Lost in motherhood? How to reclaim your purpose and presence

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In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m diving into a topic so many ambitious women wrestle with but rarely talk about—the motherhood identity crisis. Becoming a mom can flip your world upside down, leaving you questioning who you are, what you want, and if the career you’ve worked so hard for still aligns with the life you want to lead.

I’m sharing my own experience of feeling lost after having kids, stories from my clients, and the transformative results they’ve achieved by navigating this identity shift with intention.

If you’ve ever felt torn between your goals and your family, or like you’re failing at everything despite giving it your all, this episode is for you. Let’s explore how to regain your sense of purpose, calm your mind, and reclaim your power to make life feel intentional again. You don’t want to miss this one!

Topics in this episode: 

  • The motherhood identity crisis and its impact. 

  • Personal stories of transformation. 

  • Finding purpose in your career. 

  • Quieting the mental chaos. 

  • Building a balanced, intentional life. 

 Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Motherhood can be a jarring experience for career driven women because it's a time when so many of us feel stuck and unsure if we want to keep doing what we're doing in our careers and if who we are is matching what we want anymore. 

On the podcast today, we're going to talk about what I call the motherhood identity crisis and why it's so common for goal focused and career driven women to experience once they become moms. 

I'm sharing with you my own internal crisis that I went through once I became a mom, as well as several other women that I have worked with. And I'm offering to you three. This is exactly what I need results that happen for my clients when they decide to get unstuck and start navigating all the internal crisis happening within them. 

My friends, this is really why I became a coach. To help working moms navigate this crucial moment in their life and to help them stop feeling like they have to choose. I'm sharing it all right here. You ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom. I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it. 

Hello, working moms. I am so excited to be here with you today talking about an experience that so many women experience once they start having kids. But there just seems to be a lot of shame and guilt in it. And so we just don't talk about it a lot. 

Today we're going to talk about the experience of feeling lost after you become a mom. 

Loosing your sense of self. 

I was recently having a conversation with a past client and she described this loss of self to me. And she told me that that was really why she came to coaching. She literally hired me to regain her sense of self, that that was how lost she was feeling. 

The motherhood identity crisis. 

One of the terms I use to describe this experience, this sort of phenomenon that so many women have, is I call it the motherhood identity crisis. Who am I and what do I want? 

These are the big questions that sort of define if someone is having a motherhood identity crisis. And it tends to happen anywhere from the moment you find out you're pregnant with your first all the way through your second or third child at any point in there if you find yourself asking questions like who am I and what do I want? And feeling uncertain about the path that you're on, or if the path that you're on is even the one that you want to be on, where every decision that you make feels like it's not right. And somehow you are failing at absolutely everything. 

If that's your experience anytime in there, then that's when you are experiencing what I call the motherhood identity crisis. 

You are not alone. 

And I want you to know that you are not alone. This sort of internal crisis is often associated, is often found at, sort of the transition of motherhood. And to be honest, I'm tired of being so silent about this. We as women need to talk about every facet of motherhood, to normalize it for other people, but really to normalize it for ourselves. 

And so today I want to share a little bit about my own experience of regaining my sense of self, my own sort of motherhood identity crisis and I want to share some stories of some of my clients as well and ultimately talk about kind of what happens when you get through this identity crisis with much more intentionality when you regain your sense of self, what happens? 

Okay, but before I even launch into that or any of that, really, I want you to understand why the motherhood identity crisis happens, particularly for ambitious and career driven women.

When ambition meets motherhood: navigating the shift

If you are someone that is almost like hardwired is how I would describe it. If you feel like you're hardwired to achieve and you have gone all into your career and you desire to be one of the top females in your company, if you're probably even the breadwinner of your family, you have your eye on that next promotion. You've been willing to go all in to work 50 hours a week to get your job done, to be as successful as you possibly can, to move your way up, if that's been you, then pregnancy is likely one of the first seasons that you have been through in your life where you physically couldn't operate that way anymore. Or maybe you pushed through it, but it was at the sacrifice of your own mental health or even the health of your, of your baby. 

Your body in pregnancy craves rest, right? You are literally building a tiny human inside of you and that tiny human is taking away all of the extra nutrients and energy that you have. And so oftentimes right there, that's when the self doubt starts to creep in. It's this wondering if you really can hack this. It's like, look, the kid isn't Even here, right now. And I can't even like figure out how to make it all work anymore, right? 

This question, you know, can I really be a mom and be successful in the same way that gets seeded in your mind right there at that moment. And then of course, you have the child and that seed develops into a full blown plant. Because not only is your body needing to recover from the birth and the late nights and the wake ups in the middle of the night and the sleeplessness, now you have a tiny human, right? 

"Your heartstrings now feel interwoven with this tiny human."

And that tiny human takes up residence in your heart and your mind in an unfathomable way. You can't stop thinking about them. Your heartstrings that were once attached to some other things, literally now feel interwoven with this tiny human almost instantaneously when you are away from them. Your whole body craves nearness and it also probably repels them a little bit at the same time, if we're totally honest, right? 

The extra hours that you spent working, combined with the amount of time and emotional energy you thought about work and all the things that needed to get done and all, all the things that you were doing and doing them excellently, all of that extra energy and time and emotional capacity, now it goes to your kid. And so now you start really feeling behind at work and really questioning what you're doing and why you're doing it and if you can do it, right? 

Big questions like, can I hack this anymore? Do I have what it takes? Am I still good at this anymore? Is this what I really want to be doing in my life? Is it worth it? Right? Big, big questions to be asking from, ambitious women that have traditionally been very focused on goals and focused on achieving, right? 

So it makes sense why career driven, goal focused, ambitious women, those all sort of mean the same thing to me, why they lose their sense of self once they become a mom. Their way of thinking and operating and prioritizing simply will not work any longer. 

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And yet, of course, they try to do it the old way. They try to go all in with their time, their energy, and all their thought space.

Then they fail because they've got a tiny human at home that's sucking all of that up from them. That failure—what they make it mean—is that they can't do this. They believe they're on the wrong path, that they're doing something wrong.

Of course, they try again. They pick themselves up and try again because they can't not try. They go all in, putting all of themselves back into work in the same way, operating with the same habits, without any boundaries, and with completely depleted emotional and mental energy.

And, of course, they fail again. Then they make that failure mean, once again, that they're doing it wrong. They tell themselves they can't hack it, that they're incapable, that they're less than, and that they can't be successful. Right?

And then it just goes on and on. We perpetuate the cycle as ambitious women in the middle of this motherhood identity crisis.

Rebecca’s story.

It was like a light switch for me when I was pregnant with my daughter 11 years ago. Something inside of me just turned on, and I started to question absolutely everything.

Up until that point, I had loved my job. I was good at it. I had worked my way up and held every position in the department. I was the lead in my department. At one point, I was even offered a chance to go after the director role.

I ended up not pursuing it because I didn’t want that kind of lifestyle or that particular career trajectory. Still, I was really good at my job. I commuted an hour each way, and I didn’t even mind the commute because I loved my job so much.

It’s crazy for me to think about that now. I remember it so well.

It took me 15 months to get pregnant with Lillian. And it was an excruciating time of dealing with infertility and wondering and questioning if we could ever really have the family that we had longed to have. 

Questioning everything.

And so when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, this, like, light switch, like, went on inside of me, and I started questioning everything, you know, big questions. What am I really doing with my life? Is this really what I want to be doing? Is this worth my time? Right? 

And it just went on and on and on from there. My sense of responsibility at that moment went through the roof. I felt absolutely trapped. I could not leave that job because I was the breadwinner and I held all the benefits. I felt responsible, and I was dying inside. 

Who am I and what do I want now that I'm a mom? 

These were the big questions that I wrestled with. And I have found so many other ambitious women to wrestle with as well. 

The client I mentioned earlier, the one who used the phrase "regaining her sense of self," had a story that wasn’t so dissimilar. But for her, it didn’t feel like a light switch. It kind of happened over time.

When life forces you to rethink everything.

She had her babies during COVID—at least her second one was born, I think, right around the time the whole shutdown happened. She was forced to find new ways of operating—new ways of getting her work done, staying focused, and being productive while working from home. All of this while navigating a newborn, managing a toddler, lacking childcare, and dealing with the fact that the whole world was shutting down.

To make things even harder, I don’t think she had any family nearby to help. Her questions came slowly but were strikingly similar: Is this really what I want to be doing? This is hard. Is it supposed to be this hard? Maybe I’m doing it wrong.

There was this constant, consistent, subtle questioning of herself that unfolded over the course of several years. Eventually, she reached out to me for coaching.

The women that hire me to help them through their motherhood identity crisis and to regain their sense of self, there are three things that I really noticed that they want as a part of this coaching experience. And I want to break down each of them for you. 

Feeling like you’re living a purpose driven life.

The first is they desire this feeling of purpose, right? If they're going to be spending 40 plus hours a day or a week, excuse me, away from their family, and they're going to be investing their best hours of the day to a job, they want it to feel purposeful, right?

Meaningful work is often one of my clients' top five values because they don't want to waste any time, right? You only get one life. They don't want to get through their kids' younger years and feel like they missed out and regret the decision to invest in their career.

This was ultimately what led me to become a coach and to find coaching and start a coaching business. Right?

Client stories.

My client Erica, years ago, she started her dream organizing business. 

My client Hillary, decided to start her business as a contractor, doing the same work she was doing before, but getting paid more on her terms with her flexibility. 

I had a client, Emily, who could not see her future trajectory at her current job. And so she went to start looking for another one. 

Or there was Aaliyah, who said that she wanted to get paid more and that she deserved to get paid more. And so if she was going to do the work that she was doing, she felt like she deserved to be paid more. And so she asked for more money and she got it. 

For some of my clients, this is a moment, it's a pivotal career moment. They've been working for probably a decade or more in their current career, on the current trajectory, and they stop for a moment and they say, is this what I want? Am I getting what I want out of my career, am I headed in a trajectory I want to be in? 

Regaining your sense of self.

So regaining your sense of self means regaining a sense of purpose, alignment, right? Where you wake up every day and you get ready to go to work and you no longer have that feeling like you're saying, I don't know if I want to be doing this anymore. Is this what I want to be doing? And instead there's this sense of, grounded certainty and like you're doing exactly what you're meant to be doing. 

In fact, for a good portion of my clients, Mondays become a day that they look forward to. Can you imagine that? Right. Just like we all sort of look forward to the weekend and a time of less obligation towards work. When you have that sense of purpose that we all want, when we regain our sense of self, right? When you have that sense of purpose, when your work feels more aligned to who you are and what you want. In this season of life, Mondays also become a day that you look forward to. 

It's so exciting when that happens. And of course, work still can feel hard. You know, I run a business, I run a multi, six figure business and I still have lots of days that feel hard and I have competing priorities and I have to make decisions about those things. And boundaries are hard to hold to. 

I know that I'm doing exactly what I am meant to be doing in this world.

But I almost never question what I'm doing. Almost never. Like 99% of the time, right. Maybe I'll give myself like 1% of the time. Those thoughts might cross my mind, but I almost immediately dismiss them. I know that I'm doing exactly what I am meant to be doing in this world. I know that. I know that. I know that the career that I've chosen, the trajectory I'm on is exactly the one one that I want to be on. I never feel lost in my career, pretty much ever. 

And that is what I want for you. 

That is one of the aspects of regaining your sense of self. 

A calm mind.

The second results that comes from regaining your sense of self and really strategically navigating yourself through this motherhood identity crisis is a calm mind. Now what I mean by that is that your mind is more focused, it's more controlled, right? It's not running 100 miles an hour, constantly thinking about the things that you're not doing and the way that you're failing people and things on your to do list that you're not getting to, that you really think that you should be getting to. 

That's one of the symptoms of feeling lost, right? Your brain second guesses everything and thinks that you should always be doing something that you're not doing. So then there's this loss of presence, right? 

When you feel lost in the motherhood identity crisis, when you're at work, you're probably not thinking about work all the time. You're thinking about the kids.

You're thinking about what you're not doing for them, how you should be spending more time with them. You're replaying meltdowns in your head and wondering if you should have been doing things differently.

You're thinking about how you're probably going to be sending your kids to therapy one day when they get older, right? Because you're doing things wrong. That's what you're thinking about.

But then, of course, when you're at home trying to spend time with your kids and take care of your family needs, your brain is thinking about work and how you didn't get to those emails like you said you would, right? You're wondering if your team is actually feeling supported by you, if you're letting them down, if you should be doing more. You're kicking yourself for not making more time to strategically think or to prep. And you shame yourself for procrastinating on things and waiting to the last minute. So you never think that you're ever putting out your best work because of it. 

When you regain that sense of self, you regain your presence. 

You learn to listen to that negative talk track in your head and give it a whole lot less weight. Your brain is just trying to help you out so you don’t forget anything, so you don’t let anyone down, so you make the best decisions, and so you show up as the best possible mom for your kids and the best possible leader for your team.

That’s why your brain focuses so much on the things you’re not doing and questions the decisions you’re making. But when you regain your sense of self, you realize that you don’t have to listen to that voice so much anymore. It’s not a voice of reason; it’s a voice of fear.

So, you’ll hear me ask this question in coaching a lot when we start working together: Is that the voice of fear talking to you right now, or is it a voice of reason?

Then, I help you develop a much more intentional mindset that focuses on the significant impact you’re making at work and all the things you’re doing right as a mom. Rather quickly, you’ll find that your brain starts to settle into a place of calm.

Imagine being home with your kids, sitting around a dinner table asking them about their day and truly being able to listen to their answer. 

Imagine playing Candyland or reading them a book and snuggling, or having a conversation with them, depending on what age your kids are and being able to fully concentrate on them. Your phone isn't even within reach because you're not even thinking about work. You're not worried that somebody's going to notify you or something like that. 

You can't wait to hear what your kid is going to tell you about the next obscure or obscene comment they're going to make that is so funny and it's going to make you crack up. 

You can't feel like you're missing out on your kid's life when you have this level of presence. And it's one of the things that you gain when you regain that sense of self. 

Rediscovering Yourself and Becoming Proactive Again

When you get yourself through the motherhood identity crisis, the last thing that happens when you truly regain your sense of self is that you become proactive again. Life stops feeling like it’s happening to you. It stops feeling like a rinse-and-repeat cycle. It stops feeling like the same old thing every day because you start to feel more in control.

I spend about four to six sessions with my clients helping them articulate the things that are most important to them—what makes them special and unique, why they’re here on this earth in the first place, and the reason for that. Right?

By the end, they have this list of words that truly defines who they are. They don’t just know it in their head—they feel it in their body. It’s a deep, undeniable understanding: This is who I am on a human level. This is why I’m here. It feels so clear to them.

With that clarity, they can start making decisions to live into the things that are most important to them—their unique strengths and the things that bring them life—in a much more intentional, proactive way. They’re able to go after opportunities that align with what matters most to them.

The Power of Knowing Your Compass

Let me give you some examples. I had a client who identified these core pieces of who they were. I call this your compass. Right? After doing the work of articulating her compass—her strengths, the things that made her tick—she started to notice how she had been holding herself back in meetings.

Once she realized that her best qualities were her ability to ideate and problem-solve, she began inserting herself more and speaking up. Over time, she became known in her company as a problem solver and ideator. It was so life-giving for her to lean into those strengths.

Before this, she hadn’t been leaning into her potential because she felt like an imposter. She didn’t know who she was and had lost her confidence. But once we articulated her compass, she was able to regain her confidence, lean in, and find much more joy and self-assurance at work.

I had another client who was heavily involved in her community. She was a member of her kids’ PTA, sat on a few local boards, and volunteered at homeless shelters. While all of these commitments were meaningful, they left her overwhelmed and overscheduled.

When she articulated her compass and identified what truly mattered to her, she could clearly see which commitments were important and which ones she had taken on out of a sense of obligation. From there, she did the hard but necessary work of releasing the commitments that were no longer life-giving.

Even though letting go was difficult, it was incredibly freeing. She knew exactly what mattered to her, the kinds of opportunities she wanted to commit to, and those she did not—and she understood why. This clarity allowed her to feel much more in control of her schedule and less overcommitted.

And then, let me give you one more. I had another client. When she was really able to articulate her compass and feel that sense of purpose, she quit her job. It was so clear to her that this job was not aligned with what she wanted to do. The company did not have future opportunities for her and she didn't want to waste her time anymore. 

And so she quit. Now of course she had the privilege of being able to do that because of what her husband did and her family situation. But she did the hard thing. And then she took a short leave of absence and we together started really looking at where did she really want to take her career, what did she really want this next season to be for her? And she was so much more clear on what that was. And, life felt so much more intentional when she was able to do that. 

Regaining Your Sense of Self Brings Clarity and Intention

Proactive, intentional, decided, controlled. That's what's going to happen when you regain your sense of self and know who you are at this really core level. You're going to look at your calendar, and it's going to be filled with things you really want to do—instead of all these things you feel like you have to do, the things you feel obligated to do or think are just the "responsible" choice.

Your career path feels decided. Your mind feels calm. Your body is able to be present. And your commitments on your calendar feel chosen and intentional.

This, my friends, is what happens when you regain your sense of self.

You Don’t Have to Sacrifice Your Career or Burn Out

Now, for some of you, you can just sort of muddle your way through these early years of your kids’ lives and all the internal questions you’re wrestling with. And if that doesn’t lead you to quit or burn out, you might eventually get to a place where life feels more meaningful—where things feel proactive and calm.

But for most women, instead of reaching that place, they make big decisions to pull back in their careers. They go part-time or sacrifice themselves in some way because it feels like the only option. It feels like the only way to regain control of their lives is to pull back professionally.

But, my friends, this is not the only option. This is where coaching with me becomes a strategic decision to invest in your future.

With coaching, you can decide to go all in and be successful in your career while at the same time experiencing joy and prioritizing your family. You don’t have to choose, and you don’t have to burn out or quit to get there.

Hiring me as your coach means having someone strategically and efficiently ask you the right questions at the right time, call you out when needed, and guide you through a proven process that has worked for hundreds of women before you.

That, my friends, is a solution worth investing in.

End the Year Strong and Start 2025 with Purpose and Balance.

The holidays are approaching, and there has never been a better time to start coaching with me. Not only can we begin this process now to help you end the year strong and focused, but you’re also guaranteed to have a much more successful, calm, balanced, intentional, and proactive 2025.

You’ll have my support through what is, for most of us, the most stressful time of the year: the holidays. The holidays bring extra commitments and expectations. If you’re already struggling with current commitments and expectations, it’s only going to get more exhausting from here unless you get help.

I will help you decide what your commitments are this holiday season and stick to them. I will guide you in holding your boundaries so that you don’t flood life with work, but instead, pull back and become intentional with how you want to experience the holidays. I will coach you on how to speak up for what you need and how to ask for the support you deserve.

You deserve a wonderful, calm, restful, joy-filled holiday experience. You are not stuck. You are not lost. I will coach you all the way through it.

Schedule a free breakthrough call.

The next step to work with me is to schedule your free breakthrough call. This is an offer I give to anyone interested in working with me. It’s not just a “get to know you” call—it’s a strategy call.

During this call, we’ll set the vision for the proactive and balanced working mom life you want. We’ll talk about exactly what’s getting in the way of achieving it on your own and what will happen if you keep trying to do it alone. Then I’ll lay out a plan for exactly how we’ll get you to this vision—this life of balance, proactivity, and purpose—through coaching.

I have made space for you, my friends, in my calendar.

Please reach out. You can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to schedule that free strategic call with me. Can't wait to talk to you working moms. Until next week. Let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson