What Has to Give? When You Love Your Kids and the Work You’re Here to Do

I had a conversation with a mom recently who’s trying to build something she deeply believes in. She’s an artist and a mom to an eight-year-old, and she’s working to create a nonprofit art space in her community.

She wants this thing to exist. It feels purposeful. Important. Like something she is meant to contribute to the world. And she’s stuck.

She doesn’t have a lot of money to put into it. She doesn’t have endless hours because she’s raising a child. She wants the nonprofit to grow and eventually make money, and she also wants to be a present, connected mother.

So she’s trying to figure out, What has to give?

I think a lot of mothers know this question. Maybe it isn’t an art nonprofit for you. Maybe it’s a company you want to build or a career you want to grow. Maybe it’s a book you want to write, or work you want to return to. It could be anything you care about that exists outside of raising your children. You love your kids deeply, and you also have something you want to do in the world.

At some point, those two things seem to collide, and your brain starts looking for the answer.

How much time should I give my kids? How much can I give my work? Am I trying to do too much? Should I wait until they’re older? What am I going to regret? Which thing needs to give?

These sound like practical questions, and some of them are. But I think we often start trying to solve them too quickly.

Before you solve the problem, see the problem clearly

This mother has limited time. She has limited money. She has an eight-year-old who still needs her. She has an idea she really wants to bring into the world. Those are the facts.

But then there are the stories we can build around those facts. If I were really serious about this, I’d be growing faster. If I’m a good mother, I should be more available. My child shouldn’t have to give anything up because of my ambition. If this isn’t making money soon, I’m failing. Other people seem to be able to do all of this. Why can’t I?

Now we have a very different problem because we’re no longer just making decisions about time and money. We’re trying to make decisions while guilt, fear, urgency, and uncertainty are sitting at the table with us.

This is where the kind of intelligence we use becomes important.

Strategic Intelligence is incredibly useful here. It’s the part of us that plans, organizes, predicts, prioritizes, solves problems, and figures out how to get things done. She needs it. She may need a funding strategy. A board. Grants. Partners. Childcare. A budget. A business plan. A smaller first version of her idea.

But strategy works much better when we can see the situation accurately.

So before asking, What needs to give?, I might ask, What does this season actually allow? That is a very different question.

Maybe the goal this year isn’t to build a thriving nonprofit. Maybe it’s to prove that people want what she’s creating. The goal might be one program a month. or finding three people who want to help build it. Maybe it’s raising the first $10,000. Maybe it’s taking one meaningful step at a time while her child is eight, knowing that the organization can grow differently when he’s ten or twelve or fifteen.

Moving more slowly doesn’t mean the dream isn’t important. It means she’s building it inside the reality of her actual life.

And then there’s motherhood

There’s another piece of this that I think we talk about far less. Sometimes pursuing something important to us means our children won’t always get what they want from us.

There may be an afternoon when Mom is working and another caregiver is doing pickup. There may be a time when your child wishes you weren’t going to that meeting. Your child may even be disappointed. We can spend lots of energy trying to create a life in which our children never experience our ambition as an inconvenience or a loss. But that may not be possible. And I’m not convinced it needs to be the goal.

The question becomes, Can I stay connected to my child when pursuing something important to me means they don’t always get exactly what they want from me? Can I hear, “I wish you didn’t have to work,” without immediately deciding I’ve made the wrong choice? Can I tolerate my own guilt long enough to figure out whether I’ve actually done something I want to change? Can I listen to my child’s disappointment without needing to make the disappointment disappear? Can I remain connected to myself, too?

That’s Relational Intelligence.

Strategic Intelligence helps us figure out what to do. Relational Intelligence helps us stay present with what comes with doing it.

We need both.

The goal isn’t a life without tradeoffs

I think we have sold women a strange version of balance in which success means getting everything arranged so perfectly that nothing important ever competes with anything else. But, of course that’s not how a full life works.

There will be tradeoffs. There will be seasons when work gets more of you and seasons when your family does. There will be opportunities you say no to and moments when your child wishes you had made a different choice. The goal isn’t to eliminate all of that. The goal is to become someone who can make those choices without automatically letting fear, guilt, or urgency make them for you.

So perhaps the question isn’t, What has to give?

Perhaps it’s, What does this season allow? What is actually important right now? What can move more slowly without being abandoned? What support would make more possible?

And ultimately. Who do I want to be inside the life I’m building?

You don’t have to choose between loving your children deeply and caring deeply about the work you are here to do. But you may have to become more comfortable with the tension of loving both. That’s different from balance.

I think it’s fluency. And fluency isn’t figuring out how to have everything without tradeoffs. Fluency is becoming capable of making tradeoffs without abandoning yourself or your relationships.