One last thing before I let go

Lately it feels like my life is full of finish lines.

One of my sons is finishing the last badges he needs before beginning his Eagle Scout project, something he’s been working toward for years. Another is writing college essays, and while he is understandably focused on the very ordinary frustration of drafting and revising, I can see something he can’t quite see yet. I can see that senior year is beginning. I can see that this season of having him under our roof every day is starting to give way to something new.

And on Thursday, after years of writing, revising, questioning, and rewriting, Ambitious Mother will finally make its way into the world.

From the outside, all of these look like endings.

But none of them feel that way at all—they feel more like the starting line, or maybe a handoff.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot because the older my children get, the more I realize that parenting keeps asking us to loosen our grip in ways that are both ordinary and profound. It isn’t only the big milestones like college or moving away. We’ve been practicing for this all along.

We practice it when we let a toddler decide whether they’re hungry enough to eat another bite.
We practice it when we let a child spend their allowance on something we wouldn’t have chosen (more pokemon cards?!).
We practice it when we resist stepping into every friendship conflict, every homework problem, every disappointment that we know, deep down, they are capable of navigating themselves.

The goal has always been for them to have a life of their own, and for them to know themselves well enough to make thoughtful decisions.

That sounds simple, but it is one of the hardest things I know…

Many years ago, I was accepted into medical school. I had worked tirelessly to get there, but realized I did not actually want to go, only after holding that acceptance letter in my hands. My parents, meanwhile, thought I was making a huge mistake. Who gets that opportunity and then throws it away? But they didn’t say that. They didn’t say much of anything (at least to me). They watched and held their breath and trusted me to figure it out. I didn’t have another plan yet, just the deep knowing that I couldn’t say yet.

They let me make a decision they wouldn’t have made themselves.

I don’t think I fully appreciated what a gift that was until I became a parent and how that must have been.

But in the end that is the work of parenting, isn’t it?

The goal isn’t to raise children who make the choices we would make.
The goal is raising children who have enough confidence, enough self-knowledge, and enough trust in themselves to make choices that fit their lives.

I’ve realized over the past few weeks that this is also why I wrote Ambitious Mother the way I did.

People often ask me what I hope women take away from the book, and my answer is probably less satisfying than they expect.

I don’t hope every reader finishes it and makes the same decisions I would make.

I hope the woman who wants the promotion stops apologizing for wanting it.
I hope the woman who realizes she doesn’t want the promotion stops apologizing for that, too.
I hope the woman who has spent years wondering why she feels so stuck finally finds language for the question she’s been trying to ask herself.

Most of all, I hope she exhales.

Because this book was never meant to hand women another set of rules about how to build a career or raise a family.

It was always meant to return the conversation to them.

The first draft of this book was finished well over a year ago. Since then, the world has continued to move. We’ve seen new language emerge that questions women’s ambition and new policies that make working parenthood harder rather than easier. We’ve watched caregiving and women’s work become even more visible in some ways, and more misunderstood in others. We’ve watched mothers’ career decisions flattened into stories about “opting out,” when so many women are still telling us they are navigating systems that make staying in extraordinarily difficult.

If I were writing the manuscript today, some parts would undoubtedly be different.
But books are moments in time.

And yet, with a book, like with a child, there comes a point where you stop trying to prepare someone for every possible situation and trust that you’ve given them enough to ask good questions, to come back when they need support, and to keep growing long after they’ve left your kitchen table.

Next week this book leaves mine.
It won’t belong only to me anymore.

Readers will bring their own experiences, disagreements, hopes, and questions to its pages. Some will read it differently than I imagined. Some will find exactly the chapter they needed. Others may close it with entirely different questions than the ones I expected them to ask.

Oddly enough, I think that’s exactly what I want.

Because I’ve never wanted this book to end a conversation.

I’ve wanted it to begin one.

If you’ve been reading these essays over the past few months, I hope you’ll keep going with me.

Read the book a small section at a time before bed or in the pickup line. Read it with a pen in your hand, with your partner, with a friend, or with your book club. Skip around. Dog-ear the pages. Come back to the exercises six months later. Tell me where you nodded, where you pushed back, and what questions stayed with you after you closed the cover.

I’ve never wanted to tell you how to live your life. I don’t have the perfect spreadsheet or hack to fix working motherhood. But I do create enough quiet beneath the expectations, the advice, and the shoulds that you can hear yourself a little more clearly.

I’d be honored if you let this book become part of that conversation.

P.S. Next Thursday, ​Ambitious Mother​ officially enters the world. If you’ve been reading these Sunday essays, thank you for being part of this conversation long before there was a book to hold. If you know someone who’s been quietly carrying these questions on her own, I hope you’ll consider sharing the book, or this essay, with her. Word of mouth has always mattered more to me than any algorithm, and I’m so grateful you’re here for this next chapter!

P.P.S. Come have this conversation with me and other amazing moms on tour. First stop: August 6th in Boston with ​Paige Connell​