I Took A Break And Nothing Collapsed

Image by @ethanrobertson from Unsplash

You have seen that TV show. The one where the mum finally takes a well-deserved holiday with her friends, and the dad — full of confidence, full of "I've got this, babe" — is left to hold the fort.

But before she leaves, she does not simply walk out the door. She sits him down. She writes the list. The chores, the schedule, the children's timings, what needs to happen and when. She goes through it twice, maybe three times, just to be sure. She has done everything she can to set him up. And then she leaves, and within hours, the kitchen is a disaster zone, the laundry has not moved, the children are wearing yesterday's clothes, and dinner is either burnt or delivered. When she calls to check in, he sounds perfectly calm. Behind him, chaos. When she gets home, he has done a rushed job of hiding the evidence, but the house tells the truth anyway.

And yet, by the end of it all, something shifts. He looks at her differently. A quiet, humbling respect. Because he now knows, in his bones, what it actually takes.

I laughed at that scene. And then I recognised myself in it — except I was not the dad. I was the mum who could not leave, even after writing the list.

I have always found it difficult to fully step back. Not because I do not trust the people around me, but because I am wired to oversee things. I tell myself it is thoroughness, diligence, a high standard of care. And partly, that is true. But if I am being honest — and this column demands that I am — a good portion of it is control. The quiet, persistent belief that things will not go as they should unless I am watching.

So when I had to travel and leave my team to manage the programme in my absence, I did what the mum does. I prepared. I briefed them properly, mapped out what needed to happen and when, made sure nothing was left unclear. By the time I left, there was no reason they should have needed to call me. I had done the work of handing over.

And then I hovered anyway.

My body was on the trip. My mind was at work. My phone stayed within arm's reach at all times, angled slightly so I would not miss a notification. I checked in mentally every few hours, running through scenarios, half-expecting a message that began with, "Sorry to bother you, but..."

The message never came.

They did not need me.

And I did not know what to do with that.

There was relief, of course. But tucked underneath it was something I was not prepared for: a faint, unsettling deflation. If they managed without me — after I had handed everything over so thoroughly — what had the hovering been for? Had my inability to truly switch off been about them at all, or had it always been about me?

That is the question I did not want to sit with. So naturally, it is the one I needed to.

Here is what I have come to understand, uncomfortably and slowly: the desire to stay in control is not always about competence. Sometimes it is about fear. Fear that things will fall apart. Fear that you will be blamed if they do. Fear that stepping back means stepping out of relevance. We dress it up in responsibility, in standards, in care — and those things are real. But so is the fear underneath them.

There is a difference between being indispensable and being unable to let go. One is earned. The other is a trap.

And here is the more uncomfortable part: preparing thoroughly before stepping away is good practice. It is the right thing to do. But when even thorough preparation does not settle you — when the list is written, the briefing is done, and you are still reaching for your phone — the issue is no longer about preparation. It is about trust. Not trust in the people you left behind. Trust in your own judgment that you chose the right people, built the right systems, and did enough.

Control, when it becomes a default rather than a deliberate choice, starts to work against the very thing it is meant to protect. It limits the people around you. It limits you. It keeps everyone slightly smaller than they could be, because there is always a ceiling above them, and that ceiling has your face on it.

Letting go is not a one-time decision. It is a practice. And it does not start with grand gestures of trust — it starts with the small, uncomfortable choice to put the phone down. To not check. To let the work unfold without your eyes on it every hour.

Nothing collapsed.

And perhaps that was the most important thing I learnt on that trip — not from any experience I had while I was there, but from what I allowed to happen while I was away.

These days, when I travel, something has shifted. The phone still comes with me — I am not that reformed. But somewhere between takeoff and landing, a quiet thought surfaces, one I would never have admitted to a few years ago: please don't message me. Not because I do not care. But because I now know that them not messaging me is not a sign that things are falling apart. It is a sign that I did my job well before I left. And that is something worth trusting.