Motherhood didn't make me less ambitious. It sharpened my focus and made me more intentional about the work I take on.

Aug 16, 2026 05:27 PM - 1 hour ago 1

A mother holding a babe connected a sofa while moving connected a laptop.

Before I became a mother, I thought ambition meant saying yes.

Yes to different assignment, moreover if the salary was mediocre. Yes to the gathering that astir apt could person been an email. Yes to the opportunity that sounded impressive, moreover erstwhile it wasn't particularly interesting. I wanted the byline, the invitation, the impervious that I was moving forward.

My almanac was full, and I seldom stopped to inquire whether the activity itself was worthy my time.

Then, successful the terrifying early days of the pandemic, I became a mother.

Everything felt frightening and surreal. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and abruptly responsible for keeping a mini quality live during a world emergency. The competent, assured type of myself I had known — the writer who interviewed people, met deadlines, and understood really to navigate her professional world — felt very acold away.

A fewer weeks into motherhood, I received a freelance duty from a marque that sold 1 of my favourite cheeses. I retrieve sitting astatine the array pinch my babe connected my lap, my laptop wedged precariously against its edge. My canine kept dropping a artifact astatine my feet, hopeful that this mightiness yet beryllium the infinitesimal I agreed to play. The full setup was absurdly inefficient.

And yet, I felt exhilarated.

Here was thing I knew really to do. I could unfastened a document, inquire the correct questions, put words into sentences, and move those sentences into a story. I mightiness not person known why my babe was crying, whether she was eating enough, aliases really immoderate of america were expected to unrecorded done that time. But I knew really to constitute astir cheese.

The duty felt for illustration a blessing — not because it was prestigious aliases particularly career-changing, but because it returned maine to a type of myself I recognized. For a small while, I was not only a brand-new mother fumbling done an intolerable moment. I was competent. I was confident. I was a writer.

Before my girl was born, I had talked to respective women who told maine that motherhood had fundamentally altered their priorities. They had erstwhile been incredibly ambitious, they said, but aft having children, the things they had cared astir professionally simply didn't consciousness arsenic important. They were happy to standard back.

Becoming a mom refined my ambition

I believed them, and I wondered whether the aforesaid point would hap to me.

It didn't.

I still wanted to write. In immoderate ways, I felt much for illustration a writer than ever. Sharing my ain stories, and the stories of the group I interviewed, felt not little important but much so. Motherhood had expanded my affectional world. It had made maine much funny astir families, bodies, work, and each the analyzable ways group build their lives.

I had much to say, and I felt a caller urgency to opportunity it.

What changed was not my ambition but my tolerance for activity that didn't matter to me.

During those first years aft becoming a mother, childcare often arrived successful mini scraps: 2 hours of help, a 90-minute nap, an unexpected agelong of quiet. Every hr I spent moving was now an hr I was paying for childcare, an hr carved retired of a nap, aliases an hr distant from my child.

I learned to beryllium down and activity pinch ferocious concentration. There was nary clip to lukewarm up, reorganize my inbox, aliases hold for inspiration. I opened the archive and began. The costs of my time, erstwhile mostly theoretical, became startlingly clear. I stopped wanting to capable my days simply to consciousness productive. I became overmuch little willing successful assignments that looked bully connected insubstantial but near maine depleted.

Less clip forced maine to attraction connected what matters

Having little clip made maine much focused. It besides forced maine to inquire a mobility I had seldom considered before: Is this activity important capable to warrant the clip it takes from the remainder of my life?

That mobility has transformed my career.

Since becoming a mother, I person walked distant from activity that nary longer aligned pinch my values. I person surgery into publications I erstwhile dreamed of penning for. I built a penning community. I yet made abstraction for the caller I had been postponing for years.

I americium not producing the top imaginable amount of work. But I americium pursuing work that feels much meaningful and much distinctly mine.

Balancing ambition and motherhood remains an intolerable ask. There is nary clever instrumentality that allows maine to beryllium afloat coming for my children while besides giving each master dream the clip and power it deserves. Sometimes I americium moving while wishing I were pinch them. Sometimes I americium pinch them while reasoning astir the effort I want to revise.

I want my children to cognize they matter much to maine than immoderate byline aliases master achievement. But I besides want them to spot that my dreams matter, conscionable arsenic I dream theirs will matter to them.

Motherhood did not shrink my master life. It clarified it. It taught maine that ambition is not astir cramming the top number of accomplishments into a life. It is astir deciding what is worthy giving that life to.