You’re a dreamer, a born leader, and love jumping into a project with both feet! People love your can-do attitude. The part that hurts is that the project leaves you feeling burnt and you haven’t even enjoyed the steps it took to get to the end. At the end of being real busy, you just wonder what you missed while you were working so hard. 

One of those projects is becoming a working mom. In the words of author Amy Westervelt, “We expect women to work like they don’t have children, and raise children as if they don’t work.” People tell you that you’re such a great mom, and you get lovely reviews at work and yet the life you’re living feels like drudgery and mostly you wonder when people will figure out that you don’t really have it all together.
It would be such a relief to stop working so hard at building this life, how on earth do those other moms make it look so easy?! But, honestly, you don’t know where to begin.

I loved my job as an elementary art teacher, I wanted to set foundations for creativity with young children and I had arrived! In time the teachers’ schedule allowed me the space to start a family. From the moment I knew I was pregnant I started planning for my long-term substitute and mapping out where my yet-arrived kiddo would go to childcare. I made a labor mix of 30 songs, I packed cozy pajamas, I was all set! The day my son was born, my Dad got lost driving to the hospital. Looking back, there were lots of little things like this I should have noticed. Every life has things that come up, just as we’ve put a plan in place, and mine was care for my Dad experiencing early onset dementia. One night my husband brought home a large bag of hand-me-down clothes for our new baby from a friend at work and I burst into tears. He was only mildly bewildered, he was figuring out that new moms cry a lot, but this time I couldn’t stop telling him, "it’s too much, it’s all too much, it’s just too much…" I tried again and again to restore balance, but any loose part felt like a calamity. I lost my temper, then felt horribly guilty for it, took all kinds of school work home for fear that I would fall behind, and it all looked to me like proof that I was a failure.

Then I found self-inquiry and coaching.

Self-inquiry is the way I discover the difference between the stories I live by and the life that’s available to me, again and again. Finally I didn’t have to stuff down the negative, critical voices in my head because I found peace in sitting with all the thoughts. Once I learned how to untangle my thinking, there was no thought too dark. Life felt so much lighter and my natural curiosity for life was re-ignited. It’s a practice, just like art-making, and surprises me in the same ways each time. Creativity + Self-Inquiry = my north star. It’s as winning a combination as peanut butter and chocolate for guiding me towards living a life I love.
Coaching is a blend of art and science. Like art, it requires practice, showing up again and again, and a willingness to get messy. Like science, coaching is built on careful observation and putting plans in place that support a desired outcome. If therapy is the work of healing, coaching is the work of growth. 

If you get halfway through preparing dinner before noticing that you’re wearing your coat and purse…
If landing the 6pm Parent-Teacher conferences slot feels as magical as a trip down Diagon Alley…
If your bag needs room for a laptop, lipstick, a cheese stick, and an assortment of marbles and wood bits. And wipes….
If you still think this Friday might be the night you stay awake past 9PM...

Then you must be a working mom, uniquely qualified to solve the problem of living out of balance!

Where do you begin?

If you’re tired of constantly borrowing from one part of life to pay for the other part, ready to enjoy all your hard work, it’s time. Sign up for a coaching conversation with me.