5. Mom Guilt

Let's talk about mom guilt. Because so many women carry it, this low hum of not enough that follows them from the school drop-off to the office to the dinner table and back again. And I want to ask: where did it come from, and does it actually have to be there?

First, let's name what we're up against. Women are raised with a picture in their heads of what a good mother looks like. She's patient. She's present. She's self-sacrificing. She's fun. She makes nutritious lunches and she's emotionally attuned and she does all of this at the same time, all the time. The gap between that image and real life, that's where guilt lives. That gap is enormous, and it was never meant to be closed. Because that image was never real to begin with.  Now women want to have a career, they want a purpose outside of being a mom, they don’t want to only indentify as a mom, they want for themselves.  

Here's something I want you to sit with: why do so many women believe that their love is the only love their children need?

Think of parenting as a scale out of 100. Both parents live on that scale. If you are a working mom deep in a big project right now and you are giving 35% at home, that is okay. Because there is another parent, hopefully, filling the rest. You are not failing. You are in a partnership. And your partner is also capable. They might cut the sandwiches into rectangles instead of triangles. They might let the kids stay up a little later. They might do bedtime completely differently than you. And here's the thing, that's not wrong. It's just different. Kids are resilient and adaptable and they actually benefit from learning that different people show up in different ways. That's not a failure of parenting. That's life preparation.

A lot of what we call mom guilt is actually disguised control. And that's worth sitting with too.

Now. I think the real root of a lot of this guilt is something women don't say out loud. Women who don't love their jobs come home already empty. They have white-knuckled through eight hours of work they don't care about, and then parenting feels impossible, and then the guilt floods in on top of the exhaustion. But here's the truth: it's not really about the kids. It's about her.

I talked to a woman recently who is the breadwinner in her house. She recognizes she needs a little more balance, and she's working on it. But here's what struck me: when she sees her kids, she is genuinely happy to be with them. When she gets to do the school pickup, she embraces it. When she's home for dinner, she is 100% present. She loves her job. That fulfillment leaves room in her cup to give. She's not walking through the door running on empty. She has something left.

That's the proof of concept. That's what it looks like when a full cup shows up.

So what do you do if you're not there yet? What if you're in a job you don't love because you have to be because the mortgage exists, because the kids need to eat, because you didn't have the luxury of choosing a path that lit you up? I want to be clear: I'm not talking to the single parent doing it all alone. I'm not speaking for women who never had the chance to make different choices. I can't - I haven't lived that. What I am talking about is the everyday mother in a two-parent household who has some agency, and who is still drowning in guilt anyway. That's who I'm speaking to.

And even for her, even in a job that doesn't fill her, I believe there is a way to carve out a little more room. It takes digging deep. It takes hard work. But there is always a way. And here's something worth remembering: showing up every single day to a job you may not love is still teaching your children something. That discipline, that commitment, that this is what we do for our people, that is still a lesson. That is still parenting.

This is also where I think it's worth asking a harder question: what are your family values, really?

Because sometimes the lifestyle is not fixed. Sometimes the lifestyle is the variable. If the big house, the new cars, and the three vacations a year matter deeply to your family…okay. That's a valid choice. But own it. And own the tradeoff that comes with it. Because somebody has to work a little more to hold that up.

And what if you scaled back a little? Smaller house. Less overhead. Not as fancy cars. Two vacations instead of three. What does that create? More margin. More presence. More room in the cup.

I'll tell you what it looks like in our house, because I think it's worth being honest. We live in Lions Bay. The views are spectacular, I catch myself thinking about it all the time, that I actually built a life that puts me here. But we don't have the nicest cars. We drive a Tesla purely because I drive so much and the math makes sense - that's it. Our furniture is mostly IKEA. We look for second-hand bikes. We do one family vacation every two years. Adam says no to a lot of things because we work within a budget. We have renters. These are not sacrifices that feel like losses. They are the trades we made, quietly and without apology, to build the life we actually want.

My kids have been in after-school care their whole young lives and I do not feel guilty about it. Not one bit. They love it. They play, they stay children, and then when I pick them up I get to be genuinely excited to see them because I am. I'm present at dinner. I'm present at bedtime. We have dance parties until 9pm. We skip rope in the driveway with music on. Their dad watches their favourite movies with them. Yes, there's yelling sometimes. That's normal. That's a house full of people who love each other and sometimes drive each other crazy.

The point is: we work as a partnership to raise these children. That's the whole antidote to mom guilt right there in one sentence. It's not about doing everything. It's about doing it together.

So stop. Just for a moment. Think of one thing in your life right now that is genuinely joyful. Just one.

Today, mine was looking out at the view from where I live and thinking: I built this. I don't have to burn the house down to have joy. I just had to stop and notice it was already there.

You don't have to change the whole wheel. You just have to be willing to do the hard thing, so the small things can change.

-Dani