Woman, Let's Talk About Your Mental Health. Because It Matters.
A candid conversation about mental health, performance, and what it really means to be okay.
Woman, Let’s Talk
About Your Mental Health.
Because It Matters.
Not the polished version you share with colleagues. The real one.
By Bamidele Farinre
Bamidele Farinre, CSci, FIBMS, HonFellow AHCS | Chartered Biomedical Scientist, Educator and Author
I want to start with something you might not have heard recently—not from your manager, not from your institution, not from the wellbeing newsletter that landed in your inbox during a week you were already drowning in. I want to say it plainly: how you are doing matters. Not how you are performing. How you are actually doing.
Because there is a version of this conversation that gets dressed up in self-care language and posted alongside a candle and a bath bomb. That is not this. This is about the real weight that many women, particularly those navigating STEM, leadership, or both, carry in ways that rarely get named out loud.
I have been that woman. I still am, some days.
“We have become very good at looking fine. And very good at paying the price for it privately.”
Part One
The weight nobody asked you to carry
If you are a woman in a professional environment, especially one where you are underrepresented, you will know this feeling: the meeting where you speak and the room moves on, and then someone else says the same thing and suddenly it lands. The performance review where your confidence is noted as a concern rather than your ideas being celebrated. The constant low-level calculation of how much of yourself to show today, in this room, with these people.
That calculation is exhausting. And it does not stop when you leave the office. It follows you home, into your sleep, into the conversations you have with yourself at 2 a.m. when the ceiling is very quiet and your thoughts are very loud.
None of this is weakness. It is the accumulated cost of operating in environments that were not designed with you fully in mind. Naming it is not complaining. It is the beginning of dealing with it honestly.
A question worth sitting with
When did you last tell someone the true answer to “How are you?” Not the short answer. The real one.
If you cannot remember, that might be something worth paying attention to.
Why we keep saying we are fine
There are good reasons women do not talk openly about struggling. In professional spaces, particularly in science, medicine, and technology, there is still a quiet belief that admitting difficulty is admitting inadequacy—that if you cannot handle the pressure, maybe this was not the right field for you after all.
That belief is wrong. But it is powerful. And it is reinforced every time a colleague pushes through something they should have taken time off for, every time someone apologises for needing support, every time mental health is treated as a personal failing rather than a human experience.
For women from underrepresented groups, there is an additional layer: the fear that struggling will confirm what some people already half-expect—that you are an exception, a quota, a risk. That any sign of not coping will be used as evidence against not just you, but everyone who looks like you and comes after you. That is an enormous and unfair thing to carry. And many women carry it silently every day because the alternative feels too costly.
“You were never supposed to earn your right to struggle. You are human. That was always enough.”
What actually helps
I am not going to give you a list of wellness habits, though some of those have their place. What I want to offer is more specific than that.
Find one person you do not have to perform for. Not a mentor who needs to see your best self. Not a friend from work who might pass something on. One person, inside or outside your professional life, with whom you can be fully honest. That relationship, if you can find or build it, is worth more than most other interventions.
Stop treating rest as a reward. Rest is not something you earn after you have done enough. It is something your body and mind require to function. When you frame it as a reward, you will always find a reason you have not quite earned it yet.
Notice the difference between tired and depleted. Tired is fixed by sleep. Depleted is something deeper. It is the feeling of having nothing left to give, of going through the motions, of work that once meant something feeling hollow. Depletion needs more than a good night’s sleep. It needs an honest conversation, possibly with a professional, about what is happening and what needs to change.
Ask for help before the crisis, not during it. We are not good at this. We wait until things are urgent, then reach out. But help is more effective—and easier to receive—before you hit the wall. The GP appointment, the conversation with your manager, the message to a colleague you trust: do it sooner than feels necessary.
One thing to do this week
Send one message to someone you have been meaning to check in with properly. Not the quick “how are you?” in passing. A real message. Ask them a specific question. Be the person who showed up before they had to ask.
What I want institutions to hear
This article is primarily written for women. But this part is for the organisations they work in, the institutions they study at, and the leaders who set the tone for what is acceptable to say out loud.
Wellbeing programmes that sit alongside cultures of overwork, dismissal, and invisibility are not wellbeing programmes. They are theatre. A yoga class on a Wednesday does not address the fact that certain women in your organisation are twice as likely to have their contributions overlooked, their concerns minimised, or their ambitions quietly managed down.
If you want to support the mental health of women, particularly those from underrepresented groups, the work is in the culture, not the calendar. It is in who gets promoted, who gets sponsored, who gets taken seriously when they raise a concern, and who gets quietly passed over while everyone nods about inclusion.
That is harder than a workshop. It requires honest self-examination at every level. But it is the only thing that actually moves the needle for the women who need it most.
A final word, from me to you
If you have read this far, something in here spoke to you. Maybe it named something you have been carrying without quite having the words for it. Maybe it reminded you of someone you should check on. Maybe it just felt good to have someone say it plainly rather than wrap it in professional distance.
Your mental health matters. Not because you will perform better when you look after it—though you probably will. Not because resilient people achieve more, though that framing is tired and I refuse to use it. Because you are a person. Because the life behind the career is the one that counts. Because the woman reading this deserves the same care and honesty she almost certainly extends to everyone around her.
You are allowed not to be fine. You are allowed to say so. And you are allowed to take up the space it requires to get better.
Bamidele Farinre, CSci, FIBMS, HonFellow AHCS
Chartered Biomedical Scientist | Educator | Author | Global STEM Advocate
Bamidele Farinre is the author of The Mentor’s Journey: From Learning to Leading and a contributor to the APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM’s AI equity inquiry. She writes and speaks on mentorship, leadership, equity, and the human cost of systems that exclude. The No Ceiling Philosophy, built on the belief that there is no limit to what you can become, runs through everything she does.
Influential Women | influentialwomen.com
© No Ceiling 2026 | Bamidele Farinre
