A Mother’s Day Letter to the Woman Building Something

For the mother building a business, a different life, or both at the same time.

A Mother’s Day Letter to the Woman Building Something

Today I want to write to the mother who is building something while raising people.

Maybe you are building a business. Maybe you are building a different life for your family in a different country. Maybe you are building both at the same time, which is what most mothers I know are actually doing.

Either way. You are the one staying up late after everyone else has gone to bed, working on something that matters to you. You are the one researching schools, pricing offers, or sketching the next year on a piece of paper at the kitchen table. You are the one wondering if there is a way to do this without losing yourself in the process.

I see you.

The courage to want more than what you were handed

There is a particular kind of courage in admitting that the life you built, even one that looks fine from the outside, is not the life you actually want.

The world tells mothers to be grateful and quiet. To take what they have without asking for more. To put everyone else first and call that love.

You have figured out something different. Your well-being and your family’s well-being are not in competition. They are the same thing, designed two different ways.

The business that runs you is not separate from the life that runs you. The life that runs you is not separate from the business that built it. Most mothers I know are trying to fix one without fixing the other, and that is why nothing changes.

If you are building a different life, you cannot do it on top of a business that owns your time. If you are building a different business, you cannot do it on top of a life with no room. The two have to be designed together, or the design holds for a while before breaking.

What I learned moving with two daughters

I have moved my family three times in nine years. London to Copenhagen. Copenhagen to London. London to Doha, where I am now.

Two daughters, seven and nine. A husband. A business that kept running while we kept moving.

What I learned, moving them, is not what most people write about when they write about moving abroad.

I learned that the move was the easy part. The hard part was building a business underneath the life that could survive being uprooted three times. The hard part was making sure my work could move when we moved. The hard part was making sure the life I was claiming for my daughters did not require me to be exhausted to sustain it.

The mother who tells you the move was hard is telling you only part of the truth. The whole truth is that the move was hard because the life and the business were not designed together. When they are designed together, the move is just logistics.

Three things I want you to do this week

Not five. Three. Because the mother reading this on Mother’s Day does not have time for five.

1. Notice which fear is which.

There are two kinds of fear that show up at 2 a.m. when you are thinking about changing your life.

The first kind is fear of solving a logistical problem. School systems. Visas. Currency. Time zones. Tax structures. Hiring a new contractor. Saying no to a client. These are all real and solvable.

The second kind is fear that the life you have is misaligned with what you actually want. This one does not feel like a problem to solve. It feels like a quiet ache that does not go away.

The first kind has answers. The second kind has decisions.

Notice which one is talking before you decide what to do about it.

2. Find one mother who has already done what you are thinking about.

Not five. One. Reach out and ask her the question that has been keeping you up.

The mother who has already done it has wisdom that no book or course can give you. She has lived through the parts you are afraid of. Her answer to your specific question will be more useful than a hundred articles.

If you do not know any mother who has done what you are thinking about, that is information. It tells you that the path you are considering is rare enough that you are going to have to design parts of it yourself. That is not a reason not to do it. That is a reason to take your own thinking seriously.

3. Protect the time you spend designing the life, not just executing it.

Most mothers I know spend all their time executing the life they already have. They do not have time to design the next one.

You will not stumble into the life you actually want. You will design it in a notebook or a doc, or in half an hour with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, and then you will execute the design.

If you do not protect the design time, you will execute the life you already have, forever.

This week, set aside 30 minutes for design. Just thirty. Sit with what you actually want, not what you are supposed to want. Write it down.

The execution will follow.

What I believe about mothers building something

A mother’s intuition about what her family needs is rarely wrong.

A mother’s intuition about what she herself needs is also rarely wrong, but mothers have been trained for generations to ignore that one. We are taught to override our own knowing in service of everyone else’s comfort.

You do not have to.

The pull you feel toward something more, something different, something better, is information. It is not selfishness. It is not midlife restlessness. It is not a phase. It is your knowing, telling you something true about the design of your life.

Listen to it.

Happy Mother’s Day to the woman brave enough to want more for herself and those she loves most. The work you are doing, in your business and in your life, is the work that builds the future generations actually need.

I am glad you are here.

— Sonaya

If this letter found you, the rest of this Substack might be for you too. Sundays are for life decisions. Wednesdays are for business decisions. Both, because they are the same decision, made twice.