If you’re feeling mentally overloaded, emotionally drained and unsupported in your everyday life, don’t despair. Room for Home: A Woman’s Guide to Work-Life Balance Beginning With Your Space offers a calm, approachable path to feeling more grounded, supported and at ease—starting with the space you call home. The book is written by Sara Ann—founder of Mind Body Home™ and Jade Scott Design, a Tampa Bay-based lifestyle and wellness brand—and aims to provide a fresh take on work-life balance by exploring the connection between burnout, mental load, emotional well-being and the spaces we live in. An online coach who began her career in corporate healthcare, Sara Ann started her own interior design studio, which she ran for several years in Pittsburgh, after deciding she wanted a more creative outlet. During the pandemic, she found herself drawn to Feng Shui—the ancient Chinese practice meaning "wind-water"—as well as energy work and personal development. As she began weaving those principles into her own life, she realized they could help other women, too, and so the idea for Room for Home was born.

As she began her research for the book, Sara Ann created a Facebook survey in which she asked, “What's one thing right now that feels overwhelming?" and about  90% of the women who responded said it had something to do with their home. “A lot of women these days are overwhelmed with their home—it's another thing to maintain and they just can't keep up. These are the things I typically hear in my sessions,” says Sara Ann. “I help them reframe that by using their home as a source of support throughout some of the practices that I introduce in the book.” Rather than offering rigid systems or unrealistic self-help advice, the book focuses on small, meaningful shifts that help women create more calm, clarity and balance in their daily lives. Through short, easy-to-read chapters, Sara Ann explores topics like burnout, clutter, nervous system stress, emotional overwhelm, seasonal living and the connection between our environment and our wellbeing.  Homes play a significant and emotional role in professional health, Sara Ann explains. “We go to bed there at night. It's our safe space and I think that the pandemic really exposed that for people.” She says that the fix is not complicated. “We don't need to create meditation rooms and spaces to experience that. I think that we can experience that just through the rhythms that we move through each day.” She hopes the book encourages readers to rethink what work-life balance really means. “When I think of balance, I think of the scales and for something to be in balance, it's to hold equal weight on both sides. And that's just not realistic. The reframe I like to offer is alignment instead—being okay with things being out of balance. Coming back into alignment just means acknowledging what your values are for yourself and your family and what's important to you at home.”  SRQ