Working Mom Guilt: Where Is My Parade?

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 260 of 365

Today is National Working Parents Day, and I know this only because a toddler nap — one of the rarest phenomena on earth — has bought me twenty unsupervised minutes to write about it.

The irony is not lost on me.

The house is quiet. Nobody is asking for a snack, or help finding something, or the exact object sitting three inches from her hand. And when that window opened up, my first thought wasn't I should rest. It was I have work to do. More than that — I wanted to work. That's the part people miss when they talk about working mothers. I love being my daughter's mother, and I love the business I'm building, and both of those things matter to me even when they're fighting over the same twenty minutes. She comes first. That's never in question, and it's cost me things I'd give up again without blinking. But putting her first doesn't mean the rest of me has to go quiet.

National Working Parents Day feels validating. It also feels a little bit like being handed one more occasion to manage. Do I order a cake? Plan something? Remind people it exists? Honestly, I'd just like a parade.

Motherhood and Work Don't Stay in Their Lanes

Joy started with us on Monday, and naturally, my daughter joined the call. She has a sixth sense for Zoom — she'll play happily until she hears me talking to another adult, and then she appears beside me like a tiny executive auditing the meeting. She studies the screen, decides whether it's worth her time, and either stays or wanders off. Her calendar is flexible like that.

She's sat in on business calls, made cameo appearances on Zoom, and once, while I was in the car handling something a client needed urgently, quietly redecorated the window with crayon. Everyone warns you to worry when a toddler goes quiet. They're right to.

My workday starts early and usually ends somewhere between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. It happens on calls, after bedtime, in twenty-minute pockets in the car. I record voice memos constantly, because ideas don't wait for me to be somewhere quiet with clean hands and an empty back seat. I used to believe real work needed long, uninterrupted stretches and perfect conditions. Motherhood taught me otherwise — you'd be amazed what fits into twenty focused minutes when you stop waiting for the ideal version of a day that isn't coming.

The Working Mom Guilt That Follows You Everywhere

When my daughter catches me on my phone, something in my chest drops. I wonder if I'm missing something with her, or teaching her that whatever's on that screen outranks her. So I put it down and try to be fully there — and then a different part of my brain starts cataloguing everything I didn't finish.

Maybe you know that particular loop. You answer one email while your kid plays nearby and feel guilty for working. You close the laptop and sit on the floor with them and feel anxious about the email. Whichever half of your life currently has your hands, the other half is tugging your sleeve. That's working mom guilt, distilled: the quiet suspicion that you're shortchanging someone, somewhere, no matter how much of yourself you hand over. It's an exhausting loop with terrible scenery, and it runs even on the days you're doing everything right.

And that's before you count the work nobody calls work — the meals, the appointments, the health worries, tracking who needs what kind of attention and when. Even groceries have become a small logistics operation in my house: organic apples at one store, the right granola somewhere else, toddler snacks at a third stop, and somehow we ran out of dish soap while sitting on a mountain of hand soap nobody remembers buying. It's serious, people.

Working Mom Guilt Isn't Solved by Better Balance

If a stranger tells me I just need better time management, I have a very specific place I'd like them to go. Nobody watching from outside has a front-row seat to what I carry, what support I actually have, what my daughter needs, or what keeps me up at night. Some women genuinely want work to fill most of their day, and that's a real and valid choice. It's just not mine. I want to build something real, earn my own money, and still be fully present for my daughter's childhood, without burying one identity to make strangers comfortable.

Having support doesn't erase that tension, either. It helps — I'm genuinely grateful for it — but it doesn't remove the decisions, the explaining, the approving, the remembering. When several deals fell through recently and a chunk of expected income disappeared with them, I didn't just have to worry for myself. I had people counting on me to make payroll on time. Support can lighten your hands. It doesn't always lighten your heart.

Motherhood Made Me More Capable, Not Less

After my daughter was born, a few people quietly assumed I'd lose the time or the drive to build something serious. For a while, I worked myself into the ground trying to prove them wrong. I don't need to do that anymore. What I will say is this: motherhood didn't make me less capable. It made me faster and more decisive, and it taught me to record an idea the second it lands instead of waiting for a quiet room that may never come.

Would I love an uninterrupted workday? Sure. I'd also love a driver and someone trailing me with chilled sparkling water. But motherhood asked me to become a different kind of capable, and I'd like my daughter to grow up watching what that looks like — a woman who can build a life that's hers, trust herself, and never confuse being loved with needing to be rescued.

If we're really celebrating working parents today, I don't want another graphic telling me I've got this. I know. I've been getting it done between naps, pickups, deadlines, sick days, and vanishing dish soap. What I want is one day in bed with popcorn and no interruptions, trusted childcare, a good dinner, and someone on the sidewalk holding a sign that just says: you did all of that? that's incredible. More than anything, I want working parents to feel seen — not judged, not advised, not handed one more system for carrying the same impossible load a little more efficiently.

I may never find the balance everyone keeps trying to sell me. But I'm building a life my daughter gets to watch me believe in, and today, in one stolen twenty-minute nap, that's exactly what I used the time for.

About the Author | Day 260 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like using a surprise nap to write about working motherhood, and remembering that guilt has never once been a good time-management strategy.

Day 260 of 365. Still mothering. Still building. Still waiting for my parade. Just kidding. Sort of. 🐧