I Built a Career I Loved, Then Motherhood Changed What I Wanted

September Blog: By Kelly Duggan

When I was little, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, my answer was immediate and always the same. A mom, I wanted to be a mom.

But funny enough, when you get to college, “Mom” isn’t on the registrar, so I picked another major instead. I finished college, got a job, and worked hard to pay off my student loans. I got promoted, then promoted again.

And somewhere along the way, I started to realize that I was pretty great at this whole career thing. I was shocked. This was not in the plan!

But I loved being good at my job. I loved having responsibility. I loved being someone people trusted. I loved building, growing, achieving, and solving problems.

And suddenly this “side quest” that I thought I was filling my time with before I had kids had become such a core part of my identity. My work wasn’t just what I did, it was who I was. It represented everything I’d worked so hard for.

Which created a problem.

Because the one thing I had always known I wanted was still waiting for me, but now it felt like it was going to cost me something.

No one wanted to be a mom more than I did. This wasn’t an unexpected detour from the life I had planned. Motherhood WAS the plan.

And yet, by the time I got there, becoming a mom still felt like it came with a price tag.

Because I thought there were only two choices.

Keep working at the level I had been working, put my kids in childcare, and hope I made it home before bedtime, or walk away from the career I had built and become a disappointment to all of working womankind.

Of course, those were never actually the only two choices. But at the time, they were the only ones I could see.

And I think that is where so many women get stuck.

We are handed this incredibly narrow definition of what ambition is supposed to look like.

Keep climbing. Keep earning. Keep taking on more. Keep proving that motherhood hasn’t changed you.

But motherhood did change me.

It didn’t make me less ambitious, but it changed what I was ambitious for.

I still wanted to do meaningful work. I still wanted to build, create, solve, and strategize.

But I didn’t want work to be the center of my life anymore.

My life had become so much bigger than I ever imagined it could be, and I wanted room for that.

For a long time, admitting that out loud felt dangerously close to “giving up.”

But I don’t believe that anymore.

I don’t think changing what I want means I failed the woman I used to be.

I think it means I listened closely enough to the woman I am now.

Maybe your ambition still looks like climbing as high as you possibly can.

Maybe it looks like building something of your own.

Maybe it looks like taking a step back for a season, finding work with more flexibility, or simply deciding that your career gets to be important, but not the most important thing in your life.

None of those choices erase what you’ve built, none of them waste your talent, and none of them make you any less ambitious.

Can it be uncomfortable when what we want changes? Absolutely.

But the real loss would be spending the next ten or twenty years chasing a version of your life you no longer want simply because you once worked so hard to achieve it.

You are allowed to want something different after becoming a mom.

About The Author: Kelly Duggan is a career coach, HR consultant, and founder of Your Place at the Top. She helps women, especially moms, figure out what they actually want from their careers and build a path that fits the life they want to live. Before starting her business, Kelly spent nearly a decade at WWE (yes, the wrestling company). She built their Employee Experience function from the ground up before becoming Vice President, Employee Experience. She also has her Masters in Higher Education Administration from The College of William & Mary, where she specialized in Career Services. After becoming a mom herself, Kelly became even more passionate about helping women navigate the way motherhood can change what they want and need from work. Through one on-one coaching and her group program, Made for More, she works with moms who know something about their career no longer fits, even if they aren’t sure what they want instead.

Want to connect with Kelly? Head over to her Modern Providers Directory Listing to learn more about her and how she supports our village.