The Collision Between Motherhood and Ambition
What I expected motherhood to feel like
I think we all know those idealistic moms we see online or god forbid in real life that make motherhood seem like a childhood dream. I’m no dummy, I knew that wasn’t going to be my forte - “mom’n” wasn’t going to arrive naturally for me. I expected a few things to go my way tho: Picky eaters? Just not happening. Toys that litter the entire house? Obviously my kid would have one toy chest and all the toys would fit into that one box. How hard is it people? (The hypothetical toy box was full before the FIRST kid even turned one). Ok, but honestly, I didn’t really put much thought at all into what motherhood would feel like. Which is probably why I have felt so unprepared….4 years into it.
What surprised me
So I’m not the woman who dreamed of and named all my kids before they existed. But what surprised me is how obsessed I have been in this process anyways, and especially in the dreaded baby phase. I thought I’d be so uncomfortable with babies since I don’t know how to act around other people’s children. But what is better for the soul than the cutest being on the planet needing you and thriving off of being close to you. It’s strangely healing. Ah don’t get me wrong, that feeling fluctuates with “when can I have my life back?” but it’s a wild thing to be pulled in polar opposite directions at once.
How ambition changed
The thing about ambition for women like us is, it doesn’t really go away. That is likely a lot of the source of my frustration being an entrepreneur building a business and a family at the same time: living life on a tiny person’s 2 hour wake/sleep/feed cycle when I want to reorganize our business structure and create company SOPs in Notion while trying to systematize my weekly meal plan/grocery shopping and get 10,000 steps in a day when my body says I’m tired at 3,000. I’m fine. I’m fiiiiine.
What I’m still figuring out
I have to constantly, and I mean constantly, remind myself that these kids are only small for a little while. And if I’m so stressed out about what I can not get done in a day, I’m not only going to miss out on being present for their magical little lives, but I’m not getting anything heroic done anyway by having slack open 24/7, thank you sleep deprivation. My ChatGPT monologues are an absolute unstable, chaos-driven rollercoaster of “how can I balance ” one week and then “how can I do a 90-day all in” the next because hormones. Let’s go with that one.
Ladies, we got this
I’ll tell you what does help. A simple, verryy simple “morning routine”. Which can be the night before or for me is typically late morning or noon by the time I’ve dropped of my oldest at school, had breakfast, sort of cleaned up, and put my baby to his first nap:
Sit down
Clear your mind for a couple minutes (don’t time yourself)
meditation, an inspiring song, listening to an affirmation, praying, whatever you fancy
Write 3 things that are important to accomplish for the day (I started this with 6, but most days I can’t hit 6 real goal-driving tasks so I’ve chosen 3 as a more stable goal for this season).
Then choose ONE priority for the day and don’t do anything until that one thing is completed.
That’s it. Some days that’s all the get’s done. Other’s I can hit a few other items. This creates slow progress that’s actually achievable with small children.
The short story, you might become a different person when having kids and ambition could change. But you might just add them to your already full life. Kids make everything better, and everything harder. But what isn’t hard these days? And who knows, maybe they’ll learn a thing or two from watching Mama go for it.