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Mommy, you forgot to get my bag in the car.
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That's what Sophia said to me when she came home from a family reunion a few years ago.
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Except, I hadn't forgotten her bag.
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I had packed it.
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I had put it by the front door, and I wasn't even home when they left.
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But somehow it was still mommy who forgot.
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And maybe you know this feeling.
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Maybe your kid walks past another perfectly capable adult to ask you where something is.
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Or the school needs one parent email, and without anyone discussing it, yours is the one that goes first on the form.
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Or something gets forgotten by somebody else, and somehow you still feel the little pull to explain it, fix it, or wonder what you should have done differently.
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If any of that feels familiar, this episode is for you.
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Welcome back to Unscripted, a Mamtarin podcast, the show for the ambitious working mother who is caring more than anyone realizes and is finally ready to hear her own voice again.
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I'm Andy Salcedo.
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I'm a coach, a working mother, and the founder of Mamtarin, the coaching brand and community for working mums behind this show.
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If you end up wanting to go deeper after listening, Mamtarin.com is where you'll find me.
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But right now, this conversation is what matters.
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And if you want honest conversations about what it's really like to be the one everybody goes to first, the parts nobody sees, and the parts we don't say out loud, make sure you follow and scripted.
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It's a small way of making space for yourself in the middle of everything else you're carrying.
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Today I want to tell you about that bug and about a form I filled out this summer that made me realize that the mental load was not the only problem.
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This summer I was filling out all the enrollment paperwork for my daughter's new school.
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You know that kind of paperwork.
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One form becomes six, then somehow you're creating another password for another portal.
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You will absolutely forget it exists until somebody emails you about it.
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So I go to the cafeteria account form.
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Auto replenish, low balance notices, whose email should be on the account, whose card should get charged.
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And my hand went straight to my own name, my own email.
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No discussion.
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Honestly, barely a thought.
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But then I stopped.
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Wait, why am I putting myself here again?
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Maybe Dennis should be the one getting these emails this time.
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And then I had another thought, which was more uncomfortable.
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I didn't even know if he was already getting some of these things.
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The cafeteria notices, the school emails, the medical forms.
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Maybe he was.
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Maybe I was simply the one who saw them and voped first, because let's be honest, that's what I do.
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An email comes in, I answer it.
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A form appears, I fill it out.
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Somebody needs a contact, I put down my name.
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It's faster, it's efficient, and in that tiny moment it feels completely harmless.
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Until you do it enough times that everybody knows who is the person that they have to reach out to.
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That's when I realized this is a little different from mental load.
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Because mental load is all about the noticing, remembering, planning, tracking.
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But this is about position.
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Who does the school call first?
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Who does your child ask first?
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Whose number gets passed around?
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Whose inbox becomes the place where family life lives?
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And nobody ever officially gave me that position.
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I stepped into it one tiny decision at a time.
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Which brings me back to that bag.
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About three years ago, my in-laws were taking Sophia to a family reunion in Maryland.
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I had to be away for work the morning they were leaving, so the night before I packed her bag.
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I included everything she would need for the two nights, and when I finished, I put the bag right by the front door.
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The plan was simple.
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Dennis and I had agreed that when my in-laws arrived, he'd carry the bag from the front door to the car.
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Well, guess what?
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He forgot.
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Yes, he forgot.
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So they drove four hours to Maryland without it, and nobody realized until they were most of the way there.
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Later that day, my sister in law came to visit us, and she brought it up laughing.
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Haha you forgot to put soffice back in the car.
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And I remember thinking Excuse me?
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The only thing left to do was carry it a few feet and put it in the trunk.
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And that part wasn't mine.
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But somehow, within a few hours, the story had already changed from he forgot the bag to I forgot the bag.
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And then Sophia came home and the first thing she said to me, Mommy, you forgot to get my bag in the car.
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That moment stayed with me.
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Because I had done everything right.
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I had remembered, I had planned, I had packed, I had even put the thing directly in the path of the people walking out the door.
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And I still became the answer to what went wrong.
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And I think that's when something clicked for me.
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I was the default parent.
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And if doing this role perfectly still leaves you responsible for what happens after you've handed something off, then becoming even better at the role probably isn't going to change very much.
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You can make the calendar better, you can create the shared list, you can give clearer instructions, you can put the bag literally beside the door, but you're still standing in the same place.
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And this is where the cafeteria form started looking different to me.
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Because nobody sat Dennis and I down when we became parents and said, Andy, congratulations, from now on, you are the person everybody calls.
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It happened slowly.
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I put my name down, I answered first, I remembered, I followed up, I stepped in when something wasn't getting done.
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And over time, everybody learned where to go.
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Everybody learned what my position was within this family.
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The school learned, the kids learned, other parents learned, Dennis learned.
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And I learned too.
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Everyone had learned where I stood, including me.
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And I want to be careful with this because I am not interested in turning this into a story where mothers created their own problem.
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We didn't.
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There are expectations around motherhood that were here long before any of us filled out our first school form.
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There are things people assume a mother will know that they simply don't assume a father will know.
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But I can also see the part I've played inside my own family.
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The number of times I've moved before anybody else had the chance to.
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The number of times doing it myself felt easier than having the conversation.
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The number of times I thought I'll just take care of it.
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And after enough years of that, stepping back doesn't necessarily feel like relief.
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Sometimes it feels terrifying.
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Because what if nobody does it?
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What if something gets forgotten?
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What if someone is disappointed?
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What if somehow it still comes back to me?
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And I don't have this one figured out.
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I'm very honest here.
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Changing a name on a form doesn't change what my sister-in-law said or what Sophia said.
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Because I think part of me was never only worried about the bag.
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I was worried about what it said about me as a mother, as someone who's supposed to have it handled.
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So changing this can't only be a conversation about fairness.
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And I don't think it's as simple as telling your partner, okay, you do school now.
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Because if I've spent years automatically stepping into a space, the hard part may not be assigning it to somebody else.
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The hard part may be not stepping straight back into it the minute I get uncomfortable.
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And I don't want to make that sound neat because it isn't.
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No.
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Sometimes, when you step back, something might fall through.
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Somebody might forget.
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Somebody might get annoyed.
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You might be sitting there thinking, see, this is why I just do it myself.
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But I'm starting to wonder whether that discomfort is always evidence that stepping back was a mistake.
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Maybe sometimes it's just evidence that everybody had gotten very used to me stepping forward.
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Everybody agreeing it should be fair doesn't move anything.
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It moves when one person stops standing in the same place.
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When one person changes their position.
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And that doesn't mean I don't want to be first for anything anymore.
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On that cafeteria form, I stopped.
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I looked at how this year worked in our house, and I put my own name down.
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On purpose.
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Same name I would have typed without thinking.
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But this time it was mine to decide.
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And that's the point.
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I want it to be a choice, not a position I keep occupying because everyone, including me, forgot there was another option.
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So here's the question I've been sitting with.
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Where in your life are you still the automatic first call?
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And if nobody expected you to stay there, would you still choose that position?
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Before you go, notice one place this week where you're automatically first, where you are the default parent.
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Maybe it's school, the pediatrician, an enrichment activity, whatever it is.
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And before you change anything, ask yourself, do I want to be first here?
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Not should I, not is it easier if I am.
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Do I want to?
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If the answer is yes, keep it on purpose.
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And if the answer is no, make one small change that reflects that.
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Change the contact.
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Have that difficult conversation with your partner.
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Don't answer first.
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And then notice what happens inside you when you don't immediately take the space back.
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Because I have a feeling that's where the next conversation starts.
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If someone came to mind while you were listening, send this episode to her.
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Especially that friend who somehow gets the call even when she's not there.
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Next time, I want to stay right here.
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Because there's a question I can't stop asking myself.
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If covering all of this is so exhausting, why do so many of us keep taking full ownership of it?
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Why is it so hard to let anyone else hold it with us?
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I'm Andy Salcedo, this is unscripted, and I'll see you in two weeks.