Hello beautiful souls,
I’ve been sitting with something heavy since recording my conversation with Simi Drey about motherhood. Something that’s been gnawing at me, demanding to be said out loud in a world that loves to celebrate the myth of “having it all.”
The truth is, we’re not having honest conversations about what motherhood actually costs us as women. Not just financially, but emotionally, professionally, and spiritually.
The Sacrifices We Accept (And the Ones We Shouldn’t)
I was recently listening to an episode with Emma Grede and the CEO of Ami Cole Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, and they hit on something that made my chest tight with recognition. They talked about the sacrifices mothers make for businesses, for entrepreneurship, for careers—sacrifices that fathers are rarely asked to make, let alone feel guilty about.
Here’s what we’ve normalized: Missing birthdays. Missing opportunities. Responding to “urgent” texts while in labor. Pitching to investors during what should be our recovery time. Creating strategy documents between feeds and diaper changes. Being harassed for information while we’re supposed to be bonding with our babies.
And here’s the kicker—even after all of that, the business can still fail. The company can still let you go. The people who were texting you during contractions? They might get promoted while you’re left with the memory of your child’s birthday being the same day you were managing everyone else’s crises.
The Guilt That Eats Us Alive
Fathers don’t carry the weight of returning to work immediately after becoming parents. They don’t feel guilty about responding to emails. They don’t have to prove their commitment to their careers by being available during what should be sacred, protected time.
But us? We text through labor pains to show we’re still “valuable.” We take calls during the golden hour. We worry that if we don’t respond fast enough, we’ll be forgotten, replaced, deemed “less than” because we dared to create life.
The reality is brutal: We sacrifice moments that will live in our memory forever—first smiles caught on work calls, first steps missed for meetings that could have been emails, bedtime stories interrupted by “urgent” requests that turn out to be anything but.
What Simi and I Know to Be True
In our conversation, Simi and I kept circling back to one thing: the power of community. Not the performative kind, but the real, messy, show-up-when-it-matters kind.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t have to. The women who are thriving—really thriving, not just surviving with a smile—have built systems of support that catch them when the world demands too much.
They have:
- Friends who remind them that their worth isn’t tied to their response time
- Partners who share the mental load without being asked
- Communities that celebrate rest as much as they celebrate hustle
- Boundaries that protect their most precious moments
Watch the episode now https://youtu.be/b7WcC6YNITk
The Conversation We Need to Have
We need to stop celebrating mothers who sacrifice everything and start protecting the ones who refuse to. We need to normalize saying “I’m not available during my maternity leave” and meaning it. We need to create cultures where taking time to heal isn’t seen as a luxury but as a necessity.
Most importantly, we need to stop accepting that the cost of professional success includes missing the moments that make life worth living.
What This Means for All of Us
Whether you’re a mother, planning to become one, or supporting the mothers in your life, this conversation matters. It’s about redefining what success looks like when it includes the full spectrum of who we are.
It’s about building communities that hold us when the world tries to pull us in a thousand directions. It’s about refusing to accept that our value is measured by our availability during our most vulnerable moments.
And it’s about having the courage to say: I matter too. My rest matters. My recovery matters. My presence in my child’s life matters more than your urgent email.
Moving Forward
Simi and I talked about this for over an hour, and we barely scratched the surface. But what we did uncover is this: When we get real about the cost of “having it all,” we can start making different choices. Better choices. Choices that honor both our ambitions and our humanity.
The goal isn’t to have it all. The goal is to have what matters most and to build communities that support us in protecting it.
Your thoughts? Your experiences? I want to hear them. Because this conversation doesn’t end here—it’s just the beginning.
With love and solidarity, Tope
P.S. - If you haven’t listened to the full conversation with Simi yet, it’s waiting for you. Fair warning: it might change how you think about success, sacrifice, and what we owe ourselves as women navigating this beautiful, impossible world.