Episode 103: Why May Feels Impossible: The Season Every Busy Mom Needs to Know About
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
It's April, you're feeling good, spring energy is back — and then May hits like a freight train. Permission slips, recitals, Teacher Appreciation Week, end-of-year parties... all at once, with no warning.
There's a name for this: Maycember. It carries all the chaos of the holiday season without any of the twinkle lights — and the reason it knocks us flat every single year isn't a personal failing. It's a structural problem that nobody talks about.
In this episode, we're naming what's really happening in May, why we get blindsided every single year, and why surviving it is no longer the only option.
➡️ Ready to stop white-knuckling your way through May? Join me live on April 22nd for Maycember Made Easy — a hands-on planning workshop to help you actually orchestrate the craziest month of the year. Tickets are just $9. Grab yours at themothernurture.com/maycember.
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode. Of the podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you today, I'm sitting with a blanket on my lap and a hot mug of tea in my hands because the temperature dropped. Here we had a glimpse of beautiful spring weather. I made the mistake, apparently of packing away the kids' winter coats
to make room in their cubbies and I needed to pull them back out today. So anyway, I'm cold. I'm cold, and it feels so bizarre to be talking about spring things. But here we are. We're into the month of April. We have all sorts of things coming up this quarter and,
I wanna kick off this episode by painting a picture for you, walking you through a scenario to see if you can picture yourself here to see if this resonates with you, if this sounds familiar to you.
So in the next month as we go into May, there will come a day for me. I'm gonna picture a Thursday , because those are usually the nights of the week where everything sort of culminates, if you will. And here you are on this Thursday, frantically filling out a field trip, permission form, and looking through everybody's wallets to find the exact cash that is needed to pay for the field trip.
It's like always, at least for us, a random number. It's not $10. $8 or it's $13 or something like that, getting that all into an envelope and into the right book bag, it is pulling out some random card from the stash because you forgot to go to the store and get something in advance and writing a quick note to your Kid's teacher because tomorrow is teacher appreciation day.
And maybe you have a gift card stashed. Maybe you're running to the store to grab something, or maybe you're just skipping it because you're too tired. Then you're looking at the calendar and seeing all of the things that are coming up, not just at school tomorrow, not just at work tomorrow, but what's happening this weekend?
You're realizing that you've double booked yourself, or that there are two things, the concert and the game, or the game and the birthday party that are back to back. And wow, it's gonna be a really tight turnaround. You're gonna need to pack a change of clothes, maybe pack a lunch, make sure everybody has a snack in the car.
How are you gonna get that done oh, and that presentation needs to be finalized before tomorrow.
This time of year that we are heading into is called Maycember for a reason. Now, if you've been around here a while, you're probably familiar with the term Maycember but let's just define it for all of us so we're on the same page. May December gets its name because it has. The hustle, , the overscheduled busy feeling that we have typically in December, as we were heading into the end of the year and the holiday season.
But it doesn't have any of the twinkle lights or the wrapped presents
or all of the sugar cookies that we can at least enjoy through the chaos of the holiday season because it is in May
and it is sneaky because we're not expecting it. We are heading into this new season of spring. We've got energy. We're coming out of our hibernation and our cocoons, and we're ready for more, but not this much. Because if you think about it, and I'm just gonna rattle off some of the things that come to mind for me.
The sheer volume of activities and events and holidays and celebrations that happen in May is just wild. We have end of the year parties and celebrations. We have field day, we have. Maybe sports banquets or end of the season wrap up. If your kids are in sports, there's often a recital If you do dance or play an instrument of some kind, we have graduations, if not our own kids, then we are attending those for others that we know and our community.
Teacher Appreciation Week. We have Mother's Day, which we're supposed to enjoy, but we are frantically managing the schedule and doing all of the things for everything else. There's Memorial Day weekend if you're here in the States, and then of course the end of the month really kicks off for so many of us.
The transition to summer, which comes with its own learning curve and change to all of the routines that we have really solidified over the course of the school year. And this again, does not even take into account what is happening professionally as we head into the summer months.
We're in the middle of the second quarter of the year. Work does not stop. And the key distinction again is that with December. We have this cultural preparation that's built into the season. We expect it, everyone is living it, but May does not have that. No one warns you about May except for me. I'm warning you right now, if you've not thought about this before, nobody warns you about May, and not everyone is living the same reality.
So I would invite you. After you finish listening to this episode, do a quick mental inventory of what is on your May calendar. What is coming up for you, for your kids, for your family, and in your career?
When I was still new to the whole school age parenting thing, I distinctly remember one such December before I had realized that, oh, this is a theme. This is going to happen every year. I should do something about this. A, a volunteer registration, like a signup Genius had come out probably in April, maybe, nah, not earlier if they don't do things that far in advance.
But I think it was in April. And at the time I thought, oh my gosh, what a beautiful opportunity I think it was for one of my kids. They did like an outdoor carnival with all of the classrooms in that age group, and I thought, I'm gonna sign up. That sounds so fun. I can be out there. I can run one of the little games or do the temporary tattoos or whatever they need.
Well, fast forward several weeks, we're into the middle of May. I did not take into account all of the other things that were happening. I had a daughter in dance, kids playing piano. Spring soccer seasons, end of the year parties. And again, this sense of the school year is ending our schedule is going to change and wanting to get work done in a way that felt meaningful while I had this predictable routine of school.
And it was the night before this volunteer event, and I just thought, what have I done? What have I done? I don't have the space or the time for this, but I have already committed, and that's the thing about Maycember
We have this cognitive reset, which happens every year. We know this. We tend to forget the challenging parts or the really hard parts. We think it wasn't as bad as we thought. We're also coming out of winter, so there's that winter to spring energy shift. We feel more energetic. The sun is shining, we're getting outside again, we're feeling great and so therefore we feel optimistic about what we can do, what we can fit in, what we'll have the energy for.
Or as so many of us say, this year will be different. Work, isn't gonna be as busy. I'm gonna have those things done in advance. It's no problem to sign up for that. It's gonna be fine.
But what ends up happening is May. May is very much like. A death by a thousand cuts, if you will. When we think about the holidays and we think about December, of course there are lots of little things, but it's all sort of leading toward if you celebrate Christmas or one of the major holidays at that time of year, , we have this big moment that we're all leading toward and in May it's just all of these little things that on their own.
Sound doable. They sound manageable. Showing up to volunteer at a carnival at school. That's an hour and a half or two hours.
That doesn't sound like it will make the whole house of cards crumble to the ground. But when we take that activity, or the teacher appreciation day, or the Mother's Day gift, or the potluck item that we need to send in, or, the recital prep that needs to be done, it is all of the little things that add up to making it feel like too much.
And let's be honest, so many of these things are what we would call invisible labor. Or the cognitive load, or maybe you say mental load. We carry so much of that, the overwhelming majority of coordinating all of this stuff. , it's not just attending the game. It is thinking about the carpool and when you need to leave and how long the drive is to the recital and what clothes you need to have and do the pants from last year still fit?
Do we need new dress shoes? What does the hair have to be like? Is a card enough? Is a gift card enough? It's all of the questions and decisions that we have to make along the way, the planning, the remembering, the execution of all of that. And when we layer in all of these little things that, again, on their own would be no big deal to say yes to, but we just cannot say yes to all of it.
And so I feel like I'm on my soapbox a little bit here, but I want to say if it's not clear already that this is not a personal failing on your part, this is not a matter of you not being organized enough.
This is a structural problem for parents, especially of school aged kids who are also managing their own careers, and there is no cultural scaffolding. There is no broader expectation that this season is a lot for us to manage in the way that there is with December.
So we know what Maycember is. We know that it is coming. We know that it's not our fault that it's a lot if only all of these organizations from school to sports to, whoever created the calendar and put Mother's Day in May. Like, please tell me why. It's, it's all of these things happening at once that are in a lot of ways beyond our control, but
we know it's coming now and we do not wanna be caught off guard. Been there, done that. Definitely been caught off guard. Many a Maycember.
Because when you are caught off guard, when you do not go into the season with your eyes wide open with a handle on what is coming, not just in the calendar, but what is coming in terms of the preparation. The project management, the tasks, the invisible labor that needs to happen,
we end up being reactive. You all know how that feels. I talk to so many working moms who live their professional lives being reactive, even their personal lives being reactive, right? It leads to making last minute decisions. It leads to oftentimes overspending. This is a huge one that we don't talk about because it is better to get things done, make things more convenient, make things easier.
But we have to acknowledge that when we are making last minute decisions, when we are rushing, when we are scrambling because we didn't think ahead or we didn't see that coming, we end up spending more for convenience, right? Get things rushed. Pay a little bit more to have that done for you. There are oftentimes dropped balls.
We miss things because there's just too much to take in in any given day or any given hour, and it leads to a lot of resentment and frustration. Certainly could be resentment of a partner if you feel like you're carrying more of that. It could be resentment of the teacher or the organization or the school.
Right. How dare they put another Spirit week in the middle of May? Not to mention that being reactive definitely takes a toll on your energy. When you are making those last minute, or we've already missed the deadline and we're trying to catch up decisions, it drains you. It pulls your focus from what you could be working on or focusing on at work.
It takes away from being able to be present at home because you're constantly looking for, what else are you missing, right? Miss one thing, suddenly you're on high alert for, what else am I forgetting? If I forgot Teacher Appreciation day, if I missed that registration deadline, if I forgot about so and so's birthday party, what else did I forget?
Surely it's not just that one. And then we become hypervigilant, scanning our environment, scanning our inbox, living in our text messages to make sure that nothing else gets past us. And so you're not paying attention when your kid says, look, mom. You are not playing, you are not having focused conversations with your partner.
You're not connecting, you're not getting that deep work done. You're not working on those important but not urgent projects. You are living solely in the putting out fires lane, and that's exhausting. It also leads to this shame statement that I hear so often, and that is, I should have this together by now.
What is wrong with me? And I wanna offer that this does not have to be an inevitable experience for you. This could be a predictable one. We could go into Maycember with our eyes wide open and not have to live in that place of wondering what is wrong with me, or, why don't I have this together by now?
Because what would change for you if you saw Maycember as a seasonal pattern? One that comes every year that starts to fall into that rinse and repeat category. Of course, you might have variables that change as your kids change grades or activities or your work rhythms change but there's still a predictableness to it in the same way that we can start to predict what the holiday season looks like.
You do not have to white knuckle your way through Maycember. You can plan for it. You can't plan for everything. There is no true planning for the unexpected, but having a plan for what you know is coming will make reacting to what you don't know is coming so much easier.
We plan for December. I do stress less this holiday, a planning workshop every year at the beginning of November because I know it's coming and I know all of you wanna plan along with me. We also plan for back to school. We know what that season entails, and so we are checking backpacks and we are deciding if we need to order a new lunchbox and people are trying on their shoes and we are doing all of those things
for back to school. We can plan for December as well. I want you to shift your perspective as you think about May instead of it being a season that we survive. Why not let it be a season that we orchestrate
a season where we are the conductors, we can see the music. We are looking a couple of measures ahead, and we are starting to orchestrate what is coming instead of just surviving it.
So I know as you're sitting here at the beginning of April, it might feel a little bit like it's breathing down your neck. It is coming,
and I want to remind you that you have time. You are capable.
And I'll have more to say about what it looks like to orchestrate Maycember in my next podcast episode. So please subscribe and check back for those. And right now, if you are ready to stop white knuckling your way through May, if you are done being reactive of scrambling and rushing to get things done at the last minute and you're ready to get ahead of the season, I am teaching for the first time in a long time alive planning workshop on April 22nd.
It's called Maycember Made Easy.
The working moms game plan for the craziest month of the year.
I would love to have you join. This is going to be hands on conversational, but also very step by step. You'll walk away with everything you need to feel like you are in the best possible position to head into whatever Maycember has in store for you. So if you'd like to register, you can do that at themothernurture.com/maycember.
That's M-A-Y-C-E-M-B-E-R, themothernurture.com/maycember. To get your ticket, hold the date on your calendar. It's coming up on April 22nd at 12 noon Eastern 9:00 AM Pacific.
So yes, may is coming and I'll just remind you that you are not alone.
And it is totally possible to head into the season already, knowing your plan.
All right, I will talk with you in the next episode. Until then, take care.
Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast,
you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com.
I will see you again next week for another episode of the
podcast.
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