You Did More Than You Think: Honoring the Hidden Labor We Carry

This is the time of year when social media fills up with highlight reels: promotions, publications, awards, and big goals achieved. I believe we should celebrate our accomplishments. One of the lessons I learned far too late is that we don’t need to wait for others to celebrate us; we deserve to celebrate ourselves. But that’s a post for a different day.

And as a quick note: this is my first blog post since the end of October because caregiving, work with clients that I’m genuinely grateful for, and balancing daily life have been a lot. Maybe you can relate.

Today, I want to talk about the labor that doesn’t make it onto a CV or résumé, but still shapes who we are and what we manage to do.

During my first tenure-track position, I started keeping what I called my “real life CV.” It was a record of everything I was accomplishing that would never show up in the formal version — the deeply personal, often invisible work of caregiving. I tracked the clinic visits I made with my mom, including the hours of planning and research behind each appointment. I noted the research and writing I was doing alongside all of it. And even then, I didn’t include everything it took to co-parent and raise two young kids. I imagine I would have struggled to contain it all on the page.

I knew what I was doing was a lot. I also knew it impacted what I could accomplish in my research and writing. But seeing it written down changed something for me. I recognized the full weight of what I was holding, and why publishing wasn’t happening at the speed I’d imagined.

I’m sharing one version of that real-life CV in the image below. It maps the first year and a half of my tenure-track job. The same period when my mom was diagnosed with ALS. It’s a visual reminder of how heavy the unseen load can be.

At the end of each year, especially when everyone was sharing their wins (and sometimes I had a few to share too), I returned to this document. It reminded me of the multitude of things I was also doing. It gave meaning to what otherwise felt like “not enough.”

If you feel discouraged at the end of the year, wishing you had accomplished more, this may be a practice you can try. Can you fill in your CV with all the other tasks and responsibilities that impact your day-to-day?

Here are a few prompts that might help:

• What have you been holding or carrying this year?
• What responsibilities or caregiving roles have shaped how you spend your time?
• What kind of support do you need to make writing or work more sustainable?

Whatever the answers may be, my hope is that this exercise reminds you that you did things that mattered, even if they didn’t add a new line to the CV. Also, if you feel that you are far away from your commitments, maybe this is an opportunity to think about what it would take to help you get back to writing. Think of this as an invitation to consider your needs.

Coming off yet another year where caregiving was part of my daily life, I’m reminding myself of this, too. My gift to myself is space: space to acknowledge everything that doesn’t show up in a blog post, a new publication, my website, or my professional documents, yet influences who I am as a scholar, writer, and human.

I’m also giving myself something I once thought I couldn’t afford: time to imagine what I want in the year ahead. Time to hope for a gentler chapter. Time to celebrate the full picture of what I carried, and what I managed to do despite it all.

You deserve that space, too.

A Quiet Reminder as You Look Ahead

As writers and caregivers, we are often asked to keep going, to produce, to care, to deliver, without pausing to acknowledge what it costs. Before you push into the next project, semester, or deadline, I hope you can give yourself a moment to honor the fullness of your year.

Celebrate the work that kept others going.

Celebrate the labor that kept you going.

Celebrate what doesn’t get measured, but deeply matters.

You did more than you think. And that is worth recognizing.