When It Feels Like You’re Carrying It All. How Christy & Will Lowy Rebalanced the Mental Load
When you’re carrying so much, it’s easy to think the only options are: keep pushing or burn it all down.
In this conversation, I sat down with Christy and Will Lowy, parents of three and founders of The Parents Table, to talk about what it really takes to share the mental load, rebuild connection, and design a life that can hold both ambition and care.
You can watch the full interview below, or keep reading for highlights and a few simple ways to start your own reset inside Persist.
Why Talking About the Mental Load Feels So Hard and Why It’s Worth It
Christy and Will’s story starts where so many modern families find themselves:
Two demanding careers.
A newborn.
A 90-minute commute.
An unspoken assumption that Christy (the default parent, planner, feeder, rememberer) would “just handle it.”
Christy wore the “I can do it all” badge like so many of us do: hyper-competent, hyper-independent, quietly drowning.
Will wanted to be more present, but work expectations made that feel impossible. When he tried to lean in at home, he was penalized at work. When Christy tried to name how heavy it felt, it risked sounding ungrateful.
Underneath it all was something we hear every day at Persist:
“I don’t want to hurt my partner. But I can’t keep going like this.”
Talking about the mental load in a relationship is vulnerable for both people. But not talking about it guarantees that resentment piles up like dirty laundry: one sock, one shirt, one “no big deal” at a time…until you’re out of anything clean to give.
Pause & Reflect:
Where are you carrying more than your fair share, without ever saying it out loud?
From Survival Mode to Shared Vision
Their turning point didn’t come from a perfectly crafted spreadsheet.
It came from collapse.
When Will finally hit a breaking point and left the job that kept him away twelve hours a day, it cracked open a new possibility: he could be more involved. But there was a catch—Christy had built an entire invisible operating system in his absence.
Letting go of control was just as hard as stepping in.
Instead of staying stuck in “you’re not doing enough” vs. “I can’t get it right,” Christy tried something different: she invited Will into a workshop.
Not a fight. Not a performance review.
A collaborative session, like you’d run at work to:
Put all the household tasks, decisions, and emotional labor on the table
Map skills, interests, capacity, and bandwidth
Decide together what kind of life they wanted to build
Assign ownership with clarity (and compassion for the learning curve)
That workshop became the seed of The Parents Table and a reminder that equity isn’t about tallying chores; it’s about designing a shared vision and a system you both believe in.
If that sounds familiar, you might love the Shift Method. A way to pause, see what’s really happening, and start shifting without blowing things up.
Pause & Reflect:
When was the last time you invited your partner into a real conversation not about chores, but about the kind of life you’re building together?
Why These Conversations Matter
Christy and Will’s story is familiar for a reason. Most couples want fairness but get trapped in survival mode. Their experiment gave them a path out and a framework for keeping resentment from silently stacking up.
Other couples, like Brian Page and his wife, have found their own ways to reset. Each story starts with one honest conversation.
In Part 2, we’ll dive into the practical system they created, the TEAM US Method and how you can use it (and your CareLoad results) to start your own shared-load reset.
Ready to see what your CareLoad looks like?
Take the free CareLoad Assessment inside Persist and uncover how invisible work shows up in your home.
