Earlier this week the universe conspired so that friend/classmate Abby Falik and I could sneak in an impromptu 20 minute walk when I found myself in Berkeley.
Shocking how many things we could cover in those 20 minutes, but it was her parting prompt that lingered in my mind for the hour drive back:
What do I know that I keep ignoring?
And I've realized that it's this:
My work was first selfishly for me. To save myself. To figure out how to be a woman in today’s world asked to hold it all and know it all and be it all. How to keep the career I loved while having a chance to be the mama I could feel myself yearning to be.
This quest has taken me from my girls starting elementary school through the wilds of Covid and then a move across countries to now starting middle school.
It was never really about just building a company or conquering a market need. It was about seeing the impossibilities and somehow making this funny math work - take one person - give them two jobs, no tools and raise the stakes.... and see what happens.
What happens is that we burn out, and our relationships start fraying and the joy leaches out of something that, at its core - parenthood, is the ultimate joy and purpose.
Lost in the dunes of the startup desert, in the search for something that can miraculously do all the things for all of the people, I've lost sight of the simplest truth.
It started with the "mother load".... it started with not trying to outsource and distance myself from the work of being a parent but rather to have a chance to have the space to actually be connected to it and the people in my life.
When there's no path in front of you, it's easy to forget why you set out in the first place.
But this week was a good reminder, get back to my why.
And that's chasing these charts - the inequity in black and white.
We're fooling ourselves if we think we're getting to gender equity or the solving the plummeting birth rates if we don't solve for the invisible load of actually having a family today.
But in the end, this is and has always been, about making it make sense for me. Thanks Abby, for the push to remember that.