This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - The Self-Made Mom: Redefining Success for Working Moms with Julia Sewell | 429

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Working mothers are often told they can "have it all." But what many actually hear is that they're expected to do it all—build a successful career, raise thriving children, manage a household, nurture relationships, and somehow make it all look effortless. It's no wonder so many women feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and convinced they're somehow falling short. In this episode of This Is Woman's Work, Nicole Kalil welcomes Julia Sewell—performance coach, founder of the Self-Made Mom movement, entrepreneur, and author of The Self-Made Mom: Thriving at Home and at Work Without Compromise. Together, they challenge outdated expectations surrounding motherhood and success while exploring what it truly means to build a life that honors both ambition and well-being. In This Episode, Nicole and Julia Discuss: What it means to become a "Self-Made Mom." The concept of "noble self-abandonment" and how it keeps women depleted. How tying self-worth to productivity leaves women feeling like they're never enough. Julia's personal "broken red cup" story and the wake-up call that transformed her marriage and life. Why self-awareness often has to come before relationship repair. How partners can become allies in building healthier family systems. Why working moms should apply business strategies to their personal lives. Using values, systems, and planning to reduce stress and decision fatigue. Communicating effectively with family members and other key stakeholders. Delegating responsibilities based on strengths instead of outdated assumptions. How hiring help can reduce burnout and create more presence at home. Letting go of the myth of perfect work-life balance. This powerful conversation is about what it really takes to redefine success on your own terms as a working mom. Offering a new way forward for women who are ready to stop measuring themselves against impossible standards and start building lives that actually work for them.  Thank you to our sponsors! Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at Greenlight.com/TIWW. Don't wait to teach your kids real-world money skills! Connect with Julia: Website: https://www.theselfmademom.com/  Book: Sign up to be notified when the book launches and receive exclusive updates at: https://www.theselfmademom.com/book Related Podcast Episodes: 144 / Jay & Nicole Kalil on Partnership, With Guest Host Lynn Casaletto The Good Mother Myth with Nancy Reddy | 274 FACTS About Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids with Alyssa Blask Campbell M.Ed | 345 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Hey y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair. Every style, every home.

I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. And friend, if there's any group of people who've been sold the biggest lie about what women's work should look like, it's working moms. They are the most exhausted among us trying to live up to a definition of success that does not and will not serve them. Working moms have been handed an impossible standard to be everything to everyone all the time. And don't even get me started on single working moms because I do not comprehend how they do it. And yet they do. They show up. Fueled by love and what I have to imagine is a lot of caffeine

with responsibility and the deepest level of grit that business books should be writing about. They hold families together, keep businesses running, and somehow still find a way to to show up, even when there's nothing left in the tank. So if anyone deserves some redefining, it's working moms, away from being the supermom, the martyr, the selfless giver with limited capacity, and towards something that actually works, toward being a woman who no longer measures her worth by how much of herself she gives away, who knows that her joy, her energy, her ambition, her becoming are not luxuries, but lifelines. We've been told that we can have it all,

but what we really hear is that we're supposed to do it all. Be the patient mom and the high-performing professional. Keep the house running, the kids thriving, the career advancing, and for God's sake, make sure you don't break a sweat while you're doing it. It's no wonder so many working moms feel stretched, spent, and somehow still not enough. Because the truth is, no one can do it all. And friend, no one is supposed to.

So what if the goal was never about choosing between motherhood and success? What if it's truly possible to find a way to thrive, succeed, and have energy for both without feeling like we're dying in between? That's where today's guest comes in. Julia Sewell is the founder of the self-made mom of movement, a mindset, and a must-read book that is helping working mothers rediscover their power, intention, and their joy. a performance coach with decades of experience, she's worked with thousands of women to build sustainable, high performing lives and businesses without losing themselves in the process.

She's a mom of three, an entrepreneur, a truth teller who believes that working mothers deserve to be prioritized too. And I'll also share that I've known Julia for almost a decade. And from the moment I met her, her energy and obvious talent was at the forefront. And you'll see that instantly too. But what I also appreciate is that she's real. She talks about how fucking hard it can be and somehow still manages to lift others up. We've had plenty of these honest in the trenches conversations over the year. And today we get to have another one live on the show.

So, Julia, I'm super excited to have you as a guest. And I wanted to kick us off by asking you to define what you mean when you say being a self-made mom. Hi, I could not be more happy to be here. When I say self-made mom, I mean a woman who has approached her life with the same passion and ferocity as those who build businesses and has self-made herself into the woman she knows she's meant to be. One thing I was really surprised about after having children and then trying to balance a career on top of that was that the sanctity of my life kind of got thrown out the window. My hopes, desires, ability to sleep, all of those things were just kind of wiped off the table. Mostly by me, which is the most heart-wrenching part. And the self-making journey is the recapture of a life well-lived, as well as the ability to serve your family and your career.

I want to go back to the mostly by me part because it kind of punched me in the stomach, too. that is true to my experience. And I know you don't mean it this way and I don't want it to feel this way. Like we're not blaming ourselves. There are reasons why we unconsciously or subconsciously or even consciously do this to ourselves, expectations should, supposed to,

how we were raised, what we see other people doing. But can you give us some insight into how that played out for you? What were the reasons you let some of those things go or forgot or set aside some of those hopes and dreams for yourself, as you said? There's two things. The first, and I talk about this in the book, is an experience that I call noble self-abandon, where you put yourself last as a demonstration of devotion, love, loyalty, commitment, and it's rooted in gratitude. It's rooted in, oh my gosh, I have got everything I've

ever dreamed of, and if I don't continue to earn it, I'll lose you. it. I have goosebumps just saying that. There's fear associated with reaching this, oh my gosh, I became my mother or oh my gosh, my career is flourishing. What do I do? Oh my gosh, I better, you know, grind to the bone so that I don't lose it. And then the second behavior pattern that's associated with this, you know, forsaking of self is that deep down, we've never taught ourselves to believe that we deserve it. We've always thought that our worthiness was tied to this ability to do it all,

but then all the sudden, do it all is never an option again. The to-do list is never done. The relentlessness of the load never ceases. And so if that's the case, then self-worth gets depleted so fast and so often. There's not enough self-fulfillment exercises on the planet to fill you up.

if you've associated your self-worth with how much you can do. Right. And it's interesting, too, because for much of our lives, we get celebrated and praised for all the things that we can do. So there is a little bit of a letting go of something that worked for us in some way and at some capacity and replacing it with something that can work for us better today. Yeah. Yeah, it's an unlearning of lifelong conditioning.

Yeah. You have to be able to say to yourself, I'm worthy just because I am, not because I did this, this, this, this and this. That was a really hard one for me. Super type A, high achiever personality. I mean, whoa. I'm curious because I know you have daughters,

not all daughters, but I know you have daughters. Part of this for me is this is about caring and loving and gratitude, which, of course, I want to demonstrate and pass down to my daughter. but the shadow side of it that we're talking about is definitely something I do not want to pass down to my daughter. I do not want to example for her putting everybody else's needs above my own. I don't want to unconsciously teach her that this is what being a mom or a working mom or a professional or any of those things that she might aspire to be. I don't want her to see that and think this is the way it's supposed to be. Do you struggle with that at all too?

Or is that motivating to you at all too? Absolutely. I took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, I desperately do not want my daughters. I have two daughters and one son. And I don't want my son to see this either and expect it. Good point. I don't want them to think that the moment they get married,

their life becomes less important than their partners. Or the moment they become a mother, that their life becomes less important than their children. Because that's not truth. The truth is, is yes, when you become a mother, for example, you commit to serving another human being. We all know that that's the case. And your life doesn't decrease in importance or sanctity at the same time,

except the world tells you it does. Right. Right. When you're pregnant, if that's the way you have your children and you're pregnant, you're sacred. Everyone treats you like the goddess that you are. Boom. The second that baby is born, it's about them and all your needs are 50th on the list.

And I was shocked by that experience and shocked that there weren't resources available to help me mitigate, especially when I went back to work. I mean, I knew motherhood was going to be a challenge. I had three kids in 18 months. That's no joke. I knew that I mean, I cried on the ultrasound table thinking, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? But I didn't know that going back to work would be as challenging as it was. Yeah. I didn't expect to that either because the idea of not going back to work never, never.

occurred to me. It was interesting when I was pregnant, people would often ask, like, do you think you'll come back to work? Or, and I'd be like, absolutely, I'm coming back to work. And they'd be, well, you never know. And I'd be like, no, I know. Like, in our family, if one of us was going to stay home and be a full-time parent, it would have been Jay, not me. And so it was like, it irked me when people asked and assumed. And so I kind of had this in my head that, of course, I'm coming back, what I didn't anticipate is, as you said, is how freaking hard it was and how emotionally exhausting it was and how I did not know how to do it. And I didn't have many examples or tutorials or online courses that would help me figure out how to navigate that.

100%. Your capacity has to grow exponentially with no guidebook whatsoever. Right. And the truth is, is that this working mother experience is new. Like culturally, it's new. There are no guidebooks. There's not a lot of support. We are trailblazing this experience right now as we go from a generational standpoint. And which means lots of judgment, lots of questions, you know, lots of expectations that are inappropriate. And all the while this woman is moving forward just doing her best so deeply depleted.

And doesn't even know how to communicate what she needs. That's a huge part of the self-making instruction that comes in the book is simply how to communicate with yourself and the stakeholders in your life, what you need. I want to ask about that because I do think the communication and that there's an assessment that I can think of that putting your own wants and needs against being helpful. And the ideal state is that you put forward your own wants and needs and you're helpful and you like end in this like ideal state. Who lands there? Oh my gosh. My husband. He did the assessment.

I'm like, Teach me your ways. Nice. Because my helpful was super high, but my putting forward my own wants and knees was super low. And that put me in this self-sacrificing category. And it was interesting to see it on an assessment. Like it jived with my personal experience it,

but seeing it like on paper, I was like, shit. That's lifelong conditioning, Nicole. That's your life. That's 100% life. Somebody rewarded you. for being helpful long ago. And you associated it with, oh, I'm good.

Yeah. So I'm going to continue to do this. I need to ask you, though, before we get into any sort of tactics or advice or anything like that, how did a broken red cup and a snowstorm start this movement? I know you, but I haven't heard this story. So when I saw it, I was like, tell me more. Yeah, it was a turning point in every way, shape, or form for my marriage, primarily. which is obviously a huge part of my life.

But it was a wake-up call for me. So what happened was about 10 months into our twins' lives. At this point, we have a 2-year-old and 6-month-old twins. So if you sink that through, and it was during the pandemic, that's a challenging experience, right? It was a very challenging experience. Yeah, our nanny quit on a Sunday night. I had a week of scheduled calls.

He had a week of scheduled calls. We had three children at home, and everything just kind of boiled over. Our kids aren't great sleepers. so we were so tired, we were having this huge fight. And at that time in my life, prior to self-making, I hadn't really discovered that my go-to coping mechanism for depletion was projection. And so I was projecting my depletion onto my husband. It's his fault.

He wasn't helping me enough. You're not doing this. You're not, you don't see me. You know, all of those things. And he's, you could just see him getting more angry and more angry and more angry. Rightfully so. In the moment, I didn't feel like it was rightly so, but now I understand. And I would have been on your side in the moment.

100%. I felt like I was right. I felt like a martyr and a victim and all that, very alone, very isolated. And so I was shouting. And I'm not like a big shouter, little, but a big shoutter. I was shouting at the top of my lungs. You're not helping me enough all that. And I think he was just done.

And he started shouting back at me, which is not his style at all. You don't even see me anymore. I'm trying so hard to help you. You don't notice. Like, you are so caught up in your own misery that you haven't seen anything I've tried to do. And in a huge moment of frustration, I think he was trying to put some distance in between the two of us. He went out to our driveway. And he happened to be holding this red cup.

I don't know why. You know how sometimes when you're in a fight, you like hold something and demonstrate your anger with it. Anyway, so he's holding this red cup and he threw it onto the driveway out of exasperation. And I'm like in the garage, long, long far away. and it shattered. It was like one of those acrylic outdoor barbecue kind of cups, shattered onto the driveway. And I was shocked.

That's just not his style. He's a real thoughtful, high fortitude kind of person. And through this red cup out of anger. So it hits the ground, and we were like, whoa, okay, that's enough. We're stopping. Like, we're stopping this argument. We're going to have to pick it back up in the morning. You know how sometimes in marriage you're just like, well,

we are going nowhere with this. Let's just pause. and say, I love you, and I'll also kind of hate you, and I'll see you in the morning, that kind of conversation. I know I love you deep down. I just don't like you very much right now. Yes, exactly. I love you, and, oh, man.

So we said those things, you know. And then that night, I live in Colorado. It snowed a lot and covered up the pieces of that red cup. And for the next few weeks, you know, it had shattered into the yard and so on. For the next few weeks, little tiny red pieces of the red pieces of the red cup. this cup started, just kept floating to the surface of the snow or getting swept by the snowblower or whatever. And they were such a visual reminder of the absolute shambles that our life was in, my life was in. And if I'm really honest, it was me. It was me. And I'm not saying that

because I'm in any way believe that it's the woman's responsibility to set the tone in the family, not at all. I think that's a pendulum and it swings back and forth. But right then it was me. I had gotten so depleted and self-abandoned to a degree that's hard to communicate, and nothing anybody did could help me. Because I needed to help me. And that was our realization. We got to work after that. Sorry to break in, but this part matters. Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor so I can keep making episodes worth interrupting you for. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

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employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.com.ca for more. details. Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand, the high-protein yogurt Oikos Pro is there to feed your strength and help you turn every challenge into a smash. Oikos Pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar because true strength isn't about being able to take the hits. It's about being able to bounce back. Oikos Pro Feed your strength. Visit oikos.ca for more details. I imagine anyone in relationship listening in has their own version of a Red Cup story. And I can personally relate.

Jay and I have had a few challenging times over the course of our relationship. But one in particular, he said to me, do you think we should go to couples therapy? And even him offering it, like, helped me go, you know, like, he's in this with me. And I was like, let me think about it. And I took a night. And the next day I came back and I said, you know what? I think I need to go to my own therapy first. I need to figure out what's going on with me. First and foremost, and on the other side of that, it may become apparent that we do need to go talk to

somebody, but there's just something that feels so clear to me that a lot of this stuff is my stuff. And in that particular case, it was true. And I'm not trying to say that our husbands are blameless or that they, you know, anything like that, but just recognizing. that sometimes this taking it all on ourselves does more damage than I think we might be conscious to. Certainly. Okay, so one of the things that I love that you do is you take often business terms or business concepts and you apply it to having both and being a mom. Talk us through some of these concepts of being a self-made mom or self-making, as you say.

What are the things that we need to know about or can begin to test or put into practice in our own lives? Great question. So first of all, I would challenge every single listener to ask themselves why they leave their business acumen at the door of their home. Every day when they come home, or they go to work and they have all this business acumen and they run meetings with agendas and they have a vision, mission values for their work and all of those things. And then they walk in their home door and just forget all about all that. And then everything feels like a hot mess. But there is a system and we can use it. And I really just started using business acupunation. as a desperate attempt to put my life in some order and guess what it worked. So doing things like establishing self-made values for yourself. You would never start a business without some kind of value set behind it, right? Well, maybe you shouldn't be walking around the earth without some kind of value set. You would manage your time with a prioritization on elite performance if you owned a business. Well, maybe if you want to be a great working mom, you could do the same thing.

Some of the better tactics include mostly prioritization of a plan. So many working moms that I coach or work with or live life with don't have a plan. They don't have systems in place. Like if you had a business, you would have systems in place, right? You would say, okay, when we get an order, this is how we fill it, this is how we maintain our customer base, so on and so forth. Well, you know what? When a kid gets sick, do you have a system? Do you have a system in place when you have a kid that's home from school sick where you and your partner switch off or you and a friend switch off?

Do you have it communicated at work? That when you have a sick kid, you're going to be remote and you can dial in from Zoom, but you might have a kid on your lap. And if they don't like it, maybe you don't work there. You know, applying things like that to your life allows you to breathe. Yeah. Similarly, I know Jay and I recognized a couple times where we're learning all these things, you know, in business. And as you said, it doesn't make any sense to leave them at the door when we, when we get inside our homes. And I often, when we do like leadership-oriented topics on the podcast,

I often say, like, leadership is leadership. This is not just for the people with the titles or the positional authority. We're all leading in places in our homes, in our communities, you know, with our friends, whatever it might be. And I, by no stretch of the imagination, think I have any of this all figured out. And a lot of what I've learned in business, in work environments, and leadership have really supported me in my home life. So let's hone in on a few of those things. Communication with stakeholders.

Any tips or tricks or tactics that can be helpful here? Yes. The first one, and it doesn't sound sexy, but I bet you have more sex if you do it, is to send your partner calendar invites, recurring calendar invites for after-school activities, for example, calendar invites saying, hey, can you get the kids off the bus this day? Because I have a big meeting. I mean, that is, does it sounds romantic? No.

But 100% it will be in the long term because you won't be fighting at the last minute because of it. I think there is a Sunday night prep conversation that needs to happen during the week. Hey, I'm on this day, you're on this day. Here's what's coming up. I have a visual sheet that I use on my refrigerator. It's from a company that makes it aesthetically pleasing, so I like it. And I plan out the meals for the week and I communicate written. Every time somebody goes to the fridge, they can see it.

Hey, we got a dog's appointment on Friday, you know, those kind of things. We delegate to the person that performs the task to the highest degree. in our household. So, for example, when I do the dishes, I clean out the sink and wipe down the counters and do everything in the kitchen. My husband just puts the dishes in the dishwasher, right? So I typically do the dishes because I don't hate it, and I do it to the higher degree. When he cleans up the playroom, he actually puts the toys and the bins they're supposed to be in, and I do not. I just dump crap out of the way, and I don't want to see it again for the rest of my life, you know? And so we delegate to the person who does it to the highest degree. I'm going to add there, this has worked really well for Jay and I

as well. There are some things he really loves to do that I hate doing and vice versa or that he does better or that I do better. So similarly, like Jay does 100% of the grocery shopping and the cooking in our household. I handle all of the bills and the household management and the calling this person or getting this thing serviced or blah, blah, blah. I am the dishes person. He's the trash person. Now, I don't like dishes and he doesn't like trash, but like that was that we can't love everything that we have to do around here. Nobody gets to do a job that they 100% love 100% of the time. But there are things that we just sort of did this divide and conquer approach. I like the way you framed it better.

And I will say that we've sort of done similar and it's really worked out well for us. Well, it just makes it more torturous. You know, if you know you're good at it and you don't mind it as much. I mean, yes, it's still work, still housework, or scheduling work or, you know, whatever it is. But if you are naturally inclined to a task, it's more joyful and easier. That's just all there is to it. On the topic of delegation, where do you stand on hiring help for certain things? Like, when do we know when we should hire help?

How do we let go of the guilt about hiring help? Well, I'm a huge advocate. You can imagine. So we live 10 hours at a minimum from any family members. And so the hiring of help has been a very, very real part of our life from the moment we had our first child. And I'm a huge fan of it for a couple of reasons. Number one, when you calculate your hourly wage, if you can make more money working, then it costs to hire something out and it takes some of the weight off your mental load,

from a business perspective, remember this business acumen idea, it is so logical to do that. It makes so much sense to hire out tasks that cost less to hire than it would for you to perform it. Yep. We do this in business all the time. Yes, you would do that in a business, right? You would hire an admin and set, you know, whatever it is. And the second part of it is that, and this is really as it pertains to child care, that's a really, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you should be the one that takes your kids to everything and is with your, child all the time. But you know what you are if you do that? Less. You're depleted. You don't have as much as that hired person. When our nanny walks in the door, she is bright. She's excited. She has activities. And she gives them more. It's a more. For them, not a less. They're not getting less mom. They're getting more love. And on the on the back end of it, a more fulfilled, thoughtful, energetic mom who wants to be with them and doesn't resent them.

Yeah. Yeah. Or isn't it completely tapped out where you're physically there, but you're not actually there, which kids can feel. They can feel. I know this first. Yeah. I mean, that is the most gut-wrenching moment when you say, I know my kid just said something to me five times and I did not hear it one time. Yeah. And from a financial perspective, you know, yes, it is an invest. And yes, it does cost money. And there are ways to shift money in your household and prioritize what you need in the moment that you will have to think about differently. I write about this in the book. Who you used to be isn't going to work anymore. And that doesn't mean you have to give up everything that you love. But sometimes it makes sense to do an audit of your life and especially in the ways that

you spend your money and say, does this really bring me the joy it used to bring me? Or could I transfer this investment to something that I need that's different. Like, for example, when our kids were really little, you know, we had two one-year-olds and a two-year-old, for example, you know what I didn't need? I did not need a five-star dinner down in Denver and an overnight at a hotel with my husband. I didn't, I love that. Of course, that's so lovely. Wanted that beforehand.

What I really needed was help a few days a week managing their laundry. And I was more than happy to go. we did a lesser expensive restaurant and then spend the extra hundred bucks on a teenage kid to come over and fold and put away their laundry. Right. And that brought me so much joy. Yeah. And it's interesting. I am always, I try to be mindful of my privilege in all situations.

Also, we do pretty well for ourselves, but that doesn't mean we can do anything we want whenever we want and we make choices and reevaluate things. I've always driven a not very nice and certainly not very expensive car because I don't care. You know, for a while, it was just like it just needs to be big enough that kids can come in and throw Cheerios everywhere. I just don't care. And I would trade any type of car, any time for having somebody come clean my house once a week. The tradeoff is the easiest one I will ever make. And again, I know that like not everybody has all the same options or the same. flexibility, but encouraging you to think about it as a choice and as a trade-off that assuming you

can make and then deciding from there, I think, is really powerful. A hundred percent. And it's a really important point that you make, by the way, I don't drive a fancy car either because it's not important to me and I'd rather spend that money on travel with my children or child care or something like that. But ask yourself, what joy is this thing I'm going to spend money on going to bring me long term? If that handbag brings you joy by that sucker, If it doesn't, and you're just buying it out of habit, right, or expectation, don't and go invest in some help, whether that's within your own business or at home. It is okay to be different than who you used to be. And that's a really important part of the self-making journey is like, it is okay that you're changing.

And it is okay that you're different. And it's okay that you might feel unrecognizable to yourself as you implement these new strategies. but if they're connected deeply to your new, newly identified core values, go. You are untouchable. You have conviction. Let's go. You're supposed to change. But that's hard. You're depleted.

Yeah. I just want to add to with the, if it brings you joy, this is something I learned the hard way, which is how I learned most things. Separating momentary joy from sustainable joy, buying an expensive purse does bring me joy momentary. momentarily, but does it last? Do I still love it a month or a year or three years later? Versus when I take that the same dollars and invest in some sort of help, those things usually last much longer in that they keep me engaged and they prevent a burnout and all those things. And so absolutely joy. We want joy and separating that like fleeting temporary versus what's

going to stick with you. I talk about that in the book a lot, and I call it the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is externally motivated and temporary. Joy is permanent and intrinsic. And that's where you identify the two different choices is, will this bring me something temporary that, you know, I got something so I feel happy? Or is this contributing to my internal permanent sense of joy? Yeah, I love that. I love that distinction.

So good. Okay. I can't let you go without asking about prioritization because, often we hear things and we're like, okay, I just have, I have systems and processes so that I can get more done. I can pack more in. And I believe that we both agree that prioritization is about having us do less so that we're focused on only what matters most. How do we do that? What are your tips and tricks for prioritization? I think you have to immediately release the idea of 50-50 balance between work and home. that's just a fallacy that cripples so many working mothers and allow yourself to be a pendulum. In this idea of doing less, that doesn't mean you don't care about your career or you don't do, you don't care about your family. Or, for example, a lot of times when you say you need to do less, that feels like you need to choose something over something. You know, I must choose my children over my career every single time or I'm a really bad mother, right?

Like that's what that feels like, very ultimatum oriented in the book. And what I like to share with my clients is what it actually means is make a plan for the pendulum swing. Allow some days to just be about work. Plan for it. Get the child care in place. Communicate with your spouse or your stakeholders. You know, make sure that you're insulated so that you can focus on just that. Or let the pendulum swing back to home.

Like the biggest or a great demonstration of this is on those days that are work days but school out days, just admit to yourself that you need to focus on your kids. You need to be there with them. They're out of school. So go be a mom. Let the pendulum go all the way over to be a mom and stop trying to half-ass Zoom calls while you're getting them peanut butter sandwiches because everybody gets irritated and mad. you feel horrible at the end of the day.

The kids are cranky and whiny and nobody wins. Yeah. So do less, not overall. It's just do different, do it differently. Yeah. It's not quite a system or a process, maybe more of a little philosophy and progress, is the school calendars come out well before, right?

And so we go through our calendar and we block out where all of the days off are. And between Jay and I, it's like, you got this one, I got this one. And like every third or fourth of them, it's like we're going to have to figure something out. She can play with a friend or, you know, give her some activities or chores at home. Like every once in a while, we can't take the day off or we choose not to just because she's home from school. But I like the giving herself, I don't know if permission is even the right word, but like freedom to be like, today's, I'm going to win at work. And today I'm going to win at home.

And some days I might feel like I'm winning it both. And some days I might feel like I'm winning it neither. But it's not this perfectly structured 50% here, 50% here. And that's how we do it and we win because it rarely works that way. Well, and the expectation that we put on ourselves to do that is one of the most draining behaviors we have. You cannot sustainably do everything at work and everything at home every single day. And you don't need to expect that of yourself. because remember you're worthy and you can just be a mom or you can just work and still be

worthy and still be doing really well. Yeah. Julia, as you know, I could talk to you all day and I have probably a million more questions, but we're at time. So I want to remind our listeners, the book is called The Self-Made Mom, Thriving at Home and at Work without compromise. It's available on Amazon or wherever it is you buy books. Let's keep our local bookstores in business. You can find out more about Julia and her work on the self-made mom.com. And we're going to put all of the links, all the ways to find and follow Julia in show notes. Julia, friend, thank you for doing this work, for leading, for trailblazing, for being here, and for being real. I appreciate you.

Nicole, thank you for being the most impactful woman in my career and life ever. Truly. Well, it's been my pleasure. Truly. All right, friend, I'm going to close this out by saying this. Being a self-made mom isn't about mastering the chaos or pretending that you can do it all. It's about realizing that you don't have to choose between your ambition and your motherhood. You can and get to have both because the self-made mom isn't one who does it all.

She's the one who decides what's worth doing. She knows her joy isn't optional. Her energy isn't endless and her boundaries aren't selfish. They're sacred. She knows that she can love her family and herself. She can want more without apologizing for it. And maybe most importantly, she knows that having it all was never the goal. Having a life that she loves is.

So to every mom listening, you are not behind, you are not broken, and you are not alone. You're building and redefining something new, a version of motherhood that honors your ambition, your joy, and your sanity. And redefining all the shit that needs to be redefined? Well, obviously, this is woman's work. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

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