What If You’re Using the Wrong Kind of Intelligence in motherhood?

The women I work with are incredibly intelligent. They know how to plan. They know how to solve problems. They know how to anticipate what might go wrong and get ahead of it.

They build businesses. Lead teams. Manage careers. Run households. Research the options. Make the appointments. Create the spreadsheets. Figure things out.

I call this Strategic Intelligence. And most of the women I work with have it in spades.

Strategic Intelligence is the ability to analyze, plan, predict, organize, execute, and solve. It is enormously valuable. In fact, it may be responsible for much of the success you’ve created in your life.

The problem isn’t Strategic Intelligence. The problem is what happens when it becomes the intelligence you use for everything.

When solving becomes your default

Many high-achieving women have spent years learning how to move away from uncomfortable feelings as quickly as possible, sometimes without even realizing they’re doing it.

You feel uncertain, so you research. You feel anxious, so you plan. You feel inadequate, so you work harder. You feel out of control, so you organize. You feel uncomfortable in a relationship, so you analyze the conversation for three days. You stay busy. You distract. You ruminate. You fix.

And because you are genuinely good at these things, they often work. At least temporarily, you get a little relief.

The problem is that relationships require something different from us. Because your child is not a problem to solve. Neither is your partner. Neither is your friendship.

And, perhaps most importantly, neither are you.

Relationships require a different kind of intelligence

Deep connection requires the ability to remain present when we don’t know exactly what to do. It requires staying engaged when another person is upset. It requires tolerating misunderstanding, disappointment, conflict, vulnerability, uncertainty, and the possibility that someone we love may feel something we cannot fix.

This requires what I call Relational Intelligence.

Relational Intelligence is the capacity to stay engaged with reality as it is—especially when it’s uncertain, uncomfortable, or different from what you expected—so you can choose a response that aligns with your values and the relationship you’re trying to build.

Strategic Intelligence asks: How do I change this?

Relational Intelligence asks: How do I relate to this?

We need both. The goal isn’t to become less strategic, it’s to become more fluent in moving between the two.

What does Relational Intelligence actually require?

This isn’t simply about “being more present.” There are real capacities underneath presence.

Accurate perception
Seeing what is actually happening rather than immediately reacting to the story your nervous system is telling.

Emotional awareness
Recognizing and naming your internal experience without immediately reacting to it.

Emotional openness
Staying present with difficult emotions, uncertainty, and discomfort without needing to immediately change, escape, or control them.

Self-compassion
Meeting your experience with understanding rather than criticism or shame.

Psychological flexibility
Being able to hold more than one possibility instead of getting locked into one interpretation.

Discernment
Recognizing what kind of intelligence the moment requires: Does this need solving, or does it need staying?

Agency
Knowing that even when you cannot control what is happening—or control how you feel—you can choose how you respond.

Trust
Developing trust in yourself, in other people, and in your ability to handle uncertainty without having all the answers.

As these capacities strengthen, something changes in our relationships.

Relational Intelligence begins to show up as attunement, co-regulation, boundaries, repair, and intentional action.

We become more capable of staying.

Motherhood has a way of exposing the gap

This is one reason motherhood can feel so disorienting for highly capable women. You enter motherhood with an intelligence that has served you extraordinarily well. Then you meet a human being who is inherently unpredictable.

You do everything “right,” and your baby still doesn’t sleep. You carefully plan the morning, and your toddler refuses to put on pants. You try to be patient, and suddenly you’re yelling. Your child is upset with you, and every cell in your body wants to make them happy again.

The harder you try to control motherhood, the more anxious and inadequate you can begin to feel. Not because you aren’t capable, but because you’re trying to use Strategic Intelligence in moments that require Relational Intelligence.

Some moments need solving. Others need staying. Learning to recognize the difference changes everything.

This is the work I do with women

I’ve built my work around helping women develop this kind of fluency, beginning in motherhood and eventually extending into the rest of their lives.

There are several ways to enter this work.

The 14-Day Relational Intelligence Experience

This is a short, experiential introduction to a different way of meeting the hard moments of motherhood. Over 14 days, you practice four core capacities:

Notice. Regulate. Stay. Choose.

Instead of immediately fixing, controlling, overthinking, or pulling away when discomfort appears, you begin experiencing what it feels like to stay present with yourself and your child.

The goal isn’t to master Relational Intelligence in 14 days, it’s to experience it. To notice what changes when you create more safety within yourself, tolerate discomfort a little longer, and respond with greater intention.

It’s the beginning of moving from: “How do I make this moment different?”

to: “How do I want to meet this moment?”

The experience includes daily practices and two live group coaching calls.

The 90-Day Calm Connection Experience

Calm Connection is where we go deeper. Over 90 days, you learn, practice, and begin integrating Relational Intelligence into everyday motherhood.

You learn to recognize when you’re automatically reaching for Strategic Intelligence—fixing, controlling, predicting, or solving—and build the nervous system capacity to remain present when motherhood feels uncertain or uncomfortable.

Through repeated practice, these capacities become increasingly available when you actually need them. The goal is fluency: knowing what kind of intelligence a moment requires and being able to access it when it matters.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about feeling calmer. It’s about becoming the mother, woman, partner, and leader you want to be.

The Calm Connection Experience includes weekly online learning, three opportunities each week for live group coaching, individual live support, and Slack support as needed.

The 90-Day Fluent Life Experience

Fluent Life is the next step. This is where women take the Relational Intelligence they’ve developed through motherhood and bring it into the rest of their lives.

Career. Partnership. Friendships. Leadership. Decision-making. And their relationship with themselves.

Rather than abandoning the ambition, drive, organization, and strategic thinking that helped them become successful, women learn to pair those strengths with presence, emotional capacity, discernment, and trust.

The goal is whole-life fluency: The ability to recognize what a moment is asking of you and respond with the kind of intelligence it actually requires.

I don’t want women to have to choose between success and connection. I want them to have access to both.

Fluent Life includes weekly online learning, three opportunities each week for live group coaching, individual live support, and Slack support as needed.

Private 1:1 Coaching

For women who want more individualized support, I also offer a 12-week private coaching experience. We take this same work and apply it directly to your particular life, relationships, patterns, and goals.

Private coaching includes weekly in-person or virtual sessions, with Voxer support between meetings.

The goal isn’t less intelligence. It’s more fluency.

I don’t want high-achieving women to stop planning, or solving problems, or being ambitious, or leading, or getting things done. Strategic Intelligence is a tremendous strength. But it shouldn’t have to do every job, because there will always be parts of life you cannot predict, people you cannot control, feelings you cannot solve, and questions you cannot answer yet.

And sometimes the most intelligent response available to you isn’t to figure out what to do next. It’s to stay. To notice. To tolerate not knowing. To remain connected. And then, from that place, choose.

That’s Relational Intelligence.

And I believe learning to move fluently between these two kinds of intelligence changes not only the way we mother.

It changes the way we live.