Years before I became a mother, I was a doctoral student studying identity transitions, and the transition to motherhood. I added a few open-ended questions to a survey for new mothers, expecting what researchers usually expect — a sentence or two, maybe a handful of longer responses. Instead, nearly everyone wrote essays. They wrote about their bodies, their marriages, their loneliness, their ambition, their confusion about who they were becoming. They wrote about feeling invisible and...
8 months ago • 3 min read
Happy Sunday! Anyone else already in the schedule upheaval of snow? It's a lot! But despite that, I'm popping into your inbox today with a special weekend edition of my newsletter because I have a had a lot of great questions about my Ambitious Mothers Mastermind program and wanted to share those with everyone. I stated running these groups a while ago, because I have experienced- both as a group member and a group leader- the power of being in a supportive, small, group. The experience of...
8 months ago • 2 min read
A client once sat across from me, eyes red from crying, shoulders curved inward, and said very quietly: “Maybe this is a sign.” Her nanny had quit the week before. No warning. Just quit. The logistics were chaotic- missed meetings, scrambling for backup care, recalculating the month. That was hard, but that wasn’t what was undoing her. It was the meaning she was making. “Maybe I wanted too much,” she said. “Maybe this is what happens when you try to do both.” I have heard versions of this so...
8 months ago • 4 min read
We’re often told to find our village. And there’s truth in that. Support matters. Connection matters. Being known by others changes how heavy life feels. But what that phrase rarely captures is how long it can take — and how many attempts it sometimes requires — before belonging actually arrives. Not as an idea, but as a felt sense. The moment your shoulders drop. The exhale. That has been true in my own life. When I became a mother at 27, everything felt more vulnerable than I expected. Not...
8 months ago • 3 min read
A few weeks ago, my ten-year-old told me she’s auditioning for another theater production. She’s one of the younger kids in the room, trying out alongside middle schoolers and high schoolers, and when I asked her what part she was hoping for, she didn’t hedge. She didn’t soften it.She didn’t say, “I’ll just be happy to be cast.” She named the biggest role. I felt that familiar mix of pride and protectiveness rise up in my chest. Pride, because she wanted something and wasn’t afraid to say it...
9 months ago • 4 min read
A quick note outside my usual Wednesday essay — I wanted to share something directly today... There’s a version of me I think about sometimes. From the outside, she looked like she had it together. I was carrying an incredibly heavy load at work. I was pregnant with my second child. I was parenting a toddler who needed more than I knew how to give. If you had looked at my life then, you probably would have said, She’s doing it. She’s managing. I had the title, the fancy name brand employer,...
9 months ago • 2 min read
There’s a moment that happens again and again in my office. A woman sits down, takes a breath, and starts telling me about her life. The job she cares about. The kids she loves. The constant feeling that she’s behind, no matter how hard she tries. She doesn’t use big language. She doesn’t say anything about culture or policy or systems. What she usually says is something much smaller. And much heavier at the same time. “I don’t know why I can’t handle this.”“I should be better at this by...
9 months ago • 3 min read
Over Christmas break, my 10-year-old got a little crochet kit- one of those cute “make your own animal” sets that looks deceptively simple until you’re actually holding the yarn… She opened it immediately, spread everything out, and got to work. She’s always been fiercely independent (she’s the youngest of four, and I think she learned early that waiting for help can be… inefficient). I still remember her preschool teachers praising her for being the only one who could get all her snow gear...
9 months ago • 3 min read
For a long time, the idea of writing a book lived quietly in the back of my mind. Not because it felt like something I had to do, or even something I was sure I would ever do. It was more like an idea, a possibility. One that surfaced now and then, but that I didn’t feel like I had the time or space for. Life was full. Work was full. Parenting was full. And so the idea stayed there, loosely held, not acted on. It showed up in little sentences during morning walks with my dog, Allie… fragments...
9 months ago • 3 min read