I Thought Motherhood Set Me Back. I Was Wrong
The Quiet Lie of Falling Behind
I thought I had fallen behind.
Not in a dramatic, life-is-over kind of way but quietly. Life looked full from the outside but I realised the world had moved on and I was stationery.
My days were packed. Completely consumed. Feeding, cleaning, planning, worrying. Watching The Wiggles long after the kids had gone to sleep. Learning recipes I never cared about before. Living a life that was busy to the brim and yet, somehow, I felt strangely invisible.
While I was doing all of this, the world outside didn’t pause. It sped up. New ideas, new tools, new conversations. AI became a thing. Entire industries shifted. And I didn’t even see it happen.
I didn’t say it out loud, but I carried this quiet belief with me: I’ve fallen behind because I chose this life. What I couldn’t see then was this: I wasn’t falling behind. I was just measuring growth in a language the world doesn’t value openly.
The Promise of Having it All
I grew up watching my mum do two jobs—one at work, and one at home. And the second one never really ended. Not because anyone forced her to do it, but because of her own standards. The way she wanted the house to be. The way she wanted us to be raised. Out of the standard that she held herself to.
A woman’s work is never done, and I don’t think it’s just social conditioning. A part of it is deeply internalised. Almost inherited. Not because the world always demands it, but because we internalised that it.
Women have been doing this since the beginning of civilisation. Holding homes together, raising children, managing the emotional climate of a family. These aren’t new roles. They’re inherited instincts. And habits like these don’t disappear just because the world modernises.
But I also grew up in a time that told us something else—that we could have it all. A career, a family, ambition, independence. No trade-offs. No loss of self. Just balance, neatly packaged. No one really explained what that balance would cost.
Then life shifted again. I moved countries. Became an expat. Started from scratch in a place that looked familiar on the surface but felt completely different underneath. New systems, new culture, no support system built over years—just the quiet work of figuring everything out as I went. And then the kids came.
Life didn’t gradually change—it flipped. There was no slow transition, no spacious period of reinvention. No time to sit and ask, “Who am I becoming now?” It was survival. Physical, emotional, logistical survival.And somewhere in that, the question of reinventing myself didn’t disappear—it just got buried under everything that felt more urgent.
Outgrowing The Life I Was Trying To Return To
For a long time, I kept trying to fit the new me into an old life.
I thought the problem was strategy. Or discipline. Or clarity. If I could just organise myself better, focus harder, find the “right” path. If I could just pick up where I left off. But something wasn’t clicking. Because the truth was, I wasn’t the same person anymore. And no amount of forcing was going to make my old life fit. What I didn’t understand then but can see now—is that I wasn’t stuck.
I was changing.
Motherhood changes you in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. Raising children doesn’t just take your time. It stretches you in ways nothing else does. It demands patience when you have none left. It asks for emotional regulation when you’re overwhelmed. It forces you to confront parts of yourself you didn’t even know existed—your triggers, your limits, your capacity to give without immediate return. You’re needed all the time. Even when you’re not physically with your kids, a part of your mind always is.
It’s physical exhaustion. It’s mental overload. It’s emotional challenges, every single day.
Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, something else was happening too.
I was growing. I was being stretched. Not in ways that show up on a résumé. Not in ways the world rewards or even recognises. But in ways that were quietly reshaping who I am. At the time, it didn’t feel like growth. It just felt hard.
But looking back now, I can see now. My children didn’t slow me down. They changed me. I wouldn’t be this version of myself without my children. And that’s when the real mindset shift happened for me.
When a Quote held Up A Mirror
I saw something on Instagram recently that struck a chord.
It was a quote shared by Natalie Ellis from Boss Babe, originally by an account called “inexdigitalwealth.” It read: “Someday my children might ask, ‘Mom, did you sacrifice your dreams for me?’ I’ll answer, ‘No, I chased them with you right beside me.’”
How powerful is that? It brought tears to my eyes. I’ve seen hundreds of quotes the kind you read, nod at, save. But this one meant more. It stayed with me not because it immediately resonated, but because it didn’t! And honestly, my first reaction wasn’t inspiration. It was discomfort.
It confronted something I hadn’t fully admitted to myself—that a part of me still believed I had, in fact, sacrificed something. That my dreams had been put on hold. That motherhood and ambition were, at some level, in conflict. Because if I’m being truthful, a part of me still believed the opposite. That I had paused something. Delayed something. Maybe even lost something. That raising kids and building something of my own couldn’t fully coexist. It showed me the mirror to my own limiting beliefs about my capability.
But the more I sat with it, the more I realised ‘maybe the problem isn’t having children’. Maybe it’s the way I was thinking about time and identity. Maybe the problem wasn’t that my children were in the way. Maybe it was that I was still seeing my life in fragments—who I was before them, and who I was supposed to become after.
I used to think reinventing yourself happens before kids or after they grow up. Not during. Not in the middle of the chaos. But what if that’s not true? What if they’re not the interruption, but the context in which everything meaningful is being built?
I’m not there yet. I still know I have work to do to carve out my identity again, to pursue the things that call me, to move with intention instead of hesitation. But I’m beginning to see this much more clearly now: My children are not the weight I carry on the way to my dreams. They are the reason I have the depth, the creativity, and the resilience to chase them at all. They’re also the reason I’ve developed the kind of depth, strength, and persistence I didn’t have before.
From Depletion To Emotional Wealth
There’s a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from doing too much but from feeling too little while on autopilot. I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I recognise it now as emotional poverty.
And it’s something many working mothers quietly struggle with. Especially those trying to rebuild, reinvent, become an entrepreneur, or simply stay afloat.
You can be doing everything right on paper—raising kids, managing a home, and still feel strangely disconnected. You’re functioning. Delivering. Keeping things moving. But internally, something feels flat. Not alive and enthused.
Emotional poverty isn’t about a lack of love. It’s about a lack of access—to yourself. Where joy that isn’t rushed. To presence that isn’t split in ten directions. To connection that isn’t squeezed into the margins of an already overextended life. It shows up as numbness. As disconnection. As constantly doing but rarely feeling fulfilled by what you’re doing.
And the hardest part? It’s easy to miss. Because from the outside, nothing looks broken. For me, the shift didn’t come from reducing responsibility or finding balance, because that’s not always realistic.
It came from reframing what I was already living. I realised I had to nurture myself. I had to feed my soul. I had to water my calling. I had to stop and smell the roses and sometimes let things fall apart without me. When the old deck of cards started falling apart, a different path began to emerge. I started to feel more energised, more present and life felt more meaningful. Still exhausting and the same level of responsibilities but more purposeful. More… connected to what I was actually living. More aligned. I started to feel present with my children and not just manage them. And that made all the difference.
Reinventing In The Middle Of The Mess
I don’t have a formula for this. I’m still figuring it out as I go. But these are a few things that have shifted something for me—small, but not insignificant.
- I stopped waiting to feel ready
That “I’ll start when things settle down” phase doesn’t really come. Or it keeps moving. So, I started doing things before I felt clear or confident. Even small things. And weirdly, the clarity followed. - I stopped separating everything in my head
Work life. Mom life. Personal life. It all felt like it had to sit in neat boxes. But it doesn’t. It can’t. My kids are always in the background of everything I do anyway—mentally, emotionally. So instead of fighting that, I’ve started letting things blend a little more. - I changed what “productive” looks like
Some days, getting one meaningful thing done is enough. Some days it’s just thinking deeply about something while doing chores. It doesn’t look impressive, but it’s not nothing. - I started paying attention to how I feel, not just what I’m doing
There’s a difference between being tired and being disconnected. I didn’t realise that for a long time. Now I try to notice when I feel flat, or irritated, or just… off. That usually tells me more than any to-do list. - I stopped trying to go back to who I was
This one took time. I kept thinking I needed to “return” to my old self. But that version of me didn’t have this life, these responsibilities, or this depth. So of course it doesn’t fit anymore. - I started seeing this phase as part of the process, not an interruption
This is probably the biggest shift. Maybe this isn’t the part where everything pauses. Maybe this is the part that’s actually building something—just not in a way that’s obvious yet.
None of this makes life less messy. But it makes the mess feel purposeful.