When clarity strikes
On extraordinary moments in an ordinary October week
Last week, possibly for the first time ever, I verbalised aloud something that’s been inalienable from my own being for the past decade: motherhood has been the front-and-centre thread of my identity in this life stage.
In the truest “once you hear it, you can’t unhear it” fashion, a conversation between Todd Kashdan and Corinne Low has been simmering in my thoughts and allowing me to gently unravel this intimate recognition that has guided all my choices for 10+ years now.
Once a classic high potential/high achiever (empty phrases adults in my life have used to describe me since forever), with a textbook linear trajectory of “objective” accomplishment in life - linear until I had kids, that is - I have been trying hard to make myself make sense to everyone else.
In efforts to provide a coherent narrative about my professional decisions, from leaving academia and letting go of my almost finished doctoral dissertation to retraining in a profession that is in its infancy in Croatia (coaching), I have, almost apologetically, been tiptoeing around the priority of my motherhood.
So when Corinne Low said:
“I have always seen myself as like feminist, career woman. And I was shocked when I had kids, the way I actually felt my preferences transform, that my priorities really did shift, right?
…
And I just wanted to have a way to think about what success meant to me in a way that took into account the fact that I really wanted to be there every night to put my kid to bed.“1
I felt that.
In an unexpected yet fundamentally welcoming setting of the Provoked with Dr. Todd Kashdan community monthly call, I shared this realisation about my experience of motherhood, almost as a tangent to the topic of my upcoming business networking event.
When my conversation partners (Todd & Peder Söderlind) helped me hypothesise how I might respond to potential conversation-stopping reactions when I say that I’ve primarily been a mother for a while now, I first felt my instinct to explain what else I’ve been doing professionally alongside motherhood…
And then I felt that instinct melt.
And I found myself just so pleasantly surprised at the calmness and security that emerged from owning that there’s nothing that I need to justify about this: My priority has been the relationship with my children.
The day after our Provoked call I went to this local networking event, which I’d signed up for a few weeks ago. As a proverbial attempt to “make myself make sense”, “stretch my comfort zone”, “position myself as a professional in the local business community” - and whatever other overused phrase along those lines might come to mind.
One of the presenters in the educational part of the event was an NLP practitioner. I mean, to each their own, but for me… let’s just say I am really not the target group for this modality.
That said, while she was priming the audience, she asked:
“Have you ever achieved success? I want you to go to your place of success now in your mind.”
In the first 30 seconds I was frantically going through the inventory of what might be considered an accomplishment. The decorum of these entrepreneurial spaces typically dictates that people list how long they’ve had their businesses or how many clients they’ve worked with or how many product/programme launches they’ve had…
While there is no way to know where other people went with this, as we weren’t asked to share, in my mind I went to these moments:
My daughter talking about a questionnaire at school, saving one question for last because she wanted to answer it fully and truthfully.
The question was: When is your family proud of you?
She answered: When I do something well, of course, but mostly when I am just myself.
My husband and I lock eyes to say, wordlessly, “We’re doing good things here.”
A coaching client messaging me a day after our session to say how safe and willing they feel delving into their emotional layers.
They shared that being able to bring the part of themselves they’d been taught to disregard is truly profound.
Former students coming up to me last year after my presentation at a teachers’ conference, to give feedback and catch up after a very long time.
Some were a bit surprised I remembered their names; with some I shared a hug, with others dinner — and it was the best part of the conference for me.
Success, for me, is inherently relational. It’s not in metrics; it’s never been quantifiable. It’s all about “how”, and none of it about “how many”.
Qualitative by nature, worldview, and experience.
In truth, I’ve never been good at projecting a separate professional persona - though in my former work context it often felt mandatory.
From a well-meaning (?) senior member of the faculty warning me about wearing jeans when I teach (‘You’re too close in age to your students so you have to dress up. They’ll take you more seriously if you wear a skirt and heels.’) to not so well-meaning elder at the department getting annoyed at me for having an opinion (‘Why is this kid speaking up at the meeting again? You should learn to shut up and do what you’re told. When you get up in the ranks, then you speak.’) to a mentor I looked up to calling me way too emotional and warning me I’ll burn out if I invest myself too much.
And of course, the boss delivering the soul-crushing:
‘You’re still young, but you’ll learn to play the game.’
There’s certainly a playbook. An unwritten one, but there is one.
Basically, you enter the space and you learn how you’re supposed to be there. Yet this imposed fragmentation never made sense to me.
And then - motherhood.
It was the first space I entered where I felt agency to lean into how I am. And just to be clear, I don’t see motherhood as a role I stepped into, but a relationship I co-create.
In parenting, I find it, being attuned to the person in front of you, emotionally available, and open to ideas and interpersonal differences is essential. A lot of the relationship quality rests on offering possibilities instead of prescriptions, and on allowing yourself to be playful and excited about inevitable changes instead of trying to control them.
There’s boldness in letting any relationship evolve, I feel.
We don’t need to go further than Heraclitus and the notion of Panta Rei. Everything flows.
So it stands to reason that as we change, our relationships do as well. If we can be on board with the change, with the intention of co-creating and recalibrating, then we can truly and purely nurture our relationships.
The day before our Provoked call I watched The Shawshank Redemption for the first time. I know, I’m a few decades late, but given that I spent the ‘90s watching films from the ‘70s, my timing is actually just right.
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
I guess I often think about death. Not in any dark sense, rather in the “existential given” layer of its inevitability. And while the “get busy dying” part is pretty self-explanatory in the movie, the “get busy living” is beautifully open-ended.
I’ve come to understand that, for me, “the marrow of life” lies in relationships. Achievement is when people feel safe to be open and exploratory in our interactions.
In such instances, you can almost see the energy that emerges when the other person picks up on your intention to really hear them. It gives them permission to dig deeper. It gives them the courage to expand, deepen and reshuffle their thinking, without the need for finality or resolution.
——
Whew, all this has been a very lengthy way to say that my external and professional coherence is safe to rest on my internal red thread of attention, curiosity, and care.
With gratitude to the people who create conditions for such clarity to arise,
Irena
From a conversation between Dr. Todd Kashdan, and Corinne Low, PhD, on the Provoked podcast, where they discussed Corinne’s new book Having It All (titled Femonomics in some regions). Book delivery tends to take its time getting to Croatia, so I’m still eagerly waiting for my copy!
Beautiful and I fully relate
Wow, thank you so much for this!! Beautifully said!!! ❤️