Burn the hats

Why work-life integration beats work-life balance for mothers in leadership

I still have the faded Post-it note in my office.

When I was a lower school head, my own three children attended the school. And sometimes, when I called a colleague, instead of saying “Hi, this is Sarah,” I’d introduce myself as somebody’s mom. One of three somebodies, depending on which child I was calling about.

One day, a colleague stopped me cold.

“You’re either the principal,” she said, “or you’re somebody’s mom, or you’re somebody’s wife.”

“When do you get to be Sarah?”

I wrote it down immediately. I still refer to it.

When I eventually left that job, another colleague gave me a “mama” hat — a keepsake, a symbol. Now, she said, you can wear this more often.

I loved the gesture. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized: I don’t actually want more hats.

I want fewer.

In fact, maybe I’m tired of the metaphor entirely.

We’ve all heard the versions. I’ve got my 9-to-5 and my 5-to-9. I have two full-time jobs. I’m a working mom, a school leader, a partner, a room parent, a board chair, a daughter.

I understand why we talk this way. We’re trying to name something real: the massive volume of what we carry.

But I think the “hats” metaphor may be hurting us.

When I was in that lower school head role, I worked hard to compartmentalize. There were real reasons for it. If I was giving difficult feedback or not renewing someone’s contract, it wasn’t helpful when they brought up something my child did at recess. The lines mattered. So I kept them.

But eventually, I went too far. I wasn’t just keeping work and home separate. I was fragmenting myself.

A mother I’m coaching described it perfectly: the fractured way we try to live our lives feels like a coping mechanism. We compartmentalize and pivot from one role to another, pretending the wall exists between who we are at work and who we are at home. But something at work will always ripple into home, and something at home will always follow us into work.

So why are we performing otherwise?

She put it simply: I don’t want to code-switch between being a mom and a worker. I just want to be me, all the time.

She wants a new hat that just says her name.

Or better yet, in her words,

Burn the hats.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what she said. And of course, I went down the research rabbit hole.

It turns out there’s a word for what she was describing: integration.

Not balance — that word implies a scale, two sides, one always threatening to tip. Integration means something different. It means the skills I bring to leadership are the same skills I bring to parenting. The patience I practice at home makes me a better colleague. The boundaries I set at work teach my children that I value my own time.

There is, in fact, a good deal already written about work-life integration, including this excellent overview from the Center for Creative Leadership. The idea isn’t new. But I think we need to hear it more.

Because here’s what I’ve noticed: every time I meet with a mother in leadership, the same exhaustion surfaces. Not just from the work, but from the switching. From the performance of being a different person in every room.

My coachee didn’t have a framework for it. She didn’t need one. She just knew.

Burn the hats.

Not because our different roles don’t matter. They do. But because when we relate to ourselves as a stack of separate identities — each requiring its own uniform, its own code of conduct, its own performance — we lose something essential.

We lose the through line.

We lose Sarah.

🕊️

SAM

A gift I loved, and then outgrew.