Hi {{ Name | there }},
11pm last night, I got this text from a mama at Uber in our community:
"Do I take the 4pm meeting or my daughter's game?"
"Do I say yes to the work trip or do bedtime?"
Every day, it's 12 small decisions. Every day, it feels like you're choosing wrong.
Most people think there are only two options:
Option 1: Push hard. Get promoted. Keep being overloaded. Miss everything.
Option 2: Pull back. Protect your time. Watch your career stall.
Both feel like failure. 🫠
But here's what I've learned watching thousands of women navigate this: The question itself is rigged.
"How do I balance career and family?" assumes ambition and children are opposing forces.
The women who've found peace didn't learn to balance better. They rejected the premise entirely.
They stopped asking, "Career or family?"
They started asking: "What does success look like for me in this season?"
When you ask "career or family," every decision feels like betrayal—of your work or your kids.
When you ask "what does success look like for me," you start building one life you're proud of instead of two you're trying to survive.
Ambition doesn't disappear when you have kids. It just stops fitting the script you were handed.
Before kids, success meant: The next title. The bigger role. The faster climb.
Now, it might mean:
A role that stretches you without colonizing your evenings.
Turning down the VP offer because it comes with 60% travel.
Taking the $20K pay cut for the job that ends at 5:30pm.
This is the third path.
And it's not a compromise. It's a different definition of winning.
The hard part? No one applauds this choice.
LinkedIn celebrates promotions. Nobody posts "I turned down Director to keep coaching my daughter's soccer team."
So when you choose the third path, it feels lonely.
You wonder if you've lost your edge.
But here's what I need you to hear:
Choosing a life that works for you isn't loss of ambition. It's the highest form of ambition.
Because you're optimizing for a life you actually want to live.
Does that mean it's easy? No.
The third path has real trade-offs too—at work and at home. But you're making intentional choices to hit your goals, not just surviving impossible expectations.
The women I know on the third path:
They're leading teams AND making it to the game.
They turned down work that bought back 10 hours a week—and six months later got promoted anyway.
They're skipping the work dinner to do bedtime and building influence through coffees and strategic visibility instead.
They're not doing less. They're doing different.
And what do they feel?
Relief. Like they can finally breathe. And more success.
So if you're standing at that crossroads right now:
What if there's nothing wrong with you?
What if you're just trying to fit a life that's outgrown the frame?
The third path starts with one question:
What would success look like for me in this season—not the one I was in five years ago, not the one everyone expects—but the one I'm actually living right now?
Hit reply and tell me: What would success look like for you in this season? Don’t overthink this. I read every response.
And if you're struggling to figure out how to find your edge again— to grow in your career while staying connected with your kids, without losing yourself—that's exactly what I help moms do. Click here to book time with me and we can have a deeper conversation about you + I can share a special opportunity to work more closely with me on this.
Can’t wait to hear from you!
Cheering you on,
Shivani
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