The year I finally made peace with Mom Guilt.
Or: how a bank collapse, a GPT4 launch and spring break had me rethinking the whole damn thing.
This is the year I made peace (mostly) with Mom Guilt.
I am no stranger to the concept - after all, there is no doing anything outside of parenthood without having a little niggling voice saying "but you could be cuddled up to them right now." Especially for women raised under the socialization of fairly traditional family roles.
But it’s been especially acute because for the past 9 years - the entirety of my youngest’s life and nearly that of my eldest - I have found myself pulled in two directions - one that loves being in the home, making a home with these incredible lights. Cooking up a storm in the kitchen, exploring our community with our neighbors, teaching the girls to see the wonder in the world in every big and small way. The other? Out there in the world and in my computer, imagining futures that don’t yet exist but that I need to exist.
And so instead of choosing One or the Other, I, like so many others, chose to attempt to do the Both.
The cost? Beyond my sleep and sanity is surely the guilt. That I’m not doing either justice.
My head knows the guilt is fairly useless.
My heart says otherwise - when I slip into their rooms at 5am before an early flight. Or when I’m working through a challenging problem with the team instead of attending a school assembly. Or when I need to respond to a user in the middle of Uno.
My life and my choices mean that our life and our choices look different than most families.
I've struggled with this a lot, especially as I wonder "is it worth it?" The ambiguous somedays of solving this problem vs. the very real todays with my girls.
But this year changed my thinking on this.
One weekend in particular.
This time last year, we were one of 10 teams to be funded by OpenAI and invited to spend 8 weeks with their researchers and teams. I spent most of December and January in SF, learning, experimenting, building with GPT4 - still under wraps but expected to be launched in weeks.
Then March 9 happened - on this Thursday, I was flying back from SF to Vancouver and at the airport I learned: GPT-4 was to be launched in 5 days. And at the same time - something was going on with SVB the bank that held all of our company's money.
We went into divide and conquer - my cofounder was to figure out the product for Tuesday and I was to make sure we had a company making payroll. To make things worse, my girls got off on Spring Break that day and I was without childcare for the next week as my husband left for a work trip.
That Friday, I decided I needed to be back in SF so we could work through the weekend together.
My instinct was to do what I would usually do: call my parents and say I needed to drop them off for the next 4 or 5 days. But boy did the mom guilt rear its head.
It was my eldest's birthday in days, it was Spring Break and I already hadn't seen them in a week.
In flash of madness I thought: why don't I bring them?
And so I did - I booked a last minute flight for all of us to head to SF and over the next 4 days, over room service, trips to the Exploratorium and a little corner in the office for them, I managed to find my version of doing both.
We built the product and figured out all launch details while miraculously making sure our money was safe over a rollercoaster weekend. They were there when our design team introduced the “Milo Monster”, after which my youngest started drawing her own renditions. They were there as we debated how certain parts of the beta product should work, to which my eldest offered up her thoughts on emoji choices.
And when GPT4 launched that Tuesday, we ended up going a little bit viral. But by then, that was so far from the point.
As I look back on 2023, it’s one of my favorite memories. It took an insanely stressful 5 days and made it fun and meaningful.
But the true learning from this weekend didn’t sink in until later this year when I had another stint of back to back travel and mom guilt was raring its head again. Work was going really well but I was feeling terrible about home.
I came home to this sitting on my desk:
And I might have teared up.
My girls, my hearts, see my heart.
They are not damaged or deprived because I pursue my calling. They only ask to be a part of it.
That’s not to say this is all nice and tidy. The days are incredibly hard and messy. But they see I’m doing the best I can. They give me the grace and the will to do the best that I can.
It’s a conversation I’ve had to have with the girls this year- when I inevitably disappoint on the times I’m not there, I try to focus on the times I am there.
I tell them: you’re not going to be the kid who has a mama who makes every school assembly. But you’ll always be the kid who’s invited to be a part of these crazy life adventures. Invited in to this other side of what makes me, me.
They are always welcome in our office, in our meetings, into our mess. Just as my team sees and hears and lives it all too.
And ultimately what I’m taking into next year?
The guilt happens not because I’m trying to do two hard things well. It happens when I try to do them on someone else’s terms - whether it’s the other families at our school, my friends or society in general.
This is the year I said goodbye to this Mom Guilt. Not because I won’t keep feeling this tension. But because I’ll use it to find the wild options I could never have seen otherwise.
Relatable! Thx for putting this into writing. Taking the "mom guilt" we all feel from time to time and shedding some light on how we can also be positive role models through the messiness!
These words and thoughts and showing up like this is exactly what we need more of in this world! Thank you, Avni with all my heart and bones! As a damn good mother of two and an entrepreneur (with ADD) who has failed so many times - but who won't give up on my dreams of owning my own business and employing a bunch of other moms - I appreciate you for finding the time and space to write to this. This was one hell of a year and I'm thrilled for what's yet to come <3