I used to glorify hustle—motherhood taught me to prioritize presence
Credit: Canva / Motherly
And suddenly, the markers of success I used to chase didn’t matter as much as the moments I didn’t want to miss
Table of Contents
I didn’t walk away from my ambition. I just walked slower so my kids could come too.
My tempo of success used to be sprinting.
Before kids, it meant momentum: fast-moving goals, rapid promotions, tight turnarounds. If I’m honest, I liked the rush of being in demand. My value was tied to velocity.
But then, motherhood forced me to slow down—and suddenly, the markers of success I used to chase didn’t matter as much as the moments I didn’t want to miss.
My daughter Navy was born in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. At just two weeks old, she caught RSV from her two-year-old brother (an innocent, inevitable sibling gift). What we didn’t know was that RSV would lead to a weeklong stay at our local hospital, intubation, a 3 a.m. ambulance ride with our little baby in the tiniest incubator box I’ve ever seen, and an emergency transfer to Boston Children’s Hospital, where she would also be diagnosed with COVID, likely picked up in the ER.
Two weeks postpartum is a tough enough time. Like too many other moms, I was battling postpartum preeclampsia and was in the OB emergency room while Navy was admitted. At the same time, our seemingly healthy French Bulldog, Champ, died suddenly.
It was too much for anybody, any one family.
In that season, everything slowed down. Not just in the hospital, but in my soul. Because I realized: I could keep moving fast—but I didn’t want to anymore.
Letting my ambition evolve
Now, that doesn’t mean the ambition that drove me my entire life up and left. Motherhood didn’t shrink my ambition. It clarified and evolved it.
As I worked to find solid ground again, I started asking myself different questions:
- What does success look like in this season?
- How do I want to feel at the end of each day?
- What rhythms serve me and which ones quietly erode me?
- Am I trying to carry more than my share, trying to over-function instead of protecting my energy?
At first, I didn’t have clear answers. Just a deep knowing that something had to change. It took time—months, really—to mentally reframe that success isn’t about speed or optics anymore. It’s about sustainability and presence through building a career that could grow with my family, not in spite of it.
Reinvention, for me, doesn’t mean walking away from Villain Branding, the business I’ve been building since 2015. It means designing it differently. I still want growth—maybe 50% a year instead of 200%—so I can make room for school drop-offs, sick days, and preschool popsicle parties. It means having a team and client roster that respects boundaries and builds trust without burnout.
Related: Here’s how toxic positivity completely invalidates new moms
“Doing it all” a little differently
That year, my husband left his full-time job as a university athletic director to join me in the business. Every day, we’re navigating work and family in tandem.
People ask, “How do you make it work?” We stopped trying to balance everything and started building a life that bends.
That means structuring work days around kindergarten bus stop drop-off and preschool pickup. It means sometimes taking Zoom calls in the car with Navy in the backseat on one of her many play phones doing “her work” while I do mine or making sure we have Wi-Fi on vacation so I can pop in for a quick Slack huddle. It means blocking the calendar completely for Mack’s upcoming tonsillectomy (and of course the “Goodbye Tonsils” Party we’re throwing the night before) and trusting that my team can keep things going.
The key is, we’re not scrambling, we’re adjusting. Flexibility became the plan, not the exception.
We also have an incredible village—grandparents, babysitters, and a nanny who has been with us since before Navy was born. We call in help often and without guilt (mostly).
And, while I used to use every free minute to catch up on work, I’ve even finally started finding small, daily windows for myself again—a walk with Benny and our new rescue puppy Tatertot, a workout in my super-welcoming women’s gym at 5 a.m., a single hour where the only goal is to feel like myself.
Sometimes I have to literally put “do not work” on my calendar, or leave my laptop upstairs and go outside. It’s a small rebellion, but it reminds me that rest is a form of respect.
Embracing slowness as a strategy
I don’t want to give the illusion that I have this even 1% perfectly figured out. Presence isn’t easy (especially for moms).
There’s a particular tension I feel every day between two mental tabs: stay in the moment versus manage the entire household and business and calendar and life. Even when I’m playing with my kids, part of me is planning for next week’s logistics. That drop-everything mode is one of the most emotionally complex parts of parenting for me. It’s also where I’ve found the clearest definition of success: show up when it counts.
Because I know my kids won’t remember the number of emails I sent or the size of my Q4 pipeline. But they will remember if I showed up for the race and the dance recital.
A few weeks ago, Mack asked if we could build a “race track” out of couch cushions and some random 2×4 he found outside. I had emails to answer, laundry to fold, and Slack notifications screaming at me. The little dude even said, “When you’re done with work. I know work is important.” He was expecting me to say no, as I often have to say.
But this time, I paused, said yes, and 20 minutes later we were holding a “Massachusetts 500” with stuffed animals in every seat. He announced the final score mirroring his dad’s ridiculous announcer voice. I looked around at the chaos we’d created and thought: this is exactly the kind of moment I don’t want to miss.
It’s not just for them—it’s honestly probably more for me. When I honor the moments that matter most, it actually helps me work with more clarity and energy later. I’m not carrying the invisible weight of guilt or misalignment. I can move through my day knowing I didn’t miss what mattered. And that has become the only way I can keep doing big things without burning out.
About the author
Lauryn Warnick is a brand strategist, storyteller, and provocateur trusted by ambitious B2B leaders to sharpen the soul of their business. As the Founder and CEO of Villain Branding, she leads a senior-only collective of strategists and creatives who partner directly with executive teams to define what makes a brand credible, relevant, and unmistakably different.
Related articles
