Find Your Unicorn Space summary

Unicorn space is historically more difficult to come by for women than for men.

Studies show that the burden of unpaid domestic work is higher for women in spite of whether they work or not. The pandemic didn’t help. At one point, unpaid labor for women rose 153 percent and three million women dropped out of the workforce.

To find your unicorn space, you need to have fairness in the home. Women are statistically likely to be shouldering an unfair share of the unpaid domestic work it takes to run a household and family.

The first thing you need to do to begin claiming your space is to realize your own value. It’s good to be compassionate, generous, and kind to the people you love, especially if you’re a mother. At some point in motherhood, your children are pretty intensely dependent. But this doesn’t last forever, and eventually, the time comes to restore balance.

Now that you’ve carved out some unicorn space for yourself, you may be wondering what you should do with your time.

If you’re drawing nothing but blanks when asking yourself this, chances are that over years of too much work and too much caregiving, you’ve lost connection with yourself. Loss of identity means a disconnection from yourself and your passions.

Following curiosity is the path to creativity and self-expression but it can take a while to find that path.

Curiosity is the itch or desire to explore. When you’re in a state of curiosity, you’re engaged, you’re in the flow, and when you have to leave, you can’t wait to get back.

In order to actually maintain your unicorn space once you’ve found it, you have to give in to three critical permissions.

Permission number one: you’re allowed to be unavailable. This is so hard, particularly for moms. We think we need to be on call for everyone all the time. In fact, we probably judge other moms when we see them not being available for their kids.

Once you’ve discovered your passion, it won’t be enough to keep it to yourself. Something inside of you will call out for you to share your gift with the world.

This may be intuitive. Perhaps your creativity led you to knitting but you want to use that passion to connect with others. So you use some of your unicorn time to take your knitting to a local retirement home to knit with and teach the residents.

Completion is more important than perfectionism. In fact, perfectionism can hold you back and even kill your project. Sometimes you just have to choose to be done. Sometimes the project timeline will end itself.

For instance, if you’re doing a dance in a recital, when the recital is over, your dance project is over whether or not you’ve done a good job.

When finding your unicorn space, remember that you matter just as much as your family does. You deserve to be a priority in your own life. Your first step is claiming the time and space. Though this may require some negotiation with your partner, keep firm about the fact that you deserve and have a right to this time and space. Once you have that time, hold your boundaries and reject interruptions. Follow your curiosity until you find your passion. And avoid perfectionism so you can enjoy the benefits of completing a project.