Help isn’t a four-letter word

And for that matter, neither is:

Rest.

Ease.

Calm.

What is a four-letter word is f*ck. And let’s be honest, most days it’s the only one that fits.

Because the puppy has pooped on the floor. Again.

Because the kids didn’t do their chores. Again.

Because your coffee machine died. Again.

Because the laundry is overflowing, the counters are covered in cereal bowls and yogurt pots, ,permission slips are due, the school bake sale is tomorrow, and you’re out of milk, pasta, and the will to live. And you’ve literally just walked in the door from work (the one that pays you). And tomorrow? The meeting that could change your whole career.

Rest? What’s that?

We’ve been told for decades that we can have it all.

And we believed it. Because of course we did. We’re brilliant. We’re ambitious. We’re driven. We’re powerful. We can have it all. 

But having it all meant doing it all too.

The systems that should have supported us never got built.

And that’s why real help for London’s working mums isn’t optional — it’s overdue.

It’s the support we should have always had.

We’ve been carrying the load of three people, plus the mental, emotional and domestic load of keeping the whole thing from collapsing, and then feeling like we’re somehow failing at work, at home, at family. 

You know it all too well. I see you. Someone tells you you can’t do something and you say: watch me. 

I’m the same.

I was about to move countries — pack up a house, relocate a neurodivergent 16-year-old and a 12-year-old, fly two cats across the Atlantic, start a high-pressure job in a new city, get everyone into new schools, settle into a new home…and I also promised my youngest a puppy on the other side. As a solo parent. In six weeks. (I KNOW.)

Watch me. 

But the truth is: we were never meant to carry this alone.

We have been conditioned — by sheer lack of support — to normalise the impossible. To call it resilience when it’s actually exhaustion.

.

We need to normalise the things that actually lighten our load — not more hacks, not more colour-coded calendars, not more self-discipline masquerading as empowerment.

Because we need help. Real help. The kind modern families need today. 

And that’s exactly why real help for London’s working mums matters.

Not because we’re weak. FAR from it.  But because the village is broken, and we need to rebuild it so we can rise. That’s what I want to build with Ayi. 

Ayi is real help for London’s working mums — the kind that lets us reclaim our energy, our time, our ambitions, and our damn lives.

Watch me. 

Watch us.