I scrolled past a reel last week while I was supposed to be folding laundry, and I ended up sitting on my bedroom floor watching it four times in a row instead. It was from a mom named Jackie Maywood, and within the first ten seconds she said the thing so many of us think but rarely say out loud: motherhood was never meant to be the end of her own dreams.
View this post on Instagram
I’ve read a lot of “you can have it all, mama” captions over the years. Most of them slide right past me. This one didn’t, because it wasn’t selling anything. It was just honest. She said she’s not the traditional stay-at-home mom, and she’s learned that’s okay. She loves being there for her family, and she also loves building something of her own. Setting goals that scare her. Chasing ideas. Creating a life that feels like hers, too.
I think that’s the part that got me. A life that feels like hers, too.
The Guilt Nobody Warns You About
Nobody tells you, before you have kids, that the hardest part of motherhood isn’t the sleep deprivation or the tantrums in the cereal aisle. It’s the guilt that shows up the moment you want something for yourself. You close your laptop when your toddler walks in, like you got caught doing something wrong. You apologize for taking a work call during dinner. You quietly shelve the idea you were excited about because it feels indulgent to chase it right now.
Jackie’s message cuts straight through that. We’re allowed to love our families deeply AND want more for ourselves. Not one or the other. Both, at the same time, messy and imperfect, the way most of real life actually is.
If mom guilt is something you wrestle with too, you’re in good company — it comes up constantly in our Mom Life stories, because almost every mother we talk to is carrying some version of it.
Our Goals Didn’t Disappear When We Became Moms
Here’s a line from the reel I keep coming back to: our ambition didn’t expire.
I love that phrasing, because ambition can genuinely start to feel like something with an expiration date once the baby arrives. Like it was a season of life you already lived through, and now you’re in a different season where wanting things for yourself doesn’t fit the schedule anymore.
But ambition doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t clock out because you became someone’s mom. It just gets quieter for a while, buried under diaper bags and school pickup lines, waiting for you to notice it’s still there.
I’ve talked to moms building Etsy shops from their kitchen tables at 9pm. Moms studying for certifications during naptime. Moms who went back to school in their late thirties because the dream they shelved at twenty-two never actually left. None of them love their kids any less for it. If anything, chasing something of their own seems to make them better at everything else, because they’re not quietly resenting the life they didn’t get to build.
There’s No One Right Way to Be a Good Mom
This is maybe the most important part of Jackie’s message, and it’s worth saying plainly: there is no one right way to be a good mom.
Some moms are happiest fully immersed at home with their little ones, and that is a complete, beautiful way to raise a family. Some moms need a project of their own to feel like themselves — a business, a career, a creative pursuit — and that is just as complete, just as beautiful. Most of us live somewhere in the middle, shifting back and forth depending on what season we’re in.
The comparison trap is what makes this so exhausting. Instagram doesn’t help. Neither does the mom at pickup who somehow seems to have it all figured out. But comparing your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s fifteen-second reel is a losing game every single time. For more on stepping off that particular hamster wheel, our piece on building a slower, softer lifestyle as a busy mom is worth a read.
Build the Business. Chase the Goal. Raise the Babies.
Jackie’s caption ends with a line that reads almost like a permission slip: Build the business. Chase the goal. Raise the babies. Create a life you’re proud of.
I love that it’s not framed as a choice. It’s framed as a both. You get to raise your babies well AND chase the thing that scares you. You get to show up for bedtime stories AND stay up late working on the idea that keeps you up at night for good reasons, not anxious ones.
If you’re a mom in the thick of trying to figure out how to actually do both — not in theory, but in the reality of naptimes, school runs, and a to-do list that never ends — you’re not alone in that either. It’s a big part of why we started the Working Moms section of this site in the first place: to talk honestly about what it actually takes to build something while raising a family, without pretending it’s effortless.
Practically, that might look like:
- Protecting one small block of time each day that’s just for your goal, even if it’s only thirty minutes
- Letting go of the idea that “balance” means everything gets equal attention every single day
- Asking for help — from a partner, a friend, a babysitter — without treating it like a failure
- Celebrating small progress instead of waiting for some finish line to feel proud of yourself
None of it is glamorous. Most days it looks like working through exhaustion, not around it. But that’s exactly what makes it real, and exactly what Jackie’s reel captured so well.
We Get to Write Our Own Version of Motherhood
The line that closes out her post is the one worth sitting with the longest: we get to write our own version of motherhood.
Not the version our own moms lived. Not the version that gets the most likes online. Not the version anyone else has decided is the “right” one. Our own.
For me, that version includes messy hair, a half-finished to-do list, kids who interrupt every important call, and a stubborn refusal to let go of the things I want to build just because I also happen to be someone’s mom. Some days that version feels like it’s working. Some days it doesn’t. But it’s mine, and that’s the whole point.
If Jackie’s reel resonated with you the way it did with me, I’d love to hear what your version of motherhood looks like. Drop it in the comments, or share this with a mom who needs the reminder today: your dreams didn’t disappear when you became a mother. They’re still yours to chase.
Want more honest mom-life talk like this? Explore more stories in Mom Life or catch up on our latest reads in the Blog.