Pressure, Motherhood, and the Leadership Muscle We Forget We Have

A few years ago, I was asked to organize a project for a trade show.

There was just one small detail.

We had four weeks to prepare.

Four weeks to design the booth, create all the marketing materials, build a strategy, coordinate vendors, and somehow show up looking like we had been planning it for months.

I remember staring at my screen thinking, How exactly is this going to happen?

What made it even more intense was the season I was in personally.

That was the year I was publishing my first novel, Choice. At the same time, my older daughter was turning eighteen, we were planning her graduation, and our house felt full of milestone energy — pride, nostalgia, logistics, emotion.

In other words, life was already stretching me.

And then this landed on my desk.

At first, the pressure felt heavy. But as I sat with it, something unexpected surfaced: this kind of intensity wasn’t new to me.

Motherhood had already trained me for it.

The ability to hold multiple conversations at once, to juggle timelines that don’t politely space themselves out, to shift from emotional presence to logistical precision in a matter of minutes — I had been practicing those skills for years. Coordinating three graphic designers simultaneously didn’t feel all that different from managing carpools, birthday plans, and school deadlines. It was simply a different context.

So I did what moms quietly do every day.

I got to work.

Was it demanding? Absolutely. There were moments when I wondered if I had taken on too much. But instead of shrinking under the tension, I found myself growing into it. The clarity came faster. The decisions became firmer. The trust in my own judgment deepened.

And when the trade show finally arrived and everything was in place, I realized something important:

The real transformation hadn’t happened in the booth design or the printed materials.

It had happened in me.

I began to see pressure differently.

In the gym, we understand that resistance builds muscle. We expect the stretch. We accept the discomfort because we know it’s part of becoming stronger.

But in our careers — especially as women — we often interpret that same stretch as a sign that we’re not ready.

I see this again and again. Women stepping into bigger roles, launching projects, considering leadership positions — and the very sensation that signals growth gets misread as “too much.”

Yet that year — while publishing Choice, celebrating my daughter’s transition into adulthood, and leading a high-stakes trade show on a compressed timeline — I didn’t break.

I expanded.

The same pattern appears in Lost Illusion. Val reaches moments where retreat would feel safer, where stepping back would require less courage. But each turning point in her story happens when she chooses to lean into the discomfort instead of withdrawing from it.

Growth rarely feels calm while it’s happening.

It feels like tension.

Now, when I notice that tightening feeling in my chest or that thought — This is a lot — I try not to immediately label it as negative.

Instead, I ask:

Is this crushing me, or strengthening me?

There is a difference.

And if you are quietly standing at the edge of a new chapter — especially as a woman considering a larger leadership role or a shift in your career — the pressure you feel may not be a warning.

It may be expansion.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how powerful it would be for women to explore this idea together — to reframe tension not as burnout, but as growth; to recognize the leadership muscles we’ve already built; to learn how to lean into stretch without losing ourselves in the process.

I’m still shaping what that could look like. But the seed has been planted.

And if this resonates with you, you’ll likely hear more about it in the coming months. 🌱✨

Because sometimes pressure isn’t the obstacle.

It’s the doorway.