isn’t imaginary, and it isn’t a personal failing. It’s the predictable result of a society that has never fully built the systems parents actually need — paid leave, affordable childcare, flexible work, real community — and instead handed you a to-do list and called it empowerment.
There are organizations across the country fighting hard to change that — advocates pushing for paid family leave, affordable childcare, and workplace policies that actually reflect how families live. The policy changes they’re working toward are overdue, and they matter.
But policy change is slow, and Tuesday is right now.
So here’s what I want to say to you today: you don’t have to earn rest. You don’t have to justify needing support. And you don’t have to do this alone.
SHIFT exists because I believe that working parents — and especially moms, who statistically carry more — deserve a space that was designed with their actual lives in mind. A place to get focused work done. A place where your kid is safe and having fun just a few steps away. A place where the person at the front desk knows your name and the mom working next to you might just become a lifeline.
I don’t have the solution to every systemic problem. But I built SHIFT to be part of what community can look like in the meantime. And I think the meantime matters.
Happy International Women’s Day. I see you. I’m glad you’re here.
Come work. Come play. Come SHIFT.