Why I’m Shedding My Guilt about Struggling with Work-Life Balance

By Annie Mark-Westfall — LETTERS FROM BERLIN

This month I joined a professional network of English-speaking working moms in Berlin. We have accountability partners, online seminars, and a Facebook group where we share our biggest wins and worst struggles. It is the type of group that I once scoffed at, but today it is my lifeline to my sense of Self. It is the group that will help Annie get her groove back.

During our seminar last week, our coach led us through six steps to finding work-life balance. We answered several questions along the way to define our values and priorities, and establish a vision of what balance looks like.

As someone who invests probably, definitely too much time in self-reflection and self-development, I breezed through the questions. What are your top values? “That’s easy,” I thought to myself. “Family.” What drains your energy the most? “Also easy. Family.”

Our coach then moved along to Step 5: identifying ways to spend more time on your values, and less time on the things in life that drain your energy. I stared at my paper and the word “family” in both columns. Uh oh.

When the coach asked who wanted to share, I raised my hand to describe my confusion. But the more I spoke, the more I felt exposed as a…