It starts early. Pre-school even. The narrative that if we just work hard enough we can be anything we want to be.

Doctor? ✔️

Teacher? ✔️

President? ✔️

Check. Check. Check.

And on top of all of that, we can also be mom’s! We can carry babies for 9 months, birth them, feed them, raise them all while being “anything we want to be”. Or as Beyoncé puts it:

Strong enough to bare the children

Then get back to business

So we hustle and work and build and climb and graduate and achieve and we’re well on our way to being whatever it is we decided we wanted to be. And if you’re like most (not all!) women, at some point you decide to start a family. While you know it will change things, there is one change that I don’t think society has done a great job of preparing us for.

Sacrifice.

Having children and raising a family, however that looks like in your personal context, will require some type of sacrifice. Whether it’s sleep, money, a clean house, time, driving a minivan or any other number of sacrifices made, a tension is created between your new reality and that life long “you can be anything you want” narrative in your head.

Let me share a story, a few months ago my 5 year old had summer kids camp at church (old school folks know this as “VBS”). The camp was 4 days and since our child care allows us to pay by the week in the summer, I kept him home one day to save a couple hundred bucks. He’s 5 so he was mostly able to entertain himself, while I worked at home, but there were still a decent number of inconvenient interruptions. In addition, we went out to eat for lunch which took up more time than my normal work week lunch, but this was all fine. I was getting to have a special day with rare one-on-one time, but there was a sacrifice involved. The rest of that week was also a bit of a shake up since kid’s camp started 1.5 hours later and ended 1.5 hours earlier than our regular child care. I had to be very intentional about how my work week was scheduled those days as well as asking for additional help from my husband which was a sacrifice for him. Please hear my heart. I’m not complaining about any of this. Camp is a huge blessing to our kids and a priority for our family but it takes some extra logistical planning to make the week run smoothly.

So for that week, I really didn’t get to be what I wanted to be. Which is a head-down, hard-charging, hustling, innovating entrepreneur. I maintained getting the tasks done that I needed to but maintenance mode is not where I thrive or want to be.

I wondered if this was just a problem for entrepreneurs or other self-employed people. But I know it’s not. I know my friends that are in corporate settings or education or medicine have all had to make sacrifices to their careers in order to be available to their families.

Where does all this leave us? Are we to completely abandon our dreams and careers? Should we sacrifice raising a family so we can continue to run hard after goals? There’s no one size fits all answer. We all need to do the work to find the right mix of career ambition and personal life.

I do know we all need a lot of grace.

When that inner critic speaks up and scolds you for not living up to your full potential, remind yourself you have chosen sacrifice to make work + family co-exist. That you’re making compromises, because for you, living a fulfilled life includes a family. And if you are not yet in a season of mixing work and family, consider the sacrifices that will have to happen if and when that season arrives. Don’t be surprised or caught off-guard.

Let’s approach these sacrifices with joy knowing that it means we’re helping to make a beautiful life for our partners and children.