About Social and Systems Work by Bessie

Naming the Reality

This is a story about capability, not deficit.

Throughout the process of creating my practice, my biggest challenge was defining my professional and personal identity. I often found myself asking, who am I?

I am a single mum of a young child. I am a neurodivergent woman living with chronic pain and ongoing health conditions. Despite all of this, I am deeply committed to remaining in the workforce because I am also a highly experienced leader, subject matter expert, project manager, and systems specialist.

Yet time and again, I found myself constrained by employment models and support systems that were not designed for, or genuinely supportive of, people like me.

Through this process, I have come to understand that I am not alone. Many of my friends and colleagues find themselves similarly limited by these embedded models and systems, and utterly exhausted by the effort required simply to participate. I will not pretend this is not a gendered issue. While there are, of course, outliers, in my experience it is predominantly mothers who share these struggles, whether in a relationship or not.

When Systems Aren’t Flexible Enough

Flexibility was framed as an individual accommodation, not a structural reality.

From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, I was rushing.

Breakfast. Get dressed. Brush teeth. Kinder drop off. Home or office to work. Appointments. Kinder pick up. Dinner. Bath. Bed. Clean up. Sleep. Exercise for pain. Maintain friendships. Be a good enough parent, no matter what.

I was only just keeping my head above water.

Then funding for my role at work ended and I was facing redundancy. Somewhere in my days I needed to find time to apply for jobs. Even though the sector I have almost a decade of experience in claims to be underpinned by feminist values, to value lived experience, and to offer flexibility, I could not find roles that would allow me to maintain the appointments necessary for my health and mental health, manage the responsibilities of single parenting, protect my parenting capacity and connection time with my child, and work from home when needed to manage my ‘spoons’ and avoid burnout.

I had no real choice. It was either a significant drop in income and responsibility, unemployment, or private practice.

Choosing Private Practice as an Act of Self-respect

I did not step out of systems because I lacked commitment. I stepped out because I have integrity.

I began talking with friends and mentors about becoming a private practitioner and was met with nothing but encouragement and support. ‘Private practice is perfect for you!’ and ‘you won’t have a lack of work!’ were phrases I heard often. With my confidence growing, I used my project management experience to create a workplan. I explored the scope of my practice. I built a website, created a logo, a tagline, and a clear set of values.

Before I knew it, I was hyperfixating my way into business ownership. I was becoming self‑managing, someone who could independently decide her workload and hours based on her capacity, needs, and interests. Someone who could be present for her child, work to her strengths, and honour her nervous system and health as the framework holding everything else together.

For the first time in several years, I felt genuinely excited about my work and my life.

Finally, I realised it had not been a ‘me’ issue. It was a systems issue. And what do I do best? Navigate and refine systems to better support the people using them. This was a natural fit.

How Lived Experience Shapes My Practice

I had found both a business model and a purpose. My practice intentionally intertwines lived and professional experience to offer strengths‑based support, empathy without over‑identification, strong boundaries grounded in necessity, practical realism about fatigue, parenting, disability, and systems, and a deep and genuine respect for clients’ autonomy and complexity.

This practice exists because I refused to believe that professionalism requires self‑erasure, or that women with caring responsibilities should be expected to unreasonably compromise themselves or their parent‑child bond.

It’s Not Us, It’s the Systems

I know there are others reading this who recognise themselves in these words. People who are capable, experienced, and deeply committed, yet worn thin by systems that ask too much and offer too little. If that is you, this is not a personal failure. It is a systems mismatch.

This practice was built as a refusal to disappear, downshift, or disconnect in order to remain employable. It was built to prove that professionalism, care, flexibility, and integrity can coexist. My hope is that this work not only supports the people I work with, but quietly challenges the assumption that there is only one acceptable way to be competent, committed, and professional. And finally, I actually get to be the change.