Why working moms can’t do it all and why choosing your chapter is the more powerful move

What if being good at everything, and I mean really good, the kind of good where people look at you and think she has it all together, what if that is a problem?

I know. That’s a big thing to say right at the start. And honestly, I didn’t use to think like that. For me it was a goal. But something happened that kind of shifted things for me.

It was December. My husband Denis had his architecture practice year end party in Pennsylvania. And I drove out Wednesday at noon for two hours, attended the party that evening, stayed overnight, drove back Thursday late morning. My mother-in-law had come to cover while I was away and she handled everything. The Wednesday afternoon school pickup for my youngest, the afterschool pickup for my oldest, the enrichment class drop off, the whole evening routine and then the Thursday morning rush to get two girls under 8 ready for school. All of it.

And I remember being in the car on the way home on Thursday thinking: ok, we are good. I had done the drive, attended a party, been present, and now I was doing the last leg. Pick my mother-in-law up, drop her off and then go back home to keep things moving, which was kind of my thing. I managed everything, even when I wasn’t there.

But on our drive home, my mother-in-law said something. Super casually. Just five words. With absolutely no agenda. “You are a very busy woman.”

And I laughed it off. “I know, right?” And kept driving. And then, at night, while getting things ready for the next day, alone in my kitchen, those five words just landed.

“You are a very busy woman.” Said with warmth. Said with love. By someone who had spent one and a half days walking in my world. And what she saw, I had stopped seeing.

And standing there in my kitchen I had this thought. Just one thought. I didn’t want this anymore.

Welcome to Unscripted, a Momtoring podcast. I’m Andi Salcedo. I’m a coach, a working mother, and the founder of Momtoring. This show is about breaking free from the invisible scripts that you have been living by. The pressure to be perfect, hold it all together, make everyone happy. And it’s about what happens when you start asking a different question. Not how do I do it all. But who am I and what do I actually want.

So around that same time, I came across an interview with Michelle Obama. She said: life is long. You can have chapters. And it hit me. You don’t miss out if you don’t experience everything at the same time. You can grow and pivot and evolve in seasons. You get chapters.

When we are everything all at once, we are nowhere. We are physically present and emotionally somewhere else entirely. We’re at school pickup thinking about the work meeting. We’re at the work meeting thinking about the dentist appointment we forgot to book. And our kids feel it. Not the busyness. They can handle that. What they feel is the absence behind the presence.

The first thing I needed to let go of wasn’t a task at all. It was a belief. The belief that my job as a mother was to make my kids happy. When I actually examined that belief, what I found underneath it was fear. Pure fear. Fear that if I stopped controlling all of it, something would fall apart.

But here’s what I found when I challenged that belief. My job is not to make my kids happy. My job is to raise resilient, resourceful, kind human beings. And that requires a mother who has something left. When I stopped trying to show up for everything, that’s exactly when I started actually showing up.

I had a teacher during my coaching training who gave me feedback I’ve never forgotten. She said: “Andi, you always express what you don’t want. But I never hear you say what you do want. Knowing what you don’t want helps you avoid pitfalls. But knowing what you want, that drives you toward a higher vision.”

That question, what do I actually want, is what this whole show is built around. Because the script we were handed never asked us that. And it’s time to write our own.

What chapter are you actually in right now? And are you living it, or are you still trying to live all of them at once?

I’m Andi Salcedo. This is Unscripted. And I’ll see you next week.