When Success Hurts: Holding Business, Motherhood, and the Truth You Don’t Post

Motherhood and business can both be holy and hard.  I often feel the very real tension between deeply caring about and wanting multiple things in the same season, and also butting up against my capacity and things outside my control. This episode is a love letter to every mom. 

I share the behind-the-scenes of a recent emotional upheaval moment where I decided to in real and raw time share the shame, embarrassment, and trying so freaking hard to be able to “hold it all,” the frustration of doing everything right but still feeling off, and the deep relief that came when I stopped trying to fix and started to feel.

We talk about the mental and emotional weight of leadership, emotional regulation, and why success can’t just be measured in numbers when your body, babies, and business are all changing at once.

Themes:
• High-functioning burnout in motherhood
• Emotional capacity as the real metric of success
• Shame, comparison, and the myth of balance and even success
• The relief of being witnessed instead of managed
• Finding steadiness in a tender, full season

Come for the honesty. Stay for the exhale.

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Chapters

• 0:00 Naming Real Vulnerability
• 6:20 Boundaries, Shame, and Being Seen
• 12:45 Reading the Instagram Stories
• 20:30 Love for the Work, Business Friction
• 28:35 The Messy Middle and Comparison

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today's episode is a solo episode, and it's going to be a combination of a couple different things. First, we're going to have some vulnerable conversation. And when I say vulnerable, I mean actually coming to you with vulnerable emotions, not just sensitive content that I've thought through how I want to present this, what I'm going to say. I come to you with a solution, but like actually something that feels very uncomfortable, where I don't have a silver lining for it. I don't have a magic bow to tie on it. I don't have a professional positive outlook on it. I just have this reality of being human with you. And I'm also going to share a couple of updates and invitations. So I'm glad you're here. And the way that I'm going to start this podcast off is read you some stories that I posted on Instagram the other day. The reason I want to start with these is I have realized I am not super vulnerable on social media. And part of that I feel is healthy. It is I have very clear intentional boundaries with social media, with marketing, even with my podcast, that I don't share nearly as much personal information as I really think I do, especially not the vulnerable stuff. The stuff that hurts, that feels cringy and embarrassing and awkward to say while I'm still in it. And some of that is a healthy boundary of I'm protecting my marriage, I'm protecting my babies, I'm protecting my personal life because my personal life is very interconnected with relationships. And honestly, there's just a lot of stuff that I don't feel needs to be public. It doesn't need to be out there on the internet for potential peers of my kids to see or hear. My kids didn't ask for me to do this. They didn't ask for me to have a public, if you will, career where I'm talking about very vulnerable, intimate parts of my life. And it's actually really hard for me because so much of what I do with clients in masterminds and in coaching and at retreats is we talk about these intimate details of our lives, of our motherhood, of our marriages, of what it's really looking like to feel and to heal and to break cycles and to shift the relationships that are going on in your life, the grief, the real things that like they need to be named, they need to be talked about. But some of those things for me, they just they don't belong on social media. And I think part of it too is just that vulnerability feels awkward. It doesn't, it doesn't feel good. Even even when you're practiced in it, even when this is something that like I'm very accustomed to vulnerability and I have a safety with vulnerability where I don't have this over-sharing feeling. I think a lot of times if you feel like you're oversharing, if you feel like you're trauma dumping, I often think that's actually a fawning response. And I find myself living in that less and less and less where when I am vulnerably sharing, it's coming from an embodied place of I need to talk about this. I want to talk about this, I want you to hear it. And it feels tender. There is a sensitivity there, there is a tenderness, there is this, you are offering someone something that you're scared they might reject, that they might judge you on, that you have shame about, either internalized shame or externalized shame, where you are aware physiologically, you are aware that we are not supposed to talk about this. And that's not necessarily always someone has told you don't talk about this. It's just that no one is, or no one's really telling the truth about it. So today we're gonna start there. And I'm gonna read you this post mostly these stories, mostly because I wanted to read it to you as I wrote it, while I was in the emotion of vulnerability, while I was in, I was literally in the middle of a shame and embarrassment cycle. And I could feel it. And here's the thing: it keeps coming up for me. It would not go away. I have talked to my friends about this, I have gotten coached on this, I have brought this to my journal. I have brought this to my prayer realm. I I have the tools. I have the tools, I have the strategy to work through this, and it just kept coming up. And so I realized like for me, I wanted to just look it square in the face. I wanted to stop pretending that I wasn't experiencing it and I wanted to just dive in deeper instead of trying to like push it away and ignore it and pretend it wasn't happening or making it into a positive scenario. I don't know who else does this, but I do this on a regular basis. It's something, it's a pattern that I'm still working on where I have gotten so good at mindset work. I have gotten so good at positivity and gratitude and silver lining things that I will unconsciously and not maliciously, but I will take problems. I will take things that hurt or are harming me or that are hard, and I will make the best of it. I will see it as a growth opportunity. I will see it as something that I'm going to get through. I'm going to figure this out. And then I find myself over and over and over. And it feels like I'm doing all of the right things, but I'm not getting the results that I wanted. And I found myself in this spot and I've been here for a minute. Like it's it's not like a new thing. Like I've been here for a minute, and I hate problems that I don't know how to solve. I hate things in my human experience that I can't fix, that there's not a strategy within my control to change it because I'm already owning my side of the street. And that doesn't mean that I'm not going to change things, that I'm not going to empower myself with information or coaching or support or decide to do something different. And sometimes that's not what we need. Okay, so I keep getting sidetracked. Let me let me jump into reading this, these stories for you. We need to talk about the things we don't know how to talk about, the things that we somehow feel we aren't supposed to say. The things that are too vulnerable and messy and that don't match up with our personas. I'll go first. I'm struggling with the business side of my business. I can't tell if I'm spiraling up or out. I can't tell if I'm about to crush through a glass ceiling or crash out. And I'm not even in luteal, so I can't just wait a few days for my hormones to calm the F down. Whenever shame tells me not to talk about something, I have a rule to call or text a friend and tell her the thing within 24 hours. To say it out loud and unfiltered, no matter how cringy or dumb or vulnerable. I often do not share publicly while in the process, but I don't know why. I felt like today, that's what I need. So here we go. Laugh face emoji. Absolutely every aspect of my business is better than I could have ever dreamed of right now. The clients and women I work with, incredible. The work we do and the results and the transformations, life-changing, not only for them, but literal generational healing is happening. Marriages, businesses, and fucking incredible women are supported in the way they need and crave. I could hang my hat on this here, and it would be enough. I love my work that I'm doing. And the business side, not my practitioner side, has not met my expectations. It's not followed my timing. My efforts aren't getting me the results I wanted, or that I somehow feel I was promised by following the formulas. This is in quotes. Recovering perfectionist over here who really hates when I feel I did my part and life still does its life thing. And another note I'm gonna add in here. Not only does it feel like it's not matching my timing or my expectations, but I'm absolutely 100% comparing my business right now to my business last year. And this year, financially on the books does not look like last year. And not in a positive way. Not in like a oh my gosh, I can't believe how much it's exploding financially. Like if I look at every other metric in my business, everything is saying we're so, so healthy. And then this year, my like the dollar signs aren't looking that way. Okay, anyways, just had to like add that little bit of like extra spice for you. I have nothing to fix, and that is my least favorite thing. Another laugh face emoji. You guys know I love the emojis. This timing feels appropriate, actually, as I'm at the end of launching this new round of mastermind. I've been in rooms where people have all the answers, where we only show the after pictures, where we only share the stories of how we got through, where we only talk about our wins and how professional and together we are, where we network but never really get to be seen or supported, how we are so happy and shiny and successful. But what about the messy middles? What about what we when we get stuck or spiral? What about when we don't get what we want? What about when we want things and we literally have to choose? When business gets put on the back burner for motherhood, when ambition also holds grief or changes season to season? What about when our vision and our desires don't have the capacity? What about when our personal becomes professional or our professional lives get personal? That's the shit I know how to do. I don't claim to be a business coach, and yet the women I coach are really badass business women who needed something deeper and more real than just a quote unquote business mastermind. What about when all of it is a lot, even when we are holding it well? When we hit a new season that requires something different. Not the way I am in rooms or conversations, and especially not in coaching or retreats or mastermind. And that's okay. That's mostly healthy boundaries, smiley face, painting nails, emoji. But today, today I felt exhausted and also embarrassed. Oh, hey, shame, by the weight and the stress of business, by the weird tension between the practitioner side of my work and then the needing to be a boss, by the paralyzing feeling and fears of what do I do to fix it? Exclamation question mark. What's the next strategy or tool or thing that gets me to some perceived safety or success or feeling good enough? Which never comes, by the way. I've watched countless women who have it all still just to continually move the markers and carrots of success, never feeling or enjoying it, even when we have it. Today I feel the muscle that wants to flex and fake it till I make it, that wants to prove and move and to fight and flight to fix what isn't even broken. By the act of proving or puffing up. Today I felt the weird combo of, oh my gosh, I love this. And also a side of I'm so sick of the game of selling and marketing, and even when I try to make it spiritual or service. Sometimes holding business and success and leadership is a lot. Sometimes healing and motherhood is a lot. Sometimes prioritizing and having a healthy marriage while also doing all of those other things a lot, even when it's deeply good. Sometimes holding or growing and leading a business is a lot. Sometimes we need strategies, my favorite. And sometimes we need to admit how it feels. Ironically, not always my favorite. We need support for the emotional and mental weight. We need to not feel alone or broken. We need to be able to talk, invent, and be seen and held. We need to just be able to talk it out. I feel like there are a million spaces to learn strategies and blueprints. So many toolboxes, but I'm overwhelmed by it all. It's too much and yet not enough. So I come back to relationship. The relationship to me, my work, my motherhood, the relationship to mentors and friends who can deeply see and speak to exactly where I'm stuck and who can speak into that, who can remind me who I am, who can witness my growth and magic, even in ways I can't, who can see where I need to change something, and when I need to trust the timing and the process, as we laugh and cry about how shitty and scary that can actually feel. And as I was sharing that, I was literally in this place of feeling so embarrassed. And I talked to one of my best friends, and also there was some, there were some clients too, as we were talking at the retreat, because one of the things that happened at retreat is we were going around sharing, but instead of just the woman sharing what she's experiencing, I love having a circle where the women in the room share about you, what they see in you, what they witness in you, the growth, the magic, the beauty, what they love about you, what they see in you. And it is one of the most profound moments, I think, at any retreat, because all of us so deeply, one of our deepest needs and desires for so many is to be truly known and seen and understood and loved. And like, oh, they get me in a way that like sometimes like we're even missing in our own, like our own relationship to ourselves. Like I'm not even witnessing this about myself. And when it was my turn, all of these women in this circle were describing this has choked me up a little bit. They weren't just describing what it was like to work with me as a professional. Most of the women in the room were one-on-one clients or longtime friend, and of course, it was powerful for me professionally, but it was also powerful for me personally. But as I sat here and I witnessed these incredible women, and I mean, like, I love the women that I work with. I deeply care about them. They are magnificent, and I see things in them that they don't even see for themselves. And I do believe that sometimes that is my job as a coach is to see things and believe things about you that you don't yet see, that you don't yet believe, and then help you to bridge you there, help you to get you to see yourself in the way that I can see you. As they were sharing, I was sitting there and I had this overwhelming thought of like, if this room, if just these women in this room were all I ever did professionally, I could literally hang my hat on that and be like, that's all I needed to do. That would have been worth it. Witnessing and hearing from these women, if that's all I've ever done professionally, I like I can't think of a better version of success. I can't think of a better definition than hearing what these women have said, this business and my coaching and this space for them and these retreats and these masterminds, hearing them tell me what it has meant for them in their own words, and in a space where, like, it's not just like this cute little testimonial on a Google sheet. It's like they are telling me in tears what this has meant for them and what it has created, helped them create in their lives. I'm sitting there in awe and I'm and then later that day I got to have this conversation with my best friend where I was telling her how embarrassed I felt and how frustrated I was that there's parts of my business and I'm getting so emotional because I care so fucking much. And I feel like so often when I show up to the podcast or social media, I don't always have this much emotion. And typically I don't bring that forward, and I don't know why. I know there's unconscious things. I think for so many of us, like we don't want to be seen caring too much. We want to seem like it's all easy and it all comes easily to us. And oh my gosh, things are just so good and magical. And here's the thing things are so good. I mean, listen to what I just said. I literally just told you that I was sitting there saying I've reached the success that I've wanted. If this is all I have in my business, this would be enough. This would be, this would have been worth it. So I'm sitting there literally feeling that, seeing that. And moments later, I'm sitting there in this deep shame and embarrassment and frustration of like, why the fuck can't I figure this out? What is wrong with me or my business or my strategy? Is it marketing? Is it social media strategy? Is it my copywriting? Is it my website? Do I need to be on LinkedIn? Do I need to be on Substack? Do I need to go back to TikTok? And it's like all of these strategies and all of these tools. And it's so overwhelming to feel like there is just some magic thing that if I could just get that, it would make it easier. And I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that I had that vulnerable moment where I put my professional persona aside because there is a professionalism, right? Like, especially in coaching, I'm not bringing my shit to calls. In mastermind and retreats, I am mostly fundamentally holding the container in this space, but especially at masterminds and retreats. Part of the reason I created those rooms is because women like me and women like you, we needed a room where we can be fundamental badasses and leaders and we can be healthy and heal, healed and whole people and still walk in there and say, I am going through some shit. I don't have this figured out. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or hell, it feels like I'm doing everything right and I'm still not getting the results that I wanted. That is life. That is motherhood or marriage or business. You can still do everything right and not get the results that you wanted. Not get the results that everyone has promised you will happen if you just follow their magical blueprint, if you just have the right strategy. You cannot outheal your humanity. I don't care how much money you make, I don't care how successful you get, which also, by the way, have you redefined success for yourself? Have you sat down and said, what does it look like to be a successful mother? What are my mile markers? What are, what is the criteria I'm looking for that tells me I'm successful? Do you have that in your motherhood? Do you have that in your marriage? Do you have that in your own personal identity? What does it look like for me to be winning? Becca, me, Becca, in the year 2025. I literally looked at my watch. If you're just listening to this, I looked at my watch. Like, what year is it? What day is it? Where am I? What does success look like here and right now for me in this season, in this moment, because you don't control everything. And guess what? Success this year looks different for me than it did last year because it's changing. It's changing. I'm in a different season of parenting. Holy shit, we're in a different season of parenting. Soccer mom life is a lot right now. Teen parenting a teenager a lot right now. Business is a whole different game. Like I literally just went through a six, seven month, really deeply intensive healing season for me that didn't just impact me personally, it impacted me professionally because those things are deeply connected for me. I'm a very embodied practitioner. When I bring things to my work, it's only because I've already integrated that personally. It's only because I've already lived it. I've built the muscle. I've gone through the vulnerability. I've done it. And that costs me something. But I I wanted to share this in the podcast. I decided to talk about it because I think there's so much. Oh my gosh. It's like it's like overwhelming and it makes me pissed off and it makes me sad. And then part of me wants to be like, oh, you just you get to choose what you get to see. But it's like when I get on social media, the primary thing that most of us are seeing is people selling you. It's people selling you. I was about to say what they're selling you, and everyone's selling you something different. But the reality is that there is this, there's always a magical strategy or supplement or formula or protocol or biohacking or their way. And listen, here's the thing. I sell on social media. And so I'm not I'm not dogging that, but I do think that we need to cognitively recognize that our animal bodies do not understand that what we are seeing is not the full picture and it's not the full reality. Because I I work with really wonderfully, beautifully healthy, successful, established, wonderful women. And guess what? It's really fucking hard, even when it's really good. There are seasons or moments or times where life pushes in on you or pulls out on you, or you've got some stuff. You've got some stuff to heal through, you've got some stuff to work through. There's different times where marriage or motherhood or your own family dynamics. I know so many women, so, so many women right now who are dealing with massive boundaries and grief and relationship ruptures and relational restructuring with their mothers, with their family of origin, where it's changing. The dynamics are changing because they have to, the capacity is changing because the women are saying, like, this we can't be attached to this toxic system, or they're saying there's these toxic behaviors, but like I have a really healthy, wonderful mom who I love, and I can't I can't keep doing this relationship how it is. It's a lot, it's a lot, and I think so often we want to have a way to fix it. We want to hurry up and get rid of it. We want to tie a pretty bow on it, we want to make it positive, we want to silver line it, and sometimes we just need to be able to talk about it. We just need to be able to be in relationship to ourselves, to what's going on, to how it feels, to how it looks, and relationship to other people. And it is so interesting to me the timing of my, we're gonna call it a mini crash out, really. Like, and here's the thing we're gonna call that a crash out because when you are a high functioner, we have this tendency to always be okay. It's so good, I'm good, it's okay, things are pretty well. Even after we just described how every person around us is on fire and we're dealing with like five million dumpster fires, and then we're still over here, like, I'm so good. I'm navigating it so well. And it's like, could we just give ourselves a minute to be like, okay, we're okay, we're gonna keep that container, we're gonna keep that strength and that perspective. Yes, I'm so proud of us. Go us. We have a positive perspective, we have a positive mindset. Love that for us, and that right there is that costly burnout. It is going to cost us our capacity and our relational capabilities and our beingness. It's why we get so numb. It's why we get dissociated and distracted, and we're so busy being good that like we no longer feel like we're in the room. Because we numb from our emotions and from our bodies by intellectualizing, by doing mindset work and positive thinking and gratitude that doesn't reach anywhere below the neck, by using nervous system regulation as a way that we avoid anything that doesn't feel good and positive, which by the way, we need relationship and direct connection to the parts of us that we don't like. Oftentimes, those are some of the most powerful parts of you. When we connect you to your shadow, when we get you comfy with your discomfort, with the parts of you that you want to hide, that you have shame with, that you have embarrassment, that is where so much of your power is going to come from. That is where your backbone is going to come from. That is where you are all of a sudden going to be in, you know, that whole like, oh, your instinct. And you're like, I don't, do I have an instinct? No, someone tell me what to do. You won't know what to do until you are in touch with those parts of yourself. And guess what? They're not pretty and they're not cute, and they are massively inconvenient, massively inconvenient. And I say that very proudly as someone who I literally do this professionally. People pay me to do this, and I'm really, I'm really good at it. And in my own personal life, it is inconvenient for me. It is inconvenient for me to be having emotions at the same time that my teenager is having massive attitude. It is inconvenient for me to notice and name and bring conversations and conflict to my husband when I'd much rather pretend that everything's good and fine and that I don't have needs. And you know, part of that is just my Ethyogram too talking. All of you have your own personal brand of bullshit, your own personal way that you accidentally over or under underutilize your personality, your patterns because you're not aware of them, because you're avoiding and ignoring them as if you're so sophisticated that you don't have them. And anyways, I think I'm getting a little off topic. So I'm like trying to bring myself off back into topic. And also, this is the topic. I don't have some pretty perfect bow to tie on all of this. I don't. And here's the funny thing. I have a lot of strategies to support this. I do. I know how to utilize them, I know how to find them, and I love that. But oftentimes we jump so straight into like trying to answer the question that like we're not even asking the right questions yet. Because we're not to the truth, we're not to the depth, we're not to the wounding yet. And until you get to the wounding, you don't. Know what medicine it needs because otherwise you're just covering up the symptoms. You're just making the symptoms go away. It's like when you're treating a fever, but the fever is actually what's treating the virus. The fever is actually your body's innate, wise response of saying something in here is harmful for me. That is the work that I'm so deeply passionate about because I continue coming back to that medicine, not only just professionally for my clients, personally for me. Personally for me. And I'll reach for all kinds of other things. I have been reaching for strategies. And here's the thing: I am implementing strategies. I am taking active steps. I am seeking consultation. I am getting help from smart people who can see things that I can't see. I am trying different things. I am being creative. And you know what? I just needed a freaking second, a moment to talk about it, to name it, and to feel it, to feel it fully in my body. The thing that I've avoided doing unintentionally is feeling it. Because it's so uncomfortable and it's so tender and it hurts so bad because I want it so much, because I care so much, and I don't want to care any less. Because, you know, what does this matter in scale to like some of the things going on in the world? And here's the thing though: this does matter. The thing that you're walking through, it does matter. And you are allowed to take up space. In fact, it is necessary for you to take up space because that's when you actually exist to make a mark in the world, to impact people, to impact your family and your friends and your business and your motherhood and even your own family lineage. You are doing powerful, powerful, important stuff. I hope that this talk, that this podcast episode gave you hope and not the kind of hope that is just all positive thinking, the kind of gritty hope and gratitude that comes from having the full perspective of reality. And you know what? Sometimes reality has some suck to it. Even when it's really good and beautiful, there is some hard stuff that you've got to pay attention to and take care of and feel and move through and work through. And a lot of times, even when you have everything you've ever wanted, even when you are so successful, you still have humanity. You're still human. You're still gonna have human emotions and experiences, relational patterns. You're still gonna have to deal with boundaries and conflict and motherhood. Oh man, that is a continual invitation for me to meet my ego and like the hardest parts of me, the insecure parts of me, the angry parts of me, the grieving, the controlling, all of those parts of me, like man, they come up in parenthood. Man, they come up in motherhood. Thank you for being here today. I I would love to hear from you if this supported you. If you love the podcast, of course, my invitation is to follow along, leave a review, send this to a friend, send this to someone who you're like, can we just go talk about shit? Can I can I just vent instead of acting like I have it all together? Can I just like tell you some things that like I like I feel like I could die? Like I feel like I literally will die if I have to say this out loud. And then you say it out loud and you can breathe. You finally don't have that knot in your throat. I had some more things that I was gonna share in this podcast, but I think I just want to leave this podcast there. And so I'll see you in the next episode where I'll share some actual updates and invitations, but I just want to leave this podcast as it is. It's gonna be raw, unfiltered, unedited, me in the mic, you in your headphones or your car listening wherever you are, whatever it is you're doing. Take a big deep breath. I know you care so much, and you're trying so hard. And I wonder if for today or even just this moment, you let it be good enough.