Unsolicited Permission: The Crown-Fixing Mom Podcast
Unsolicited Permission: The Crown-Fixing Mom Podcast is the show for mothers over 35 who are done waiting, done shrinking, and ready to break the generational cycles that have kept them putting themselves last for generations.
We talk about the hard stuff: the mom burnout nobody names, the mom guilt that won't quit, the identity you lost somewhere between diapers and carpool, the body that's been through everything and deserves to be celebrated instead of punished, and the community of women who fix each other's crowns instead of competing for them.
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Unsolicited Permission: The Crown-Fixing Mom Podcast
Episode 9: You Run This. Even When It's Tilted.
•Emily Liang•Season 1•Episode 9
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It's nine at night and you're doing the math.
Who got what today? The kids. Work. The house. The appointments. The endless things that needed you.
And somehow, there was nothing left for you.
So you hand yourself the same verdict so many overwhelmed moms do:
I have no balance.
But what if you don't have a balance problem?
What if you have a definition problem?
In the final episode of August's take-your-life-back series, I'm throwing out the idea that balance means giving everything an equal piece of you.
Because real life doesn't work that way.
And I know that personally.
I've always been the woman with a loaded plate. In high school, I stacked sports, activities, performances and leadership roles. In college, I double majored while working three jobs, dancing, and taking on sorority and Panhellenic responsibilities.
My answer was always the same:
I'll figure out how to carry it all.
Until IIH forced me to admit that this time, I couldn't.
For the first time, I had to put something down.
Graduate school.
Not because I stopped wanting my degree. Not because I gave up. Not because I couldn't handle it.
I had to learn the difference between “I quit” and “not right now.”
I need to take care of my health. Fix my head. And then I'll be back.
And maybe that's what real balance sometimes looks like.
Not proving you can carry everything.
Knowing what needs you right now, protecting enough of yourself that you don't disappear in the process, and giving yourself permission to let something else wait.
In this episode: → Why work-life balance is a two-sided scale for a twelve-sided life → Why intentional doesn't mean you chose what happened → The lesson IIH taught me about finally putting something down → Why “not right now” does NOT mean giving up → The small “floor” that keeps you from disappearing during a lopsided season → How to decide what needs you now — and what can wait
This week's Permission Slip: 👑 You have permission to let your life tilt without calling yourself a failure.
The Challenge: Finish these three sentences:
Right now, this season is tilted toward ______.
The thing I'm protecting while it's tilted is ______.
The thing I'm giving myself permission to say “not right now” to is ______.
Let's do some math. Today you gave your kids what 70%? Work took 20, the house took 10. Somebody needed a ride. Somebody needed help with homework. Somebody needed you to be patient at exactly the moment you had none left. And now it's 9 o'clock at night, and you're doing the arithmetic in your head, trying to figure out where your slice went. There isn't one. There's never one. So you land one more time on the same verdict. I have no balance. I want to tell you something that took me an embarrassingly long time to understand. You don't have a balance problem. You have a definition problem. Because somewhere along the way, somebody taught us that balance means equal, equal time, equal energy, equal attention to every single thing that matters. And by that definition, no mother has ever lived, has been balanced. Not one. Not in a week with a sick kid, not in a season with a new baby. Not in a month when work explodes, when somebody you love needs more of you, or when your body stops cooperating. You have been failing a test that has never been possible to pass. So today we're throwing that test out. Because maybe balance isn't about learning to carry everything. Maybe sometimes it's knowing what to put down. This is unsolicited permission, the podcast for moms who are done waiting for permission to take care of themselves. Because the only permission you've been waiting for is your own. I'm Emily. Every Tuesday I'll hand you one permission slip to become healthier, stronger, more confident, and to remember the woman you've always been. So take a deep breath, grab your coffee, and let's fix some crowns. Hey mamas, welcome back. This is week four, the last one in our August series. And look at what we've done this month. We've named the real enemy, the perfect routine myth. You fired a should. We took back 10 minutes and called it what it really is: a declaration that you still matter. Last week we walked all of that straight into the loudest season of the year and said, Hold your corner. We named it, reclaimed it, tested it. Today we own it. So here is this week's permission slip. You have permission to let your life tilt without calling yourself a failure. Not balanced like a scale. Not equal. Not 50-50. Tilted, leaning hard into whatever this season actually needs. Sometimes because you choose it. And sometimes because life chose it for you. Because you may not always control what causes the tilt, but you still get to decide how you're going to live inside it. Let's talk about where this idea even came from. Picture the image we've been handed our whole lives: work, life, balance. A scale, two sides, perfectly even. It's on the cover of books, it's in the advice, it's in the thing everybody says we need more of. And here's the first problem with the scale. A scale only has two sides. Your life has what? Nine, twelve, twenty seven on a Tuesday, your kids, your health, your marriage, or your dating life, or your peace about being single, your job, your business, your friendships, your faith, your parents who are getting older, your house, your money, your rest, and somewhere in there, you. The woman who still has dreams, goals, things she wants to build, a person she is still becoming. Now, go ahead, balance all of that on a two-sided scale. You can't. Nobody can. The tool was wrong. And I need you to sit with what that means for a second. Every time you've called yourself unbalanced, every time you've gone to bed with that low, quiet guilt that you're somehow doing it all badly. You were measuring your real, complicated, multidimensional life against a picture with two sides of it. You weren't failing, mama. You were using somebody else's broken ruler. So let's replace it. Balance isn't a scale. Balance is stewardship. Stewardship means I know what I've been given, I know what matters, and I decide where my limited time, energy, and attention need to go. Not evenly intentionally. Sometimes that sounds like this month, my kid needs more of me, so she gets more. Or this quarter, my business needs more of me, so I'm giving it more. Or my family is going through something right now, so some other things are gonna have to wait. And sometimes you don't get to choose what needs more. Sometimes your body chooses for you. Sometimes life walks right in, knocks up perfectly balanced scale off the table, and says, We're doing this now. That's still a tilt, but here's the distinction I've had to learn. Intentional doesn't mean you choose what happened. It means you're choosing how you're going to respond to what happened. You're deciding what gets your energy, what gets protected, what can wait, and sometimes what needs to come off the plate completely. Balance isn't equal, it's intentional. And I think I understand that now in a way I never did before. Here is the irony about me talking to you about balance. I have never been a person with a lightly loaded plate. Ever. In high school, I played basketball, cheerleading, did marching band, choir, performances, scholastic bowl. I was newspaper editor, yearbook editor. And that's not even the whole entire list. Then I went to college and apparently thought, you know what this schedule needs? More. I double majored. I worked three jobs. I had dance rehearsals and performances, sorority obligations, panelytic counsel. And again, that's the abbreviated version. That's who I've always been. I like doing things, I like building things, I like being involved, I like chasing big goals. I have spent most of my life looking at a ridiculously full plate and thinking, okay, how do I make all of this work? And honestly, for a long time, I could. Maybe not perfectly, maybe not with anything resembling that beautiful little evenly balanced scale we've been talking about today, but I could carry a lot. So I did. And then IIH happened, and for the first time in my life, I've had to learn something I really, really am not good at. I had to learn how to say no. Not because I don't want something, not because it doesn't matter, not because I've stopped being ambitious, not because I'm suddenly okay with making my world smaller, but because I've had to accept that sometimes I cannot carry everything that's on the plate. Graduate school was one of those things, and that one was hard because I didn't want to stop. I didn't suddenly care less about my degree. My goals didn't change, my plans didn't change. But IIH brought this mental fog with it that made reading, retaining information, and doing my schoolwork so much harder than it had been before. And I kept trying to make it work because that's what I do. Okay, this is harder now. How do I work around it? What can I rearrange? Where can I find some more time? How do I push through? Until eventually I had to admit something I did not want to admit. I couldn't rearrange the plate anymore. Something had to come off. And I chose graduate school temporarily. And I need you to hear that word temporarily, because I didn't say I give up. I didn't say I guess I'm never finishing. I didn't say I couldn't handle it. I said not right now. Not know, not never, not giving up. Just not right now. I need to take a break. I need to fix my head. I need to give my body the attention this season requires. And then I'll be back. And maybe that's one of the biggest things this season has been teaching me. I spent most of my life thinking about being capable might mean figuring out how to carry everything. Maybe sometimes being capable means knowing when to put something down. That's stewardship too. And actually, maybe that's one of the hardest forms of it. Because putting something down on purpose doesn't mean it stopped mattering. It means you decided what matters most right now. And that's the distinction I wish somebody had taught me years ago. There is a difference between quitting something and releasing it for a season. There's a difference between I can't do this and I can't do this right now. There's a difference between giving up on a dream and protecting that dream by refusing to destroy yourself, trying to accomplish it on the wrong timeline. My life is tilted toward my health right now in ways I never would have chosen. I didn't choose IIH. I didn't choose to brain fog. I didn't choose to need a break from school. But I can choose what I do with this season I've been given. And right now, that means letting something I love wait for me. Not forever, just for now. So maybe balance isn't proving you can hold everything. Maybe sometimes balance looks like having the courage to put something down without convincing yourself that means you failed. And Mama, I wonder if that's where some of you are right now. Maybe your problem isn't that you haven't found the right routine. Maybe you don't need another planner, another productivity hack, another color-coded calendar, another morning routine that requires you to wake up before the rest of civilization. Maybe there are 13 things on a plate that currently has room for 10, and no amount of organizing is going to change the size of the plate. Something might need to wait. I know you don't want to hear that. Neither did I. Because putting something down can feel like failure, especially when you're used to being the woman who figures it out. Especially when everybody else is used to you figuring it out. But listen to me, not right now is a complete answer. It doesn't mean the dream died, it doesn't mean you're lazy. It doesn't mean you couldn't hack it. It doesn't mean you're becoming less of yourself. Sometimes, not right now, is how you protect the woman who will eventually come back for it. And that matters. Because you don't need to prove your strength by carrying something until it crushes you. Now here's the other side of this. Because I don't want you to hear put something down and translate that into Emily said nothing matters anymore. Everybody fend for yourselves. Nice try. A tilt still needs a floor. Even in the most lopsided season of your life, there needs to be something that reminds you I'm still here. For you, it might be your 10 minutes, your corner, your walk, your Bible, and your coffee, ten minutes of movement, sitting in the car for five minutes before you walk into the house. It doesn't have to be impressive. Actually, it probably shouldn't be. Remember, if it only works on a good day, it's not a floor. It's a wish. Your floor is small enough to survive the bad days. And here's why that matters more than it sounds. The floor is proof. It's a thing that says even in a season where almost everything is going to be somebody or something else, I did not disappear. Because a tilt with a floor is stewardship. A tilt with no floor is just losing yourself slowly with better vocabulary. And I know that because I've done it. I'm learning it while I'm living it too. But I notice a difference when I let myself go completely to zero. And that's when the tilt stops feeling like a season and starts feeling like I'm disappearing inside of it. And that's not what we're doing anymore. There's one more thing I want you to do. Name the season. Especially to the people who live inside it with you. The people in your house aren't mind readers. Your children aren't mind readers. Your partner isn't a mind reader. If this season is different, say so. Mom has to take care of her health right now. The next six weeks are really busy with gymnastics. Work is going to require more of me through this deadline. I'm putting this project down until January. Naming it creates a boundary around it. This is this season. Not forever. And sometimes we need to hear ourselves say that just as much as our families do. Okay, mama, this week's permission slip challenge is a little bit different. I want you to finish three sentences. Number one, right now, this season is tilted toward your kids, your health, your marriage, your work, recovery, grief, building something, whatever is true. Number two, the thing I'm protecting while it's tilted is your ten minutes, your movement, your prayer time, your walk, your quiet, whatever keeps you from disappearing. And then number three. That's great. But if something immediately came into your mind when I asked that question, pay attention to it. You don't have to quit. You don't have to throw away the dream. Maybe just sit to let it wait for you. Then come tell us in the crown club. Here's my tilt, here's my floor, here's my not right now. Because I promise you some other tired mom is going to read yours and realize she's allowed to put something down too. So here's your crown fixing moment. You have spent years believing balance was something you kept failing at. It wasn't. You were handed a two-sided scale for a twelve-sided life, and then you blamed yourself when it wouldn't sit level. Put the scale down, your life is going to tilt. This season, next season, every season. Some months your kids will get more, some months your work will get more, some months your dreams will get more. And some months your body or your circumstances are going to make the decision for you. That is not failure of the plan, that is the plan. You don't always get to choose what causes a tilt, but you get to decide how you're going to live inside it. What needs you most right now? What do you need to protect so you don't lose yourself while you give in? And what can you lovingly look at and say, not right now? Not never, not failure, not giving up, not right now. Because strength isn't always caring more. Sometimes strength is finally admitting, this matters to me, but so do I. So let your life tilt, mama. Protect your floor, put down what needs to wait, and stop using an uneven season as evidence that you're doing life wrong. You're not supposed to give everything the same amount of you. You're supposed to know what needs you now without forgetting that you are one of the things worth taking care of too. If this episode found you at 9 o'clock at night doing the math, trying to figure out where your slice went, come join us in the free Mom Strong Crown Club on Facebook. The link is in the show notes. And keep your eyes on the Crown Club this week because September is coming, and I've been building something for exactly this. For the mom who doesn't need another perfect routine, she needs a rhythm that can survive her actual life. Because next week we turn the page into September. August was about taking your life back. September is about what you do once you've got it. Because deciding is one thing, building is another. Don't miss it. And remember, you never needed anyone else's permission, only your own. Go become the woman you've been missing because your kids aren't watching perfection. They're watching courage. Until next Tuesday, keep fixing your crown, and I'll see you then.
