07/22/2025
I was having a conversation today with my friend and fellow badass entrepreneur, Sara Heidinger, and we got on the topic of balance. We both agreed that balance in life doesn’t really exist…not the way we’re sold it anyway. Especially for women. We’re told that we SHOULD have “work/life balance” but really that’s just another thing to add vs to our over stuffed list of “shoulds”.
When in reality, some days, weeks, months, or even years, you focus on work, some you focus on family and some you focus on other people. Eventually there are some times you focus on yourself and those are almost always the most necessary, productive, restful and healing.
But the myth that you’ll ever have a perfect and equal amount of time on each aspect of your life is just another unrealistic expectation on you.
I liken it to tree pose in yoga. Sometimes you’re on the perfect mat on the perfect floor and in the perfect yoga pants where your foot doesn’t slide down over your knee and you had enough food and water to feel focused and stable and cleared your mind enough to find your drishti (your focal point) and you can stand in tree pose for several minutes without a single wobble. But not very often.
Most of the time you’re lucky enough to get one of those conditions at a time and there are always some wobbles, some checks to the balance, things that pull your focus elsewhere.
Is my point to not even try, cause you’ll always be out of balance? Not in the slightest. My point is that it’s easiest to find balance when you’re present and fully focused on one thing at a time. Trying to be an open and present mother while writing a social media post is not the most effective way to do either thing…but sometimes it’s necessary to wobble. Sometimes you’ve gotta set your other foot down, reposition your stance, take a breath and try again.
Balance isn’t something that happens all at once. It’s resetting your stance, changing your drishti…starting over again and again without fear. It’s knowing it’s always going to tip sooner or later and being ready to catch yourself.
It’s like Ani DiFranco says, “Buildings and bridges were made to bend in the wind. To withstand the world that’s what it takes.” And I’m sharing this picture because I wasn’t on the perfect mat in the perfect clothes, but for one brief moment, I was balanced with my foot on my knee, in jeans on a skinny bench, three feet off the ground…and I still managed to smile at the camera.
📸 by Beth Insalaco
