Mom Guilt Doesn't Mean You're Doing It Wrong

Let me tell you about a couch.

Shirley Grimes, foster and adoptive mom of nearly 30 children, Business Central community member, someone who describes herself as just a mom trying to make it, went to a conference once with seven kids at home. While she was sitting in sessions, trying to focus and learn and be present, everyone in her household came down with a stomach bug. All seven of them. Her husband was managing the whole thing solo. It was bad enough that they had to get rid of the couch when she got home.

She told me she was sweating through the entire conference. Anxiety through the roof. Convinced she needed to leave. And when I asked her if she still thought going had been worth it, she didn't even hesitate.

Yes. Absolutely. Every time.

The Cost Nobody Talks About Enough

There is a whole invisible infrastructure that goes into a working mom leaving for a few days. Grocery runs. Meals prepped and labeled. Field trip forms filled out. School shirts located. Every teacher appreciation card accounted for. A schedule mapped out down to who picks up who and what happens if someone runs a fever.

And that's before you even get to the professional prep. The work you do the weekend before so your team isn't underwater while you're gone, the emails you pre-schedule, the projects you get ahead on just so you can give yourself a little breathing room to actually be present at the thing you worked so hard to get to.

I know this particular kind of leaving. In my wedding photography days, I was gone most weekends from spring through fall. I missed championship games and friends' birthday parties and snuggly Saturday mornings that nobody puts on a calendar but that you still feel the absence of. It was the right work at the right time in my life. And it cost something real.

Shirley named all of this without any bitterness. Just matter-of-factly, the way you describe something that's simply true. It's a lot. It takes a lot. And we don't say that to each other enough.

I think we're so conditioned to make it look easy, to not complain, to just handle it. And we end up isolated in the experience of it. You're standing in an airport at 5am having triple-checked the permission slip situation and you feel guilty for leaving and overwhelmed by everything you managed before you got here and somewhere underneath all of that is the knowledge that this matters, that you're going to come back better for it, that your kids are watching you build something. But in that moment it's a lot to hold all at once.

The Guilt Isn't a Sign You're Wrong

Here's what I want to say clearly: the guilt doesn't mean you made the wrong call. It means you care. It means you are paying attention to the people who depend on you even when you're not in the room. That's not a flaw. That's actually part of what makes you good at this.

Shirley said something that I keep coming back to, and keep remind myself of: she said her kids don't need much. They just need love. And that the work she does, the showing up she does in her community and her career, is part of what she's building for them. They're watching her. They're learning what it looks like to invest in yourself and in others. That's not something they'll articulate at age four or seven. But it goes in. And one day they'll know.

I've thought about that a lot in the context of my own kids. The times I left, the times I felt the pull of guilt, the times I wondered if I was getting the balance right. And I don't think the goal is ever to eliminate the tension. The tension means you're taking both things seriously. Your family and your growth. Your presence at home and your presence in the world. Those don't have to be in opposition, even when they feel like they are.

You Deserve the Nod Too

One of the things Shirley said that I immediately wanted to put on a wall somewhere: when she sees another mom show up to a conference, she wants to hug her and say, I know what it took for you to be here.

That's it. That's the whole thing. Just that acknowledgment. I see the work that happened before you walked through this door. I know this didn't just happen. You made choices and sacrifices and plans so that you could be standing here right now, and that matters.

So if you're reading this and you're a working mom who is navigating the guilt and the prep and the mental load of trying to show up in multiple places at once, I want you to hear it: I know what it took for you to be here. Whatever your version of here looks like right now. At the conference. At your desk at 6am. On the call after bedtime. Trying to build something while also trying to be everything your kids need.

You're doing it. The guilt doesn't mean you're failing. It means you love them. And you're showing them, every single day, what it looks like to keep going anyway.

Check out the full episode here: Apple Podcasts