The Hidden Cost of Guilt: Why Working Mothers Need Permission to Flourish
When Mary Sheehan, marketing leader at Adobe and Founder of Propel Yourself, told me that guilt is the number one struggle working mothers face, I felt it in my bones. Not because I’m a working mother, I’m not, but I’ve witnessed this pattern over and over again.
The guilt Mary describes isn’t occasional. It’s relentless. You’re crushing it at work, and you feel guilty about not spending time with your family. You’re with your family, and you feel guilty about not being at work. It’s a balancing scale that, as Mary puts it, “is never going to be totally balanced.”
This conversation with Mary pulled back the curtain on something our workplaces desperately need to address and it starts with understanding that this isn’t just a “women’s issue.” It’s a leadership issue, a culture issue, and ultimately, a human flourishing issue.
The Heartbreaking Reality Behind Success
One story from our REWIRE programs still strikes me. We were working with a group of women CIOs and CTOs from Fortune 500 companies, incredibly accomplished leaders. During a module on beliefs and self-judgment, one woman confessed: “I beat myself up every day that I can’t cook a fresh meal for my kids.”
Here was someone leading technology for a massive organization, someone who could afford any support she needed, still carrying the crushing weight of a childhood story about what “good mothers” do. She was doing so much and yet feeling like she was failing at everything.
This is what guilt does. It blinds us to our own remarkable capacity and replaces it with an endless litany of “not enough.”
The Business Case No One Can Ignore
The reality is, that multiple studies show, is that when women comprise more than 30% of senior leadership, companies see at least a 6% increase in profits. These aren’t marginal gains, this is serious competitive advantage.
Yet the Washington Post reported at the start of this year that women with young children are dropping out of the workforce at alarming rates. We’re not just losing talent. We’re hemorrhaging the very diversity that drives innovation and profitability.
Mary identified the culprits clearly: inflexible return-to-office mandates, inadequate parental leave (the 12-week unpaid FMLA policy is, as Mary put it, “a joke”), crushing childcare costs, and workplace cultures that demand working in the office rather than outcomes-based performance.
When Mary travels for a week for work, it costs her family $1,000 in additional childcare. That’s the hidden tax of “business as usual” that working mothers pay and it’s unsustainable.
Leaders: You Have More Power Than You Think
Here’s what struck me most powerfully in our conversation: so much of what makes workplaces hostile to working parents is within a leader’s control.
You don’t need corporate policy changes to offer flexibility. You don’t need HR approval to focus on outcomes rather than face time. You don’t need a C-suite mandate to create a team culture where people can be honest about their caregiving responsibilities without fear.
Whether you’re a manager, senior manager, director, or VP you can start changing this today. You can choose not to schedule critical meetings at 5 PM. You can model boundary-setting yourself. You can measure impact rather than hours logged.
The alternative is the victim mindset: “This is just how it is. This is what’s expected.” That mindset doesn’t serve anyone. Not the organization, not the team, and certainly not the talented people you’re losing.
And here’s the beautiful thing: when you create environments that work for working mothers, you lift the waters for everyone. Men need flexibility too. Caregiving responsibilities don’t discriminate by gender. The workplace that works for a mother of two will also work for someone caring for aging parents, managing a chronic health condition, or simply trying to live a life that feels meaningful.
The Five Regrets We Can’t Ignore
During our conversation, I shared insights from Bronnie Ware’s The Five Regrets of the Dying a book that has profoundly shaped my thinking. Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, documented the most common regrets people express in their final days:
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
- I wish I had lived a life true to myself based on what I valued, not what others expected of me
Read those again. Now think about the choices we’re making today. The special moments we’re missing. The boundaries we’re not setting. The guilt we’re carrying for wanting both meaningful work and meaningful presence with our families.
Our journey from first breath to last is a journey of coming home to ourselves. The only path that matters is the one that’s true to you not the one prescribed by outdated corporate norms.
The Practice That Changes Everything: Know Your North Star
Mary shared something that completely shifted how she navigates this tension. After becoming a mother and trying to “do it all,” she sat down and identified her core values: health, family, and creativity.
Notice what’s not on that list? Being super productive. Earning the highest salary. Those things might matter, but they’re not her North Star.
This clarity became her decision-making framework. When she takes a 20-minute walk in the morning, she doesn’t feel guilty. It serves her health value. When she declines travel, she’s honoring her family value. When she sets boundaries around evening events, she’s living aligned with what actually matters to her.
The key isn’t that you’ll get this right all the time. You won’t. Mary shared the story of her first day back at work after maternity leave agreeing to a dinner event, then sobbing in her car at 8 PM because she’d missed her son’s bedtime. The lesson wasn’t perfection. It was learning that she had to communicate her needs and set her boundaries. No one else would do it for her.
Your values become your North Star. Not fear. Not anxiety. Not FOMO. Purpose.
The Self-Compassion Framework That Saves Us
One of the most powerful practices in our REWIRE program is Kristin Neff’s self-compassion framework, and it’s especially critical for working mothers. It has three parts:
- Acknowledge the suffering. If you’re struggling right now, just be with it. Don’t amplify it, but don’t dismiss it either.
- Recognize common humanity. You are not alone. Thousands of others are experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing right now; the same guilt, the same sense of falling short, the same impossible juggle.
- Speak to yourself like you would a dear friend. If your best friend came to you and said, “I’m such a bad mom,” what would you tell her? Now say that to yourself. Cultivate your inner coach voice, not your inner critic.
This three-part move: acknowledge, connect, coach, can be life-changing when you’re caught in the spiral of self-judgment. One simple somatic practice Neff recommends: place your hands on your heart or give yourself a gentle hug. This releases oxytocin and calms your nervous system, bringing you back to that grounded place where love lives.
The Minimum Viable Person
Leave it to a product marketer to bring MVP thinking to personal wellbeing. Mary’s concept of the “Minimum Viable Person” is brilliant in its simplicity.
After her second child, Mary had no time for the 90-minute gym sessions she used to enjoy. For a while, she did nothing for herself—just woke up when the kids woke up and began 15 hours of chaos.
Then she asked: What if I woke up just five minutes before the kids and did something for myself?
She started with five minutes of meditation and ten minutes of walking. Not perfect. Not Instagram-worthy. Just the minimum viable version of self-care that would help her feel more grounded.
And it worked. Over time, she built more. But the key was lowering the bar enough to actually start.
The magic isn’t in doing everything perfectly. It’s in identifying the minimum viable conditions for your wellbeing and protecting them.
Two Micro-Practices to Try This Week
I want to offer you two MVP-sized practices that can begin rewiring your brain away from scarcity and toward abundance:
Morning: Mindful Start (5 minutes)
Before you reach for your phone, do something mindful. Meditate if you can. If not, brush your teeth with full presence. Make tea slowly. If you’re waking your child, take one minute to simply appreciate that gift—the one so many people would give anything to have.
Evening: Positivity Anchoring (5 minutes)
Before bed, journal (or just think through) one of these three practices:
- Three things you’re grateful for today
- Three positive things that happened or advances you made
- Read something beautiful (a poem, philosophy, something spiritual) and note one intention for tomorrow
Why? Because overnight, we transfer short-term memories into long-term storage. When you seed your short-term memory with positivity, you build a positivity bias over time—counteracting the negativity bias we’re all born with.
The Invitation
If you’re a working mother reading this: you are not alone in your guilt. You are not failing. The system is failing you, but you can start reclaiming your power today by clarifying your values, setting boundaries, and practicing fierce self-compassion.
If you’re a leader reading this: you have more control than you think. Start creating outcome-based environments. Model boundary-setting. Trust your people. The talent you retain, and the loyalty you build, will transform your team’s performance.
Learn more about Mary Sheehan on LinkedIn.
Listen to the podcast with Ashish and Mary Sheehan below, You can also listen on Apple Podcasts.
Access and subscribe to all of the episodes of the Flourishing Edge Podcast here.
Make Flourishing Your Competitive Edge.
