Hello WLAM readers! As we have mentioned in our last few posts, Lisa and I both find ourselves in shifting seasons and most days our cups overfloweth 🫠 - we know you can relate.
Bugaboo exec and content creator Jeanelle Teves wrote a few months back about the pie theory for working motherhood - a visual metaphor for the age old “can women have it all?” question with a “yes, but not all at once” spin. And I think this imagery is helpful, particularly when I can’t quite locate myself in the span of a few days, weeks or months. I remember that it is normal for the pieces of my pie to shift and change often.
But what I’ve noticed about my own energy pie is that sometimes the pieces can feel muddy or altogether invisible, not always reflecting what I actually want to focus on in my life. Sometimes there are things taking up significant pieces of my pie that I didn’t consciously invite to the party. I am also prone to devoting slices of my pie to whatever my current obsession or micro-fixation is during a given week. Other times, slices of the pie seem to disappear into thin air, as if someone snuck in and ate half of it while I was asleep.
Ideally, a much smaller section of my precious energy pie would be absorbed by existential dread and instead channeled into activities that bring me joy, improve my health, or serve someone else in ways that feel meaningful. I know from experience that those things are effective at reducing less helpful energy, so it becomes a sort of cycle to move that angsty, stuck energy into things that help the pie expand rather than contract. But this requires intention and care - if I don’t pay attention, a lot of junk can start to creep into the whole.
At the same time, I don’t want to waste too much energy fretting over the days or weeks when my pie sections aren’t what I hoped they’d be. Otherwise, that self-criticism becomes just another energy leak that depletes me and shrinks the pie.
I think my particular take on the pie theory is that it is a balance of being intentional with my time and energy and also making sure I don’t lose the plot. Being a good human while also trying to raise small people to be good humans is the sum of many, many, many pies.
So it’s my job to do what I can to protect my pie and make sure it’s divided up in ways that align with what I actually care about and it’s also completely reasonable that sometimes the whole pie gets dropped on the floor and falls apart. I can always start over tomorrow.