When my boys were young, a neighbor’s grandson asked them: “Is your mommy dead?”
Every Wednesday, this little boy would visit his grandparents across the street. He would see my husband and my sons, but he never saw me. I was at work.
Thankfully, my boys came home that night laughing—they thought it was hilarious. My immediate response was incredible guilt. My soul was crushed.
I know I’m not alone in that reaction. A KPMG survey found 43% of working parents struggle with guilt about not spending enough time either at home or at work, and women reported feeling guilt more often than men (50% versus 38%).
It would have been easy to let the guilt consume me all those years ago. I chose not to let it, because I understood that I’m a better parent when I’m fulfilled in my job. I told my sons it must be really nice that their friend’s mom didn’t work as much as I did—and then I told them it was pretty cool they had a mom who was very good at her job.
A decade or so later, as the president and CFO of a Fortune 500 company, I’ve tried to maintain that perspective. If juggling it all was challenging years ago, it’s even more so now.
Aiming for a position in senior leadership or the C-suite is a choice, and not everyone wants it. Plenty of people build a full life around being home with their kids, and that is not a lesser path. Those choosing to take on demanding careers require support systems, whether that’s a partner who picks up the slack or outside help with childcare and household tasks, which can be difficult to source and manage.
For anyone chasing a high-powered career, while also trying to raise a family, the first thing to understand is this: Guilt will consume you if you allow it, and it’s almost always misplaced and counterproductive. Here’s what I tell others who feel torn between their personal and professional responsibilities.
1. Stop aiming for balance
The problem with balance is that it implies you can have one foot in your personal life and one in your work life at all times. That’s not possible. Everything can’t constantly be equal—not if you’re an ambitious person aiming to run billion-dollar companies.
There are weeks when I am all-in on work and everything else is secondary, like when I’m finalizing quarterly results and preparing for earnings. Then, there are weekends when I receive work texts and decide not to respond right away. Both decisions are right and deliberate.
It’s why I prefer the concept of “disciplined presence” over “work-life balance.” It’s about making deliberate choices of who and what receives your attention and standing fully in those choices. It means putting your phone away in the meeting or not checking email at the dinner table—small choices that add up to a life lived with intention.
2. Stop measuring yourself by the moment
Just because things are a certain way right now does not mean they will be that way forever.
I’ve seen this play out time and again in my own career journey. For example, I’m a firm believer in putting on your own oxygen mask first, which includes prioritizing fitness. Yet, when my boys were 2 and 5, I simply couldn’t go to the gym as consistently as I would have liked. There was no time. I accepted that because I knew the season was temporary. As they got older and needed me less, I could spend more time working, traveling, and enjoying my workouts.
Now that my oldest is leaving for college, I’ve told my team I want to travel less for a bit because I have a finite number of months left with him under my roof.
Don’t make permanent decisions based on a temporary season—and don’t let it convince you that you’re failing. Guilt is a response to the moment, not a measure of you as a person. The trade-offs will rebalance, but you have to be patient enough to let them.
3. Ask loved ones what matters to them, then pick your moments
The single best piece of advice I ever got as a mom was from another female leader who told me, “Stop assuming you know what your loved ones want from you. Ask them.”
So, I asked my kids. What I discovered was that many of the things I felt guilty about simply didn’t matter to them. My boys didn’t need me to be the room parent at school. They didn’t care whether I made it to every weekday soccer practice.
What they did care about was specific and consistent. It was important to them that I showed up at weekend games, so I went to almost every one. My phone was out of sight, and I was the loudest voice on the sideline. Bedtime was another important ritual. I was always the one who tucked them in. That obviously looks different now that they’re older, but I’m still the last person to go in and wish them goodnight when I’m home.
You can’t be everywhere, so stop trying. Instead, ask the people you care about what they actually want. Then protect those moments as best you can. My boys aren’t going to remember the practice I missed. They are going to remember that I was at almost every important game, and that I was the last face they saw before they closed their eyes at night.
4. Guilt doesn’t serve you, your family, or your work
I recently listened to Emma Grede [the British fashion designer and entrepreneur] interview Victoria Beckham, who recounted something Diane von Fürstenberg told her: “Guilt is such a negative emotion. It is pointless.” The Belgian-born designer went on, “And darling, it’s very aging.”
I laughed when I heard this, because anyone who knows me knows I’m all about longevity and slowing the aging process—and I’ve been giving people a version of this advice for years.
Guilt about trade-offs you’ve already made is wasted energy. It doesn’t make your family feel more loved. It may feel like evidence that you care, but most of the time, it’s just evidence that you are measuring yourself against an unrealistic version of motherhood.
Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: There is no ambition without sacrifices. There will be missed dinners, and there will be games during earnings week. Pretending otherwise does everyone a disservice. What ultimately matters is whether those sacrifices are conscious and reflect your values.
If I’ve committed to a moment, I show up completely. The trade-offs I made to get here remain, but they stop being decisions I keep relitigating. They become the choices I made on purpose, and the people I made them for get the best version of me when I’m with them.