When Your Career Doesn't Feel Right After Becoming a Mom

Before having a baby, you might have had a pretty clear idea of what you wanted from your career.

Maybe you spent years building your skills, working toward promotions, or finding work that felt meaningful.

And then you became a mom.

Suddenly, things that used to feel important don't necessarily carry the same weight. You might still enjoy your work, but the long hours, demands, or expectations that once felt manageable no longer fit your life.

And you might find yourself wondering: Is this still what I want?

That's part of what Donna and I explore in this episode of Clarity Sessions.

Listen to Donna's Clarity Session

In this episode, Donna shares her experience with burnout and the changing role of work in her identity. We then move into a coaching session about her hopes for a different kind of balance as she navigates motherhood.

When the career you loved no longer feels the same

Donna spent more than a decade building a career in tech. She genuinely enjoyed her work and found a lot of meaning, connection, and identity through her career.

But after returning from maternity leave, things felt different. Between the demands of work, caring for her daughter, navigating daycare illnesses, and managing other family responsibilities, she found herself increasingly exhausted. Eventually, she reached a point where even simple work tasks felt impossible.

She made the decision to take personal leave. And while that time gave her space to recover, it also opened the door to some bigger questions.

• Who am I outside of work?

• What matters to me now?

• What kind of life do I want to build moving forward?

These aren't always easy questions to answer, especially when you've spent years investing in a particular version of yourself.

What does balance actually mean to you?

One of my favorite moments from our coaching conversation came when I asked Donna a simple question:

• What does balance mean to you?

As moms, we're surrounded by messages about what we should be doing. We should be spending quality time with our children. We should be investing in our careers. We should be making time for our partners, taking care of our health, keeping up with friendships, and practicing self-care.

Even the idea of achieving balance can become another expectation we put on ourselves.

But what does balance actually mean? For Donna, it wasn't about dividing her time equally among her responsibilities. It was about having enough energy to be present. Present with her daughter. Present in her work. And present for herself. I think that's such an important distinction.

Balance doesn't have to mean giving everything equal time. It means figuring out what allows you to live in a way that feels sustainable and meaningful to you.

And that definition can change depending on your season of life.

So before you start rearranging your schedule or adding another self-care activity to your calendar, consider asking yourself:

• What would balance actually look and feel like for me right now?

You don't have to figure out your next chapter all at once

As our conversation continued, Donna began imagining what returning to work might look like.

She still wanted meaningful work, but she also wanted time for her daughter and, importantly, time for herself. One possibility that excited her was working four days a week. The challenge? She wasn't sure whether that kind of arrangement existed in her field. And when we're facing uncertainty, it's easy to get stuck trying to figure out the entire path before taking the first step. But here's something I love about Donna's story. As a product manager, she'd spent years researching possibilities, testing ideas, and solving problems without knowing all the answers upfront. Those skills hadn't disappeared. She simply needed to consider how she might apply them to her own life.

Sometimes, when we're navigating a transition, we forget about the strengths and experience we already bring with us.And we put pressure on ourselves to make a big decision before we've even explored our options.

But exploration is part of making progress.

You don't have to commit to an entirely new career or life plan today. You can start by gathering information, having conversations, experimenting, and seeing what you learn. For Donna, that meant committing to one hour of research into flexible work arrangements. It wasn't a decision about her entire future. It was simply a next step.

Giving yourself permission to explore

One of the biggest things I took away from Donna's session is that becoming a mom can change what we want. And that's okay. The career, routines, or priorities that worked for us before motherhood might not fit quite the same way anymore. That doesn't mean everything we've built was a mistake, or that we have to abandon the things we once loved. It means we have an opportunity to reevaluate what matters to us now. And we don't have to have all the answers before we begin. Sometimes clarity comes from giving ourselves permission to explore what's possible, experiment a little, and let what we learn guide us forward.

If you're navigating your own changes in motherhood and would like support figuring out what matters most and how to move forward, I'd love to connect.

Book a free Clarity Conversation here.