Knowing What You Want and Making It Happen
November 05, 2025
If your life currently runs on duct tape and grit, I see you. You’re “making it work”: swapping call, meal-prepping at 11 p.m., charting with a baby monitor hissing in the background, and trying to be on for everyone. You can do it—of course you can. You were built for hard things. But here’s the truth I had to learn (the hard way): “making it work” is not the same as making it yours.
“Making it work” is survival.
Making it yours is design.
This is an invitation to design your career and your motherhood around what actually matters to you—with fewer gold stars and more peace, more presence, and a whole lot more you.
What “Making It Yours” Really Means
When I say “make it yours,” I’m not talking about vision boards and vibes. I’m talking about ownership:
Choosing a work structure that matches your values (not your fears).
Letting go of the Supermom script that says “do it all, alone, perfectly.”
Deciding you can be deeply ambitious and deeply present—without apologizing for either.
This isn’t about proving you can carry more. It’s about refusing to carry what was never yours.
Self-Awareness Is a Clinical Skill
We’re excellent at reading patients and terrible at reading ourselves. Self-awareness feels indulgent until you notice the cost of not having it: resentment, invisible labor, and simmering exhaustion that looks like productivity on paper.
Start here: when you feel that spike of annoyance at your partner, your team, or your schedule—pause and ask, “What do I wish were happening instead?”
If you can’t answer, you can’t advocate. If you can answer, you’ve just written your first order set for your own life.
A quick script to practice:
“When you say ‘I’ll grab groceries,’ what I actually need is you home with the kids so I can go—alone.”
“I need explicit appreciation for the parenting work I do. It changes how supported I feel.”
“I need one protected evening a week where I’m not on call for anyone but myself.”
Naming the need is not weakness. It’s leadership.
Help Is Strategy, Not Luxury
Even if you work part-time. Even if your mom did “everything.” Even if you could technically do it yourself.
Help is how you buy back the best of you. It turns you from resentful house manager into the mother you want to be—present, less rushed, more available for the moments that actually matter.
Consider your support team like you consider a care team:
Clinical coverage: childcare, backup care, school pickups.
Home operations: cleaning, laundry, meal support, lawn, repairs.
You-care: therapy, coaching, exercise, protected quiet.
If you can justify hiring a scribe to free your brain at work, you can justify a housekeeper to free your brain at home. Same ROI: your presence, your patience, your joy.
Stop Training Your Partner to Be Incompetent
Spicy, I know. But many of us do this without meaning to. We anticipate, overfunction, and “fix”—then wonder why our partner hangs back or does it “wrong.”
Let it be imperfect. Let them learn their way. Let them build their own rituals and memories with your kids (yes, even if it means post-game ice cream on a school night). You are not the quality control department; you’re a co-parent.
Try this:
Hand over the bedtime routine for a month. No play-by-play, no audits.
Leave for the soccer game and let your partner handle gear, snacks, and logistics.
Swap primaries on a task you usually own (daycare forms, camp sign-ups, pediatrician emails).
Competence requires reps. Give your partner theirs.
Work That Works for You
Let’s talk shop. You are not “lucky to be employed.” You are valuable. Your presence has a measurable impact on revenue, access, and outcomes. That means you have leverage—even if you’ve forgotten it.
Options you might be underestimating:
Creative schedules: 2–3 clinical days, surgical blocks batched, telehealth half-days, academic/leadership carve-outs.
Boundary pilots: protected admin time, hard stop clinic hours, “no meetings” blocks, fewer portals after 6 p.m.
Role redesign: shift to hospitalist, consult-only, specialty clinic, perinatal mental health focus, or hybrid models.
Compensation swaps: trade less cash for more freedom on purpose (equity, rent offsets, call reduction, sabbatical windows).
Will everyone say yes? No. But the “no” is data. If a place won’t negotiate the basics of your wellbeing, believe them. Don’t unpack and build a life in an environment that starves you.
Mothers Who Dream Raise Kids Who Dream
Your children don’t need a martyr. They need a model.
When you choose work you love and a life that loves you back, your kids see possibility: My mom is allowed to be joyful. She chooses us—and herself. They learn that adulthood is not all gray. That responsibility and delight can coexist. That dreams aren’t childish; they’re generational.
This isn’t permission to disappear into work. It’s a reminder that your aliveness is part of your parenting. You don’t have to shrink for your kids to shine.
If You’re in the Thick of It
Three small moves that change everything:
Name one friction point you complain about weekly. Write the alternative you actually want. Ask for it—clearly and kindly—within the next 48 hours.
Buy back two hours this week. Outsource one task or skip a nonessential standard you’re policing (color-coded lunches can retire). Use those hours for rest or something that lights you up.
Hand off one domain at home for 30 days. No rescuing. Debrief at the end like the teammates you are.
None of this requires a total life overhaul. It requires micro-acts of honesty and courage stacked over time.
The Takeaway
You can keep proving how much you can hold. Or you can build a life that holds you.
Choose design over endurance. Choose help over heroics. Choose partnership over project management. Choose the career that works for the mother you are—because when your life fits, everyone you love fits better inside it.
You don’t have to do it all. You just have to do it on purpose.
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