Many women don’t describe themselves as struggling with worthiness. But I see how it shows up in who adapts first, who flexes most, and whose rest gets negotiated away. Motherhood often exposes a deeper pattern: women becoming the adaptive force within families, workplaces, and culture. The mental load expands. Invisible labor accumulates. Flexibility becomes identity. And adaptation slowly turns into expectation.

This piece explores how gendered adaptive labor stabilizes both households and organizations and why adaptation without consent quietly erodes power. When we name the pattern, we can begin renegotiating the inherited contracts shaping our homes, partnerships, and leadership roles.

Last week, I had the honor of speaking at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, sharing Rewriting Capacity with a room full of Human Resources, administrators, and leaders — people who live at the intersection of care and constant demand.

We didn’t gather to “fix burnout.”
We gathered to reimagine what it means to hold our work, our lives, and each other — so that growth and service don’t cost us ourselves.

The Capacity Reflection Guide is a thoughtfully designed resource to help you slow down, reflect, and build the inner and outer capacity needed to thrive. Through practical tools, prompts, and reflections, it supports you in cultivating sustainable practices, setting boundaries, and nurturing rooted resilience in both your personal and professional life.

There’s a refrain I hear again and again in my work with women:

“Elizabeth, I’ve checked all the boxes. I have the degrees, the position, the kids (or no kids), the travel, the house. And yet—I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out. I’m miserable.”

Because here’s the truth: we cannot sever our womanhood, our humanity, from our work. If you’re miserable at work, you’re miserable in life. And in business, that misery too often gets hidden under the mask of achievement.

The missing ingredient? Wellness. Capacity. Nervous system literacy. The ability to experiment and regulate ourselves inside the mess and beauty of entrepreneurship.

We often talk about summer as a time to unwind—lazy days, beach reads, kids running barefoot, and "out of office" messages that imply everyone else is finally living their best life. But for many women, especially mothers and entrepreneurs, summer doesn’t feel like a break. It feels like a disruption.