Sharing a thoughtful piece on motherhood with you today––written by my close friend Leah. Leah and I worked together while in New York; she took me under her wing as a freelance writer when she was at ELLE and helped me get into the magazine world. It was such an invaluable experience for me, and I’ve been so thankful for our friendship ever since. From ELLE, to Upstate New York adventures with the hubs, game nights in her Chelsea apartment, our lunch dates whenever I’m back in NYC, an especially dusty Coachella, a number of backstage interviewing during past fashion weeks and her visit to see us when we moved to Sacramento,… we’ve had many a good times!
I love Leah’s writing style so much as she writes how she talks––just as if we were having a coffee date, catching-up on life. During the pandemic this past year she turned her love for writing and magazines into her own Zine… the Leah-zine! It was such a refreshing read to receive in the mail. Especially at a time when I was missing my east coast girlfriend. I don’t know about you, but I will always have such a soft spot for print and tangible reads. I dove back into reading books this year and read more than I have in a long time (pre-kids for sure). I signed up for a number of new magazine subscriptions and have been craving more offline reads in general. Well, I’m happy to share that Leah’s zine is coming out for a second edition and has evolved into: In Kind. If you’re craving honest writing, thoughtful pieces on everything from motherhood to style and career… I think you’ll really enjoy In Kind.
You can follow along with them on Instagram here and sign up for your own copy of the magazine coming this April here. (I’m flattered to be interviewed in this upcoming issue!).
Such a proud friend! Congrats Leah––and now I hope you’ll enjoy this honest piece on ambition and motherhood that I really resonated with from the first issue written by Leah.
Of all the questions and uncertainties that plague you throughout the journey to motherhood, the one that’s stuck with me the longest—first appearing during pregnancy and rearing its head even right now this very second—is how ambition fits into the whole equation. How do you combine the dreams and goals of you-before-baby with a future you can’t possibly imagine? Even after the baby has arrived, it’s foolish to assume you can predict your emotions and desires when said child turns one, three, five. (We’ll leave out the practical concerns of finances and childcare since that turns a big question into a massive one).
I’ve danced around the question with so many people, trying to work out how to verbalize it. Is my ambition still there, just quieted as I work out the practicalities of this? Am I subconsciously ashamed of wanting the same dreams as before? And, most painfully, allowing yourself to wonder if you missed some critical juncture, if you failed to get your career in tiptop shape before having the baby and now those doors are locked. For so many in my generation, the baby is something we might have struggled to get. Then it happens and arrives and you’re confused by going right back to wanting what you did before.
I was beyond honored when Marcella Kelson, a personal development strategist and coach (with masters in psychoanalytic development psychology and clinical social work) who I love following on Instagram, agreed to chat with me about everything rattling around in my brain.
“In the same way that there’s no point in thinking about your career three years from now because you don’t know what you’re going to feel, I very much believe motherhood is one step at a time. All you have is the information you have now; all you can create is the next step based on your truth today. If I was constantly living in the future it’d be very hard to make a decision about the present,” she explained on the phone.
She’s right, of course—depression lives in the past and anxiety in the future. With or without kids, all you can do is pilot your ship for the current at-sea conditions.
And yet.
Before having a baby, even before I was pregnant, I wondered what I would be like after. Would I be swept up by a feeling unlike anything I’d experienced before? Would I know, deep in my bones, that I wanted to stay home, abandon my professional work? As I tiptoed back into life after she was born, I found I was fine to leave her, physically (for a ferry ride into the city to interview for a new job) and mentally (while I picked freelance work back up). And while that was interesting to see, I started looking six months, one year, three years into the future and came away feeling absolutely confused. What I want now might not be what I want then, and how can I even predict then when I’d only mothered a three-month-old, not a toddler?
“Our generation is really conflicted: ‘Do I want to be a working mom?’ It’s hard, but it’s really hard to be a stay-at-home mom too. The question is do you really want to work, and what does that look like for you; if you didn’t care about what people thought would you still work? That’s a big question because I think a lot of our generation thinks, ‘We’re supposed to be improving conditions for working women, and if I’m not partaking in that I’m doing a disservice to women’; ‘I’m so educated and not using that education.’ There are conflicting messages.”
She rationalized the expense of childcare in the most insanely smart way I’ve ever heard—that it’s an investment in you, your career, and your business that might take longer to show returns, sure, yet is still absolutely vital for building that business or profile.
“It’s just about what feels right to each individual. I think a lot of people feel either way they go they aren’t making the right decision and that’s unfortunate,” she explained. Part of what makes her brand of candor so appealing, both on Instagram and as a coach, is that she’s in a similar boat to many of us, working, building her own brand, and wondering why the first year of her son’s life didn’t feel her with the almost heavenly glow some Insta-moms seem to beam.
“Think about all the people you know and how they relate to work or marriage or their parents, any other dynamic. Everybody has their version of that, and somehow we don’t allow the same thing for mothers, we can’t accept that mothers have all different kinds of connections and styles and approaches. It feels like this is the one way you do it and if you don’t do it that way there’s something wrong with you,” she told me.
While our conversation and Marcella’s work focuses on motherhood, there’s no denying that all of it—all the anxieties and the corresponding advice—fit into the larger picture of simply being too. The question she poses to women worrying about what work will make them miss in their child’s life ought to be one we all ask ourselves in similar moments. What will you miss if you don’t?
