Latest / The Kelly Jedele Show / Mom Guilt Is a Signal, Not a Verdict
Transcript
- Kelly intro: Hey, I'm Kelly Jedele and this is the Kelly Jedele Show. the lie we've been sold that you have to pick: the career or the kid, the big vision or the bedtime story. ⁓ calling it. That's not the deal. You can have both. I have built businesses for the last 16 years as a single mom. And you can do it without hustling yourself into the ground, but by choosing strategically every single day. Kelly: That's it for this week. If something in this episode hit, do me a favor. Send it to one woman in your life who needs to hear it. That's how this community grows, one honest conversation at a time. Follow the show, leave a review, and come find me on Instagram. I read everything. Remember, strong doesn't mean solo. I'll see you next week. Hello. Today we're talking about something that almost every mother I know carries around like a second purse. Something I almost didn't want to talk about today because it's so real and feels so big, even still in my life. Mom guilt. The kind that shows up while you're at work, when you think you should be at home. And when you're at home, you think you should be at work. The kind that somehow convinces you that no matter where you are, you're failing someone. And if you're a woman building something, a business, a career, a side hustle, a dream, that guilt can feel relentless. I know because I've lived it. Not from a book and not from a a coaching group. Kelly intro: This show is for the woman who wants the business, the brand, the freedom, and the family. All of it. So grab your coffee, your kids' juice box, whatever you got in your hand. Let's get into it. Kelly: From building a business for 16 years while raising my daughter as a single mom. And a few things that I've learned: that guilt can be a signal, but it's a terrible leader. And somewhere along the way, many of us started treating guilt like a life sentence instead of a just a piece of information. So today I want to talk about the difference because a lot of women are paying a tax that they don't actually owe. today want to talk about the difference because a lot of women are paying a tax that they don't actually owe. There was a season when mom guilt hit me harder than any other. My daughter Carli had chosen to do online school. At the time I had finally gotten to a place in my business where I had a general manager running operations. I thought I had created some breathing room for myself and for her. I thought I'd built just a little bit of freedom. Then my manager quit. And suddenly I was right back at it, building the operations, back in the office, putting out fires, and meanwhile my daughter was at home doing school by herself. I remember driving to work feeling just torn in half. Part of me knew that the business needed me. The other part of me thought, what kind of mother leaves her kid at home while she goes to work? I replayed that question just time and time and time again in my brain. And this is what I wish I had known then. That the guilt wasn't coming from what was happening. The guilt was coming from the story I was telling myself about what was happening. Two different things. There's a huge difference. The fact was, I was providing for my daughter, I was building stability, I was solving a problem. But the story was a good mom would be there. A better mom wouldn't have this problem. A different mom would somehow magically be everywhere at once. Sound familiar? I think a lot of us confuse guilt with truth. We assume that because we feel guilty, we must be doing something wrong. But that's not always true. Sometimes guilt is simply showing us that two things we care about, deeply care about, are competing for attention. And that's very different from failure, right? Let me say that again. So just because something is hard doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. This is huge for us as moms. Just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you're guilty. One of the biggest mind shifts I've had is realizing that guilt is just a signal. It's not a verdict. Signals are useful in our lives as we as we grow. Verdict, they really shut us down. A signal says, hey, pay attention. This is happening. A verdict says, you're a bad mother. A signal says, maybe you need more connection. A verdict says you've already messed it all up. One hurts, one helps. And too many ambitious women treat every signal like a conviction. Now I want to talk about another kind of guilt, the guilt that comes from compare comparison. Because if I'm being honest, this still gets me. Still gets me sometimes. I look at other business owners. people with bigger companies, more experience, more revenue, more skills. And for a moment I start wondering if I somehow w missed a class everyone else got to take. Maybe you've done this too. Maybe yours isn't business. Maybe it's another mom, another entrepreneur. Another woman on Instagram who seems to have figured it all out, how to meal prep, work out, grow a business, volunteer at school, and somehow have perfect hair while doing it all. And comparison starts whispering. You should be further along. You should know more. You should be doing better. And here's the reminder I come back to over and over. That no one taught me how to do what I've done. Nobody handed me a blueprint or a manual. I figured out by asking questions and trying things, making mistakes, failing, researching, trying, trying again. And if you're building something right now, chances are you're doing the same thing. Comparison steals the evidence. It makes you forget how far you've come already. What's interesting is that the the thing I worried about most wasn't actually the thing that happened. Because today I get to look at Carli. Not little Carli adult Carli. The woman she has become, and she's thriving. She graduated college. She's living in New Jersey, working in New York City. She's building her own career. She's making adult decisions. She's creating opportunities for herself. She's doing very brave things on a daily basis. And watching her has forced me to ask a difficult question. What if all the things I felt guilty about weren't hurting her the way I thought they were? What if some of them were actually helping her? A while back, Carli was asked to make a video about one of her heroes. And as her mom, I assumed she'd choose an actor or an actress, a performer, right? Someone famous. Instead, she talked about me. She sent me that video. She talked about watching me build a business from nothing. She talked about my work ethic, my effort, my determination. The things I respected least about myself in certain seasons because I thought they were making taking me farther away from her. Those were some of the things she respected most. That hit me really hard. Because while I was worried about whether I was present enough, she was watching what courage looked like. While I worried about every missed moment, she was learning resilience. While I worried about building too much, she was learning that women are allowed to build. That wasn't a perspective shift, I'll n that was a perspective shift I'll never forget. That was recently. Now let's be clear. This isn't permission to ignore your kids. It's not what I'm saying. This isn't an argument for hustle culture because we don't need that either. This isn't me saying presence doesn't matter because we know it does. In fact, one of the things I still feel guilty about today is how often I was distracted. Not absent, just distracted. The busyness of the business was always buzzing, always demanding something from me. And there were times my body was in the room, but my attention wasn't. And I and I can't change that. I can't go back. And I I don't pretend that it didn't happen. But I've also learned that beating myself up about it today doesn't serve anyone. Not me, not Carli, not the mothers listening, not the lesson. The lesson isn't that. It isn't perfection. The lesson is awareness, allowing ourselves to aware, be aware of what's going on and what we're doing. I think one of the biggest lies women have been told is like the good mom myth. The myth, the idea that a good mother is endlessly available, right? We're never tired, never ambitious, never focused on herself, never wanting more, never needing more, and somehow capable of meeting everyone's needs before her own. That woman doesn't exist. She she's a fictional character. And yet, real women are measuring themselves against her every day, you and I. No wonder we're exhausted. No wonder we compare. No wonder we feel guilty. The standard itself is impossible. Your children do not need a perfect mother. They need a whole mother. A mother who is alive, a mother who is growing and evolving, a mother who is willing to show them what it looks like to pursue a meaningful life. That's not perfect. So here's the challenge I want to leave you with today. The next time guilt shows up, don't immediately believe it. Get curious about it. Ask yourself, is this guilt a signal? Or is it a story? Is there something I genuinely need to adjust? Because that might be the case. Or am I replaying an impossible standard of what we've seen? And then remind yourself of this. You're doing something no one taught you how to do, most likely. You're figuring it out in real time and you're learning. You're growing. You're making mistakes. You're correcting your course. You're loving your kids. And you're building a life at the same time. That's not failure. That's courage. Mom guilt can knock at the door, and it probably always will, right? But you don't have to invite it in, hand it a chair, and let it run the meeting. You can listen to the signal. Thank it. Thank it for the information. Like allow the the awareness and keep moving. Because the truth is your kids may not remember every meeting that you took, every phone call you answered, every moment that you doubted yourself. But they will remember what it looked like to watch a woman believe she was allowed to build something meaningful. And that lesson might be the greatest gift you ever give them. Thanks for listening, my friend. Until next time, take care.