Why High-Achieving Women Think They’ll Be the Exception in Motherhood

We think we’ll be the exception. Like most ambitious women, we don’t enter motherhood expecting it to be easy. We’ve heard the stories and we’ve watched our friends struggle. We know motherhood is hard. But somewhere, quietly, there’s another belief:

I’ll figure it out. It won’t happen to me.

We don’t go to this place because we’re arrogant. We go there because that’s what we’ve always done.

We’ve built careers. Earned degrees. Solved impossible problems. Thrived under pressure. When something is difficult, we work harder, learn faster, and find a way through. And so we assume motherhood will be the same. We assume we’ll be the exception.

Then motherhood humbles us.

The baby won’t sleep despite doing everything “right.” The anxiety won’t quiet down. The guilt doesn’t disappear after checking another box. The harder we work, the further away calm can seem. And suddenly we’re not just struggling…We’re embarrassed that we’re struggling. We’re ashamed that the strategies that worked everywhere else don’t seem to work here.

But here’s what I wish every mother knew: Motherhood is the great equalizer.

No one gets a hall pass.

Discomfort and uncertainty in motherhood don’t happen because we’re failing at something, and motherhood isn’t asking us to become better at achieving. It’s asking us to become fluent in something entirely different.

The women who thrive in motherhood aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones who eventually realize that this isn’t another performance to master. It’s a relationship to experience.

And relationships? They ask us to stay. To be present. To be open to and learn from discomfort. Relationships ask us to be willing to be wrong and to not know the answers. Relationships - the healthy ones at least - require us to step into such uncertain and foreign territory that we feel temporarily lost. And something else too…. they ask us to stay inside of that feeling of being lost without climbing back to familiar safety.

Sound hard? Uncomfortable? Scary? Yeah… Welcome to motherhood ;-)

So, if you are reading this today and you feel completely abandoned by the version of you who had it all together, knew how to find clarity quickly, and felt totally, well, awesome…And you aren’t having those achievement-oriented experiences much at all right now?

Welcome to real motherhood. This, my friend, is what it’s all about. And I know that it’s disorienting. But a brighter, more alive, more real and badass version of yourself is just waiting to unfold.