Friday Morning Thoughts From a Corporate Mommy

It’s Friday morning. And this is a working mom’s honest brain dump.

The coffee is hot for now. Someone has already asked me for a snack. I’ve changed 2 full diapers of poop. I haven’t signed into work yet. And I’m sitting here with a thought that I need to get out of my head and onto a page before the day swallows it whole.

First, let me say this clearly: I am grateful. Genuinely, deeply grateful. I worked hard to get here. You know… to have a career and a family and a life that I built on purpose. I know what a privilege that is and I do not take it lightly for a single second.

But here’s the thing. Two things can be true at the same time.

I can be grateful and it can also be really, really hard. Both of those things are true. And I think a lot of us, especially working moms, spend so much energy performing the gratitude that we don’t let ourselves acknowledge the hard part out loud. So this is me, doing that. Out loud. On a Friday morning before I sign in.

The Grinding, The Climbing, and the Quiet Reckoning

I spent my twenties grinding. And I mean the real kind, working all hours, sometimes weekends, chasing bosses, doing whatever it took to be seen and to matter and to build something. I gave that decade everything I had.

Then I spent my early thirties climbing. Playing office politics. Learning how the game worked and playing it. Doing the things you do to get ahead, some of which I’m not particularly proud of in retrospect.

And then somewhere in my mid-thirties, I found myself doing something I wasn’t prepared for.

Asking: what am I doing?

Not in a dramatic, quit-everything way. In a quiet, 9pm, staring-at-the-ceiling way. How many times had I missed something real, something that actually mattered in my actual life, in exchange for a “thank you” from a boss who went home and had their dinner and made it to their family’s thing? How many times had I given my labor as a stepping stone for someone else’s gain while I sat there carrying the guilt of being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be?

I missed my parent’s dinner. I missed my kid’s crawl. I missed things I cannot get back.

And the trade I made for those moments? A nonmeaningful acknowledgment from someone who was not thinking about me when they clocked out.

I’m not saying this to be bitter. I’m saying it because I think someone reading this needs to hear that they’re not the only one who has felt this way.

The Statistic That Lives In My Head

Here’s something that stopped me when I read it.

According to USAFacts, sourcing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 24 million mothers of children younger than 18 are in the labor force.

Twenty-four million. This was a 2023 article so that number has probably climbed.

That’s a staggering number of women who are doing what every working mom is doing, navigating the impossible math of a career and a family and a self, all at the same time, all in the same body, often running on not enough sleep and too much coffee.

And here’s the part that really gets me, the part I almost didn’t want to write because it’s uncomfortable. In my experience, a lot of the time it’s the moms who are the hardest on each other at work. Not always. But often enough that I’ve noticed. The sharpest edges in a workplace, the most competitive energy, the least grace — sometimes it comes from us.

I’ve thought about why that is. Call it lack of sleep. Call it self-protection. Call it the particular pressure of feeling like you gave something up to be in that room and needing to prove it was worth it. Maybe it’s because somewhere deep down, we all feel like we’re trading something to be there — and that makes us defensive about our choices in ways we don’t always recognize.

I’m not judging. I’ve been that person. I understand where it comes from.

But I also think we can do better.

A Friday Morning Reminder for Every Working Mom

Whatever is happening at work right now, the politics, the pressure, the thing that kept you up last night, the email you’re dreading sending, I want to leave you with something.

Be kind to the other moms in your orbit. And actually, just be kind to everyone. We are all figuring this out. All of us. Every single person in that office or on that Zoom call is carrying something you can’t see.

It’s all a little messy. It’s supposed to be. Give people some grace, and maybe save a little of that grace for yourself too.

And last thing for those of us at desk jobs, those of us who are saving PDFs and not lives, please take the extra ten minutes to get yourself together before you sign in. Make the coffee properly. Sit for a second. Look at your kid for a moment longer than feels efficient.

If this resonated, you might also like my Monday Roundup — a weekly reminder to find small things worth looking forward to.

The emails will still be there.