Career: Where I Am Now

A few years ago I read my forever First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama’s book Becoming. It spoke to me then, as a 20-something-year-old soon to be entering law school. But reading it again now, as a 31-year-old mother of two, it hits totally different. I now truly understand that Becoming means a constant lifelong evolution instead of arriving at a final destination. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I had the epiphany that I will forever be Becoming a new version of myself and shedding past variations of who I was along the way.

Two years into motherhood, I’ve learned there is no arrival point. There is no version of “having it all figured out.” No neat bow where everything clicks into place and stays that way. Instead, there is a slow, uneven, deeply personal becoming.

I’m still in it. Still learning how to hold my children with tenderness and my dreams with courage. Still figuring out what it means to build a life that feels aligned, not just impressive. Still growing into a version of motherhood, and womanhood, that feels honest, grounded, and mine.

The Part I Didn’t Expect: My Mental Health

What I didn’t anticipate was how deeply motherhood would affect my mental health. After becoming a mother, my mental health became impossible to ignore. Postpartum Depression and Anxiety, brain fog, and a constant overwhelm that made even simple decisions feel heavy. I was barely functioning.

Postpartum wasn’t just about healing my body. It was about reckoning with my mind. I had to confront the fact that asking for help is not weakness, it’s wisdom. There were seasons when getting through the day was the achievement. And I had to learn to let that be enough.

Walking Away From a Life That Looked “Perfect”

Around the same time, I made one of the hardest decisions of my adult life: I walked away from my job as a Big Law attorney. On paper, it didn’t make sense. Prestige. Security. Years of work to get there. A career many people aspire to and never reach.

But internally, I was breaking. The pace was incompatible with the season I was in. The pressure amplified my anxiety. The version of success I was chasing no longer aligned with the woman, or the mother, I was becoming.

Leaving wasn’t a failure. It was an act of self-preservation. It forced me to sit with uncertainty. To untangle my identity from my job title. To ask myself who I was without the external validation of achievement. A question I’m still routinely asking myself and sitting with its discomfort.

Redefining What “Success” Means to Me Now

Success used to look like advancement, visibility, accolades. Now it looks like giving myself the time and space to heal, rest, and create. Success is mental clarity and a nervous system that isn’t in constant fight-or-flight. And to be clear, that doesn’t mean I stopped being ambitious. It means my ambition matured.

I still have dreams. Big ones. I just refuse to build them at the expense of myself or my family.