Cat Sims' new book unpacks the mental load

NEW BOOK: THE MENTAL LOAD DIARIES BY CAT SIMS

Cat Sims and her family

“This book – and Cat Sims generally – helps me to breathe a bit easier. My shoulders drop, my jaw relaxes, and I know everything is going to be OK.”   Bryony Gordon

Writer, podcaster and content creator Cat Sims has been making women feel seen for years by speaking candidly about parenting, relationships and the messy realities of modern womanhood. Now, for the first time, she turns the lens on herself – telling her own brutally honest story of marriage, motherhood, mental health, addiction, and the crushing, all-consuming weight of the mental load.

Call it what you like - emotional labour, the invisible burden or the mental load, but it’s insidiously impacting women’s lives. Where did it come from? Why are women still the ones carrying it? Can a marriage realistically survive it? And is it even possible to share it?

With eye-opening honesty and her trademark dry wit, Cat confronts these questions head-on, documenting how this invisible yet relentless burden has shaped her relationships, career, self-worth and mental wellbeing and what she’s learned about how to break the cycle.

This is not a self-help manual filled with statistics and quick fixes. This is a blisteringly candid story – funny, messy, real, and at times, very sweary. It’s about navigating addiction and sobriety, a late ADHD diagnosis, and the sheer emotional gymnastics of raising children while caring for ageing parents. It’s about sex and intimacy after kids, the resentment that brews when one partner carries more of the load, and how therapy helped Cat and her husband find their way back to each other. It’s about the reality of carrying too much and what happens when you finally decide to put some of it down, giving you the confidence to know it is possible to shift the balance.

Cat Sims said: “This isn’t a book to beat men over the head with. It’s a no-holds barred, deeply honest account of my experience of trying to understand the world as a woman, a wife and a mother. It might not give you the answers, but it will definitely make you realise that you're not the only one who feels frustrated and lost in the bed they've made and have to lie in.”

Through her candid storytelling, Cat hopes to spark the uncomfortable but necessary conversations that can finally change the way we navigate relationships, parenting and domestic life. It’s for anyone who’s ever thought: Why am I the only one thinking about this stuff? and for couples ready to challenge old dynamics and make meaningful change.

The Mental Load Diaries is a book that will make you laugh, cry, and - most importantly - see yourself in its pages. Above all, this is a rallying cry for change, told through one woman’s journey, but echoing the experiences of many.

The Mental Load Diaries by Cat Sims is out now in all formats, published by Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster UK