I was sitting in a classroom at Harvard Business School, expecting to celebrate how far we’d all come.
About sixty of us, most of my first-year section, were back together for the first time since graduation for our 10-year reunion.
These are some of the most accomplished people I know. Founders, CEOs, partners at consulting and investment firms. Senior leaders across nearly every industry you can imagine.
As we went around the room sharing updates, I expected to hear about promotions, companies built, and big career moves.
Instead, many of us had become parents over the last few years, so almost everyone spent more time talking about their kids than their careers. People lit up pulling out photos, sharing names and ages, telling stories about their children. It was obvious this had become the part of their lives they were most proud of.
As people shared the harder parts of the last ten years, one theme kept surfacing. Beyond the truly difficult things like health scares, aging parents, and loss, everyone had barely enough energy for anything besides work and family.
Despite all the different careers and life circumstances in the room, one classmate perfectly captured what so many people seemed to be feeling:
“I’m struggling with not kicking ass at everything after becoming a parent.”
Nearly every other person nodded.
Listening to everyone that afternoon, I realized I had been hearing versions of this same story from the ambitious women I work with. The stories were different, but they all pointed to the same underlying shift.
Before kids, many of us got ahead by pouring almost unlimited time and energy into work.
And even with an intense job, there was margin for the rest of your life. You could go to a workout class on Saturday morning, grab brunch with friends afterward, recover in the afternoon, and still pull an all-nighter if a project demanded it.
Then you become a parent.
Suddenly work isn't your only priority. Now you're building a career while raising children, investing in your relationship, taking care of your health, holding onto friendships, and maybe helping aging parents too.
Every day becomes a series of tradeoffs between things that all matter deeply.
Do I wake up early to work out or catch up on sleep?
Do I finish the presentation or have dinner with my family?
Do I take the customer call or make it to the preschool parade?
The challenge isn’t just that there’s less time. It’s that every “yes” comes at the expense of something else you care about.
No matter how intentional you are, something important is always getting less of you than you’d like.
When you're used to giving your full effort to what matters most, living with constant tradeoffs can make it feel like you're never doing enough.
At the same time the tradeoffs multiply, the evidence that you're doing well starts to disappear.
Earlier in your career, there are clear signals that you’re doing well: performance reviews, raises, promotions. A manager telling you, "Great job."
As you become more senior, that positive reinforcement fades.
People don't come to you because things are going well anymore. They come because something is on fire and you need to fix it. The better you get, the fewer gold stars you receive.
Parenting is even less generous. Your kids never tell you they’ve had enough quality time with you this week.
You can spend all afternoon at the park and they’re still upset when you leave. You can read every parenting book, do everything “right,” and your child still gets sick, still won’t sleep, still melts down because you cut the sandwich the wrong way.
The work of parenting is never done.
So now you're spreading your best effort across more parts of your life than ever before, while getting far less reassurance that you’re doing any of it well. No wonder so many of us start wondering whether we're still kicking ass.
But here’s the irony: many of the people who struggle with this are living the lives they spent years working toward.
Their careers are flourishing. Their families are growing.
What changed isn’t what they’re accomplishing. It’s how they’re evaluating themselves.
They’re still expecting “kicking ass” to feel the way it did before kids, when they had more time, more flexibility, and fewer people depending on them.
That’s where so many of us get stuck. We keep comparing ourselves to a version of life that no longer exists. As long as that’s the benchmark, this season will always feel like we’re falling short.
That afternoon in Boston reminded me how universal this feeling is. Not just among parents who are struggling, but among people who, by almost any external measure, are thriving.
I’ve spent the last few years coaching ambitious women navigating demanding careers during early motherhood, and here’s what I’ve realized: one of the most overlooked parts of becoming a parent is grieving the version of yourself who came before.
The woman who could say yes to everything, who could pour herself completely into one goal, who had endless energy and enough time.
That person isn’t coming back. And the sooner we stop waiting for her, the sooner we can actually show up for the life we have now.
This season asks something different of us. To spread our ambition across more parts of life than ever before. To make impossible tradeoffs every day. To show up for the people who matter most, even when it means leaving other things unfinished.
This is what kicking ass looks like now: being intentional about where you give your best, and letting that be enough.
Namaste,
Tamara
P.S. How has your definition “kicking ass” changed since becoming a parent?
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