The Bold Ten: 10 minutes a day, every day in November. Details at the end.

“You don’t have to wait for your story to be finished to write it. The unfinished version is the one people see themselves in.”

posted this a few days ago, and it got me thinking about something I’ve been mulling over for weeks.

My life is not the one with all the successes yet. I can’t tell you how I stepped out of corporate and built my six-figure business, or that I’m a mom who also created a business and is now super successful.

I didn’t.

Yet.

I’m saying yet because, deep inside and for a reason I don’t understand yet, I still believe I’m just at the beginning. Do I have the answers? No. Do I have the ambition? Definitely. The question is: what’s next?

So when I read this quote I thought: what if I just share my journey? Not the finished product, not the final tips. Just me, figuring it out as I go. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. And maybe others get inspired.

To set the scene, and if you don’t know me, a bit of background.

I worked in corporate for 20+ years, and I loved climbing the ladder much more than I would ever have thought. I never pushed for promotions, but I had a really nice career and I was proud of what I achieved.

So when we talked about having kids, I was super clear: I will not stop working. I even wrote my thesis about it. I wanted to be the “Rabenmutter” I wrote about (the German word for a mother who supposedly neglects her children for her career). Looking back, I was so convinced that working was the right way that I only interviewed women who were working. I never asked the ones who had left, or why.

I graduated three weeks after my son was born, and yes, I looked like an elephant. I decided to step out of my job for six months and then start again.

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When I came back, I was offered a project I really didn’t like, and everyone knew it. I remember sitting at my desk at home, my son in his first or second week of daycare, thinking: really? This is what I leave him for? That’s when I felt it. I can do many things. I wanted to work for myself, build a brand and create something more “meaningful.”

That was 2.5 years ago. Since then I started this newsletter, which I love, created a framework (or several), worked on projects as a freelancer, and started a podcast with my dear friend . We did research, two studies actually.

Funny enough, in the first survey 28% of the mothers we surveyed said they had started their own business. I was becoming one of them.

Just without the income.

Because that’s the part that didn’t work: my income. I mostly lived on my corporate savings. I used to have a good monthly income, I was proud of it, and I didn’t have to worry. All of a sudden it was gone.

For a while I thought it was just me. But the more I go into this, the more I realise it isn’t.

A well-known Harvard Business Review study found that 37% of highly qualified women step off the career track at some point. 93% of them want back in, but only 40% return to full-time work. And in Germany, mothers earn about 60% less than they otherwise would ten years after their first child.

So when I realized that meaningful things were nice but I still needed the cheque, I started looking for a full-time job. Something flexible, doable with a small child and a husband who travels constantly.

It took me a long time.

This year I found it: a small coaching company of 7 people, where I can be a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big one. I’m now Head of Marketing and Head of People & Culture, and I love it. The impact I can have. The flexibility.

And yet: a regular income is not the same as a meaningful one.

Here I am, with a 25-year career, so much ambition and so much to give. I truly believe the company I work for can grow into something really meaningful, and my salary with it. But it doesn’t pay what I’d like yet, and I want to earn more now. In Germany that’s not something you say out loud, we don’t talk about money. But I want to, because it’s important.

What tipped it for me was a podcast with Dada, co-CEO of Langdock and one of Europe’s best-known tech investors. She told the story of coming home after ten days of travel and her daughter greeting her with: “Oh, mom, you’re back, but I want the nanny.” A mom’s worst nightmare. It would be mine. And at the same time, she’s doing such an incredible job on AI and Europe.

So there I sat, thinking: yes, I truly want to be with my son, and I don’t want that moment. But I also want to bring something back to the world. I truly belief it does not need to be one or the other. Whilst I will never be as successful as Judith, there are other ways to make it work. For me, in this season, working is part of giving to society, and making money matters. My son is 4 now. He can be with me a bit longer, without me a bit longer. It’s time.

To be clear, this is my season, not a rule. It’s also completely okay not to work, or not right now. And ambition doesn’t have to be about money at all. For some women it’s their family, their health, a community, a quiet year. Mine, in this season of life, happens to be about income. Yours might look completely different.

I’m 43. A US study of 2.7 million founders found that the average age of the people behind the fastest-growing new companies is 45. So I’m not late. I’m right on time.

I’ve been circling trainings, pocket mentoring and online courses, and I’m still contemplating what would really make a difference for women, for mothers with ambition. Which brings me to the problem: I’ve been thinking about this for weeks.

There’s a book called Working Identity that says you don’t think your way into a new identity, you act your way into it.

So it’s time to act.

In Dubai, the 30-30 Challenge started on the 1st of November: 30 minutes of sport every day. I’m stealing the idea and shrinking it, because let’s be honest, I’m a mom with a full-time job and 30 minutes a day isn’t realistic. Ten is.

So: The Bold Ten.

Ten minutes a day, every day in November, on one small, slightly bold thing that moves me toward the portfolio career I want: testing something I might sell, talking to someone a step ahead of me, learning something new. I’ll share what I did every day in Notes. Join me, with your own ten minutes. It doesn’t have to be about money or work. Your ten minutes, your ambition.”

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To get started, I wrote a prompt that helps me design two or three small experiments. Try it with me:

I want to act my way into a new chapter, not think my way into it
(an idea from Herminia Ibarra's book Working Identity).

Act as my experiment coach. First interview me, one question at a time,
waiting for my answer:
1. Where am I now (work, income, family constraints)?
2. What do I want to add or change, and by when?
3. How much time can I realistically give per week, and what is non-negotiable?
4. What have I already tried or half-started?
5. Which skills, people and stories do I already have?
6. What scares me about being seen doing this?

Then propose 3 experiments for the next 30 days, one of each type:
- DO: a small real test of the work or offer itself, ideally one that
  could earn money or prove demand
- CONNECT: conversations with 3-5 people one step ahead of me
- TELL: a way to share what I'm learning publicly, unfinished

For each, give me: the hypothesis ("I believe that..."), the smallest
version I can start this week, time needed, cost, how I'll know it
worked (a number or yes/no, decided in advance), and what I'll have
learned either way.

Rules: every experiment must fit my time budget, be reversible and
involve at least one other person. Rank them by learning per hour.
Push back if I'm hiding in planning or perfecting when I should be
testing.

Come along. Day 1 is today.

And if you have ideas, or you’ve done something like this yourself, please tell me. Maybe you want to run your own 10-30 and share it in Notes, so we can learn from each other.

I’m posting my own card every day in Notes. Follow me there so you don’t miss one.”

Both And, always - Constanze

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Sources:

Hewlett, “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps” (Harvard Business Review, 2005); Kleven, Landais and Søgaard, child penalties study (AEA Papers & Proceedings, 2019); Azoulay, Jones, Kim and Miranda, “Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship” (2018); Munz and Kalyanpur De Luca, State of Motherhood & Ambition in the UAE 2025 (covered by Khaleej Times).

You were the lawyer two years from partner. The marketing director with a team and a plan. The nurse who ran her ward, the teacher everyone wanted for their kids, the consultant who knew exactly what she’d be doing in five years. You were on a path.

Then you had a child.

And now you’re in it. The love is real, the joy is real, and so is the guilt. But underneath, one question keeps coming back: now what?

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You’re not unhappy. That’s not it. And, you also know there’s so much more to you than this, and you have no idea how to get to it. Where do you even start? What’s the first step? And how do you move when you’re this tired and this busy?

I know that place. I spent 20 years in corporate, had a son, and then had to work out what I actually wanted.

Since then I’ve written to you for two and a half years, made two seasons of podcast conversations with mothers, published the Real Talk interviews and run two waves of research on mothers and ambition. And today I live the portfolio life I was aiming for. It’s not perfect, but it’s my “next” for this season.

Along the way, the same pattern kept showing up. Whether I was listening to a mother on the podcast, reading survey answers, or working out my own next step, I tried to find a pattern.

And this is what I came up with, listening to the women who went from “now what?” to “this is next”.

1. They stop chasing balance.

Balance assumes that giving to one side takes from the other, so you’re always failing at something. One mother told us it’s a myth, and she judges success week by week instead. Nobody does it all. The mothers who got unstuck think in seasons: they pick what matters right now and let the rest wait.

Stop balancing, think in seasons.

2. They stop asking “Am I still ambitious?” and start asking “Ambitious for what?”

You haven’t lost your ambition. In our research, 31% of mothers said theirs got clearer and stronger after having children, and 69% want to show their kids what ambition looks like. What changes is the question. One mother told us she didn’t lose her ambition, she finally understood what she’s ambitious for. The old version (the title, the ladder, the pace) may not fit anymore. Yours still might, just differently.

Clarity beats speed. Know what your ambition is for (and yes, it could also be learning how to nit).

3. They let go of guilt, because it costs them the joy.

Guilt makes you pay twice. One mother told us that at work she felt guilty about her kids, and with her kids she felt guilty about work, so she missed the joy of both. When sharing this with a friend she asked me what would happen if she would have swapped guilt for gratitude. Or if I would do that. It isn’t the nanny instead of me. It’s the nanny and me.

Holding Both And is a skill, and you can practise it.

4. They name what’s really in the way.

It’s rarely time. It’s usually the load nobody sees. One mother told us the hardest part was never childcare, it was the mental and physical load of running a household, which drained her more than working did. In our research, 80% of mothers said the mental load sat mostly with them, and only 16% said it was shared equally. Until you name it, you keep trying to fix it with better planning, and planning can’t fix it.

Name the load, then hand one piece (or more) of it to someone else. It could also be AI.

5. They build their village before they’re drowning.

Many of us don’t have family next door. In our research only 12% of mothers lean on extended family for care, but 45% built new friendships through motherhood. One mother told us to ask for help well before you struggle, and another learned the hard way that building a village isn’t optional. Villages look different: neighbours who became friends, a nanny, sisters nearby, clients who turned into friends, an online group. What does yours look like?

Build the village that fits your life, before you need it.

What none of them did: wait until they felt ready, or do it alone. They asked. They took one step after the other. They tried, learned, failed and grew. Until they created the life they were looking for, and were not able to find it before.

What if you would finish this sentence: In this season of my life, I want more of ______. Write the first thing that comes up, not the sensible one.

That’s the start of your answer to now what?

Both And, always — Constanze

P.S. If you recognised yourself in this, and are not sure what your now what is or how to get there, I would love to support.

I’m opening the first round of The Bold Edit, a four-week programme for mothers asking now what? It’s a small group of 5-8, so you get my full attention, and I’ll refine what comes next with your feedback.

I built these four weeks around everything I've learned, so you don't have to start from scratch.

Over the four weeks you will go from “now what?” to one clear next step. You will:

• Know your season. A one-page map of where you are right now: your child’s age, your energy, the load nobody sees, and the system around you. No more measuring yourself against someone else’s life.

• Know what you want, and what it takes. One sentence on what you want from this season, plus what you need to get it (time, support, money, flexibility) and who could help.

• Get your own Bold Ask Prompt. A reusable AI prompt, built around your season, that helps you find the asks you haven’t thought of yet, now and for your next season. No tech skills needed.

• Send your first bold ask. A real request to a real person: a raise, flexible hours, a new role, an introduction, help at home. Written with the prompt, and sent.

• Have me in your corner. Send me a short voice note each week and I’ll reply personally within two working days.

Spots are limited to 10. The founding price is €200 / $220, for this round only, and it starts on Monday, October 26. Reply “I’m in” by Friday, October 16 and I’ll send you everything.

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Eight years ago I moved to Singapore. I remember sitting on that balcony, on a small Ikea outdoor desk and a plastic chair - both of which I had bought because my then boyfriend, now husband, who I’d just moved in with, had neither a dining table nor dining chairs. He did have a black leather couch though. I guess you get the picture.

I had a lot of time on the weekends back then - this was pre my son - and I went through some coaching materials on where I saw myself in 10 years (which is nearly now, wow), 5 years, 3 years. I guess we’ve all done this before.

The image I created in my head: me, sitting in a cafe outside, in a big city, drinking a latte, working. Laptop and phone in my hands. Really busy. And a stroller next to me, with a perfectly sleeping baby (I know…). That was what I wanted for myself.

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Eight years ago I dreamed of something. And, believe it or not, this is me today. Not the sleeping stroller baby - my son is now 4 and, thank god, loves school. But all the rest: the MacBook (which I didn’t even own yet back then), the cafe in a big city (ok, outside not always, but Dubai winters give me that too). And I am busy. Actually quite busy at the moment.

And believe it or not: I love it. I love being busy. I love doing different things. That’s not the problem. The problem is fitting it all into the hours I actually have. Priorities. And some days, motivation.

I visualized the life I wanted, and I arrived at exactly this point. Isn’t that scary? Great? Weird? Just amazing?

So here I am. In this life. A flexible full-time job, a podcast, a newsletter, and more things coming my way - trainings, and all kinds of other things. And that always leads to the question in my head: who do I even think I am, to be the right person for all of it?

Not sure why, but my imposter syndrome - a concept I really don’t like, it’s so overused - is kicking in again. I think what I actually mean isn’t “I’m a fraud.” It’s a gap between what I’ve done and what I believe I’m allowed to claim.

Let’s call it the credit gap. I have the receipts. I just haven’t been cashing them in.

And then I get a call. Can you do a training on social media? My first reaction: definitely not. They explain - it’s about helping people understand their vision, mission, values, and how to translate that into comms. Wait. Where was this training again? I have so many tools for this. Thirty minutes later, they’d convinced me. I do have a marketing background, after all.

But it bothered me. Social Media. How does this fit me? In probably every communication training I’ve attended the last few years, they always talk about content pillars. Focus. Be sure people know what you’ll talk about. Yes, I agree. I work in a coaching company, so learning & development makes sense. My podcast and newsletter are about motherhood and ambition - that makes sense too, and interests me a lot. So which bucket does this new training fit, then?

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Turns out, the longer I sit with it, the more I think this is the point. I stepped out of corporate to do things the non-linear, non-normal way - to not be stuck in one role, or one subject. Yes, I want a container. But a container can hold so much. My newsletter is called Both And for a reason. It’s not black and white.

So I’m adding a social media training to my container. But because I am who I am I will probably change the name. Social Media is overused. It’s a training to ensure you are seen and heard. This is what it should focus on. And don’t we all need this somehow?

Which, sitting with that phrase, might be the real thread through everything I make. Not social media, or motherhood, or ambition, as separate subjects - but being seen and heard at all, in a season of life that tends to erase women quietly.

In our own study of 180+ professional mothers here in the UAE, 28% started their own business after having kids. One in five changed industries entirely. Nearly half - 46% - plan to start a business in the future. Mothers are not opting out. They're opting for something bigger, something of their own making, something with room in it for all of who they are. That's what a container is for. Not to narrow you down to one visible lane, but to hold everything true about you at once, and still be legible to the people who need to find you.

Maybe that’s the real revision to the ten-year vision board. Not just the cafe, the laptop, the busy life - but the confidence to believe you’re allowed to take up that much space. A laptop, a phone, a stroller, all at once. I didn’t visualize a pillar. I visualized a container. I just didn’t have the word for it yet.

So next time something doesn’t fit your pillars - say yes anyway, then ask what it’s really doing in your container. Not “does this match my brand.” Just: does this let more of me be seen? That might be the only content strategy that’s ever actually worked for me.

Both And, always - Constanze

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I stood in the empty living room and the first thing that popped up was: is this me?

Does a house define me? Does my son’s school? The number of presents under the tree, the size of the birthday party, which children come for the playdate? And underneath all of those, the one I actually can’t answer: how do I make sure the values I was given stay alive in him, when nothing around us is the same as what shaped me?

Because I grew up without ever deciding who I was. I just fitted into the puzzle around me. My friends lived on my street, basically more or less next door. In summer we were outside on our inline skates, and whoever had time joined in. Nobody checked the temperature first, or the traffic, or the air quality. In winter it was playdates, honestly always the same three or four kids. Tennis, ballet, karate, youth club, chess, flute, piano. And, the most important thing: as far as I can remember, my mother never once stressed about curating the perfect week. It just was what it was. Light. No pressure.

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I want to give him that.

Writing this makes me cringe. I would give my son my exact childhood in a heartbeat. I was so happy. It was so easy. And I can’t. Not here.

Nobody ever handed me a list of values, either. Authenticity. Fairness. Curiosity. Joy. Belonging. Self-efficacy. The place gave them to me for free. I didn’t have to choose a single one. My mom and everyone around me made me live them.

Dubai has no single puzzle. Here I’m a loose piece, and there are several puzzles at once. And I spend most of my days now wondering which one we’re supposed to fit into. Everything is a decision. How many presents. What kind of party. Which friends, which playdates, which school. Here, the childhood itself is a decision - because here, it doesn’t build itself. There’s no street. There’s heat, and traffic, and an air-quality number on my phone. I have to consciously create the thing that me or my mom never had to think about. I guess that’s one of the many things I was not ready for when becoming a mom in a different country.

Interesting enough, whilst writing this, I went through my life and thought about more than “just” the mom aspect of this. The puzzle, the reinvention, the curation of a life: I’ve done this before. Several times.

One example. In my former company I was part of a Future Leaders group. To get in you had to go through a quite selective process. It came with training, and, looking back at it and reflecting, also with a promise: you are worth something. We believe in you, even if you don’t. Being inside a system like that is a flat escalator. It’s always moving. It carries you, hands you opportunities, and you grow just by staying on it.

Another example: friendship. Growing up, I never really made friends - I just somehow had them. They came in the neighborhood, the school, my mom’s friends. Here, it sometimes feels like no one comes with anything. If I want a circle, I have to build it on purpose: introduce myself, follow up, invite people who might say no. Belonging used to be so easy. Now it's a decision I make on a Tuesday after my son’s bedtime. Off the escalator, putting effort into building it myself.

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Then I stepped off the escalator. And there was noone anymore that told me “you are worth something”. Only me.

Before I left and long after, I work on myself to be able to tell myself my worth. I try to understand who am I, really? What do I actually want? If I’m not the title, then what’s left? If I want to believe I am worth something now, no one is going to say it for me. I have to decide it. On purpose.

The same purpose I have to put for Anton.

And for many other areas of my life. My friends, my new home.. all things that change when you decide that you live outside of where you grew up. And in the beginning that also means, outside of your comfort zone.

So here I am, writing that all of this I am creating on purpose. Which feels like so much clarity. And at the same time, I am still struggling with so many Both And moments.

Right now, as I write this, my son is downstairs with our nanny so that I can work until five. Writing that sentence makes me cringe. What kind of mother am I. My mother was always there. I am not. And at the same time, I love this. I love the hour, the ambition, the work that makes me feel like myself. The life I built is the exact reason I can’t give him the one I had.

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And the house is its own Both And. I grew up thinking a home like this one was "too much" and only belongs to a certain kind of people. Not my kind. I really so much want to give my son the lightness of less, and still I can give him more than I ever had. Both are true. I haven't reconciled them. Not sure I need to. But a friend said something this weekend which made it feel lighter:

What if you replaced guilt with gratitude?

Not the nanny instead of me. The nanny and me. He is downstairs, safe and happy and loved, and I get to do the work that makes me who I am. What a thing to get to have both.

Not the big house instead of the childhood I actually believe in. The big house and that childhood - because the things I want for him were never made of square meters. Belonging, fairness, joy, enough - none of them care how many rooms we have. A home I once decided wasn’t “my kind” can still be where he learns exactly what mine stood for. The walls don’t raise him. We do.

And once I swap guilt for gratitude, I can’t stop. My husband, who chose this life with me and carries the parts I don’t see. My new friends - I didn’t inherit them from a street, I chose them and they chose me back. More curated than my old ones, maybe. But curated just means we’re here on purpose.

And the house. The one I decided wasn’t “my kind.” I want my son to grow up grateful for it - not entitled, grateful. My own childhood was a privilege too, so easy I never thought to be grateful for it. Maybe that’s the one thing he’ll have that I didn’t: he’ll have to notice.

For a long time I thought my job was to design who my son becomes - to find the right puzzle and place him inside it. But he’s going to grow up and choose his own life, in puzzles I can’t even see yet. I can’t hand him a street. What I can hand him is the values: authenticity, fairness, curiosity, joy, belonging, and the belief that he is worth so much - even on the days he doesn’t feel it. And even if there is no label or job title behind it.

And that’s the thing I keep forgetting to do for myself. I go looking for the right puzzle to fit into - the right city, the right title, the right version of a good mother - when the whole point is that I already carry my own. The house doesn’t define me. Dubai doesn’t. The nanny, the school, the missing street - none of them do.

I do.

Figure out who you are, and then be that - on purpose. Dolly said it. I wrote it somewhere to even find it again because I loved it so much. I think I only understand now why I loved it: because no one hands you the answer for free anymore. Not the place, not the system, not your mother. That part is yours to make.

Keep your own puzzle.
Both And, always | Constanze

P.S. None of this is lost on me — the house, the nanny, the choice to have both. Even getting to ask these questions is a privilege. Gratitude, again.

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I had a job I loved. I was good at it. I was doing an INSEAD Executive Master in Change at the same time - because apparently one full thing wasn’t enough for me. I had ambition and I had somewhere to put it.

Then I had a child.

I went back at six months. Motivated - genuinely. Not even joking about this. I remember calling my manager 3 weeks before my official start date, asking: “so can we start planning”?
But I also didn’t want my son in daycare all day, barely seeing me. I got lucky: I could work from home. Except fully home wasn’t the answer either. I was lonely. I missed the office, the people, the hallway conversations that make you feel part of something.

So I started looking. And every single job wanted me back in the office five days a week, eight hours minimum. That was the deal. Take it or leave it.

I didn’t want that - not for me, not for my son. So I left it.

And just like that, I was the statistic. The woman who “stepped back.” From a career I loved to, on paper, nothing. (I never actually stopped - I consulted, I wrote, I built this. But you know that already.) Nobody asked me to floor it or park it. Those were just the only two pedals in the car.

Here’s what the data says

We love the phrase “opting out.” It’s clean. It suggests a choice - she decided family mattered more, she chose to step back. Everyone gets to feel fine about it.

The problem is it’s mostly not true. And I don’t just feel that - last year and I went and measured it. Because of all the conversations we had, we just felt there was so much more to it.

So we surveyed more than 180 professional mothers across the UAE for a study we called The State of Motherhood & Ambition.

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What came back: seven in ten had kept or even grown their ambition after having children. Not shrunk. Kept, or grew.

They hadn’t opted out. They’d redesigned. One in five changed industries to do more meaningful work. Another one in five came back to the same role with more clarity and drive. And 28% started their own business - because when the road ahead was blocked, they built a different one. (I guess this makes me a walking data point. Hi.)

This isn’t a story about women opting out. It’s about women innovating within constraints and it’s well past time for the systems around them to innovate too.

Because here’s the mechanism. Most workplaces don’t offer a dial. They offer a switch. On or off. Full speed or full stop. And when the only two options are 100% or 0%, a lot of capable, ambitious women get quietly pushed to zero - not because they wanted zero, but because nobody ever built anything in between.

The full stop is the expensive one

But back to the traffic light - because this is where it stops being a metaphor and starts being math.

When you slam the brakes to a complete stop, restarting is brutal. The data is stark: of women trying to return after a break, roughly 54% succeed after one to three years away — but only about 19% after five or more (MENA, via Gulf News). Nearly half of returners get rejected on the résumé gap alone. The longer the full stop, the steeper the hill back. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a system charging interest on a pause it forced.

But what for me is so important to keep in mind on this. Even for the mothers whose ambition did take a hit, it mostly didn’t disappear - it froze. That’s the whole thing in one word. Froze. The drive is still in there. It’s just been left at a dead stop, with no one letting it move.

The motherhood penalty does the rest - the quiet assumption that a mother is less committed, less promotable, less there. It’s why women hit the “broken rung” first: for every 100 men promoted to their first manager role, only 81 to 93 women make the same step (McKinsey / Lean In). And the push is often not subtle at all: in a 2024 UAE survey, 56% of mothers said they’d felt pressured or pushed to leave a job because they were pregnant or had just had a baby (Beyond Careers). The brake doesn’t always creep up on you. Sometimes it’s someone else’s foot. And then you get blamed for the stop.

What “keep moving” would actually look like

None of this is inevitable. We know what the other design looks like.

The single biggest lever we found was support. Among the mothers who had childcare they were happy with, 84% said their ambition held steady or grew. Among those without it, only 55% could say the same. Same women, same drive - the gap was simply whether anyone had built a floor under them.

And flexibility isn’t a nice-to-have. 65% of the mothers we surveyed called it essential infrastructure - not a perk. The one condition that keeps the engine running. Companies that actually provide it see it in the numbers: female attrition of roughly 13.8% where there’s real flexibility, versus 21.9% where there isn’t (2025 analysis). Keeping women moving is not charity. It’s retention - the cheaper, smarter option that also happens to be the humane one.

So “always keep moving,” applied to work, is simple to say and apparently very hard to build: stop forcing the brake.

Let a mother slow down when she needs to and speed back up when she’s ready. Let the pace be hers to set. Don’t demand she prove her commitment by parking her whole life, and then punish her for the very stop you engineered.

Give her the dial, not the switch.

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The reframe

Fun Fact. I’m the woman who got kind of forced to brake. I’m also the woman who did not to let the engine go cold - who kept moving on the one thing she couldn’t put down, and is now building something out of it.

Does it earn me the same. No.

Does it fuel my ambition. 100%.

But it should not take that much stubbornness. Not every woman can, or should have to, out-hustle a system designed to stop her. And it should also not have cost me two third of my original income.

So let’s normalize the thing we’ve been treating as impossible: not hitting the brakes fully. Not having to come roaring back at 200% with something big to prove. Just... keeping moving. Slower sometimes. Faster later. On her terms.

The mothers already want to keep going. Seven in ten told us so, in our own study. The least we can do is build a road that lets them.

So that's how I became "that woman." Not the one who stepped back — the one who never fully stopped. And now I'm building the road I couldn't find, so the next mother won't have to go looking for it.

Keep moving.

Both And, always — Constanze

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P.S. The stories behind these numbers - mothers redesigning ambition in real time -are exactly what and I dig into on our podcast, Motherhood in Motion. Come listen.

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Sources

• The State of Motherhood & Ambition in the UAE 2025 — Constanze Munz & Anushka Kalyanpur De Luca (180+ mothers, June–Nov 2025). As reported by Khaleej Times.

• Return-to-work pressure on new mothers — Beyond Careers, Return to Work Survey 2024.

• The re-entry cliff (return success by break length; résumé-gap rejections) — World Bank & TENTEN Partners, via Gulf News, 2026.

• The “broken rung” (first promotion to manager) — McKinsey & LeanIn, Women in the Workplace.

• Women leaving the workforce at a record pace — Catalyst, 2026.

I forgot how much I missed this.

Here’s the honest answer to “how do you start a newsletter again after the longest silence?” You just start. That’s it. That’s the whole trick. You open the thing and you type the first sentence and you stop waiting to feel ready, find the right topic or overcomplicate it. You just start typing.

The last six months were a lot. You saw some of it - the posts where I mentioned what was happening politically, the ones about the podcast and wrapping up our first season. Travelling with my 4 year old, and, ah yes, a full time job. But the newsletter itself I put a bit on hold. Which is strange, because this is my happy place. This is where I get to just be myself, think out loud, learn something and hand it to you while it’s still warm.

And there's one thing I've been learning — this week, and honestly for most of the last few months: always keep moving.

I know. We’ve all heard it. It’s on a hundred mugs. But I don’t think I understood it until now.

The traffic light

It all made sense yesterday at the gym. Which is a little ironic — because the gym is the one place I did slam the brakes. Six months off. A full, dead stop. (Do not do this.) So there I was, back under the bar at 40 kilos, paying for it, when my coach said something that stuck: think of it like a car coming up to a traffic light. What you don't want to do is race toward it and then slam the brakes right at the line. You want to approach slow. Ideally you don't stop at all. You roll through and keep going.

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Same with the squat. Don’t crash to the bottom and jerk back up. Control the descent, stay in motion, drive back up.

Same, it turns out, with life.

A slower season, but never a full stop

My summers are always a bit different. Dubai empties out - there’s this huge exodus every year, everyone chasing somewhere cooler, going back to Europe or wherever home is. (Germany this year was not, in fact, cooler. But that’s another story.) It’s just a different season. Slower by design.

When I landed in Germany I was still going full speed. And over eight weeks, things did soften. The pace dropped.

But here’s what mattered to me this year: nothing ever fully stopped. The podcast kept going. My job kept going. And even though I wasn’t writing the newsletter, I kept posting Notes on Substack - not as often as I’d have liked, but still. I kept moving.

And because I kept moving, everything stayed running. Quieter, lighter, lower to the ground - but there was always this low hum underneath the summer. A soft engine noise of all the things I’m building. It never went silent.

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The red thread

When I look back at my whole life since becoming a mother, this is the thread I keep finding.

I almost never came to a complete stop. I kept moving through my studies when Anton was born. I kept moving with the reading, the podcasts, the ideas in the back of the car. And the one thing that never once stopped moving - the topic I kept circling no matter the season - was motherhood and ambition.

I’m still moving on it now. The podcast. This newsletter, back in your inbox. And a new idea for a training that I’m only just starting to shape. More on that soon.

The September thing

And then there's September - which is almost the plot twist in all this. Because if my whole year is about not stopping, September is the one time everyone does. The big collective restart. And I love it. Every year I buy the new booklets, the new pens, I download some shiny new app that's finally going to organize my whole life. The fresh-start ritual is one of my favorite things.

And I did it again this year - but less. Fewer new pens. I’d already been thinking about the apps months ago (because I never really put the old system down). The blank-slate energy was quieter, because there wasn’t as much blank slate to fill.

And you know what? It still feels like a great start. Maybe even better. Because it doesn’t feel like starting from zero. It feels like an acceleration - foot back on the gas from a roll, not from a dead stop.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I think we treat “coming back” like it requires a full stop and a big dramatic restart. Like you have to screech to a halt, gather yourself, and then floor it again with something impressive to show for the pause.

You don’t. You never had to stop. Slowing down counts. A season on low counts. The engine humming quietly under a slow summer counts. Momentum doesn’t need you at full speed - it just needs you to not slam the brakes.

Roll toward the light slow. Try not to stop. And keep moving.

Next issue (Thursday, that's the plan): I've been digging into why so many women - and it's mostly mothers - leave the workforce. I think it's the same traffic light, except this time it's companies forcing the brake. I want to make the case for a different design - not all-in or all-out, but a career that's allowed to slow down and speed back up on your terms. If you've ever felt like your only two options were full speed or full stop, that one's for you.

Both And, always.

Constanze

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She meant our kids, hers and mine, running around a horse riding place surrounded by nothing but nature. My son has really gotten to explore that side of himself the last few weeks. Playing outside until it’s dark, sweaty and dirty, full of joy over another trampoline session or a football match with whoever wants to join. It’s 37 degrees here in Germany. I could do with a bit less heat, but I’m enjoying every moment.

Normally we live in Dubai. Not exactly a place known for country kids, though there’s more to it than meets the eye, especially in winter. What Dubai is known for is ambition, in every form. I’m genuinely lucky to be surrounded by women there who’ve built their own version of it. But the general current still pulls one direction. Ambition as more. More weekend plans, more after school activities, more titles, more travel, more connections, more money. Scarcity isn’t a word I’d use in Dubai. Everything is available, always.

Today I was sitting in my mom’s garden, watching my son do garden work with his grandma, and I read a magazine article about Finland being voted the happiest country in the world, nine years running. I’d heard that before and shrugged past it, but this time I got stuck. It described something I’d been feeling all summer without knowing how to say it.

This isn’t Dubai versus Germany, even though it would be easy to make it that. It’s me in Dubai versus me in Germany. Routine versus my mom’s house. The version of me that’s always slightly switched on, versus the one sitting here right now, sweaty and still, completely fine doing nothing. No evening plans, no coffee catch-ups, no play dates scheduled.

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The article gave that feeling a shape, and I wanted to share it with you. So here are the 6 lessons from the happiest country in the world, and why they hit me the way they did.

Connection to Nature. Living with your rhythm, not against it.

In Finland, from May to July it barely gets dark at all, and in the north the sun doesn’t set. Instead of fighting that, Finns use it. Fishing, foraging berries, swimming in one of the country’s roughly 188,000 lakes. On average, a Finn does around 182 outdoor activities a year, more than three a week. It’s just how life is built there.

My son doesn’t know any of that, obviously. He just knows it’s still light out, so he keeps playing. And I notice I’m not fighting it either, not tonight, not during summer holidays. I think about how rarely I extend myself that same grace. Tired becomes something to fix instead of something to just be. I wonder what it would look like to treat my own rhythm the way I’m treating his tonight. Not a problem. Just where we are right now.

Maybe that's the actual point. My ambition doesn't need to be fed constantly. Sometimes it needs air to breathe. It needs to walk in the greenery. It needs time and space, exactly the same way my son's does, and I keep treating his as reasonable and mine as negotiable. But changing that these days.

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Sauna-Kultur. Coming together without performing it.

In Finland, sauna isn’t a spa treatment, it’s daily life. There are over three million of them in a country of about 5.5 million people. Every home has one, so does the government. No clock on the wall, no temperature sign, no rules for how long you stay, you come and go as it feels right. One man in the article, an expat who works as a sauna heater in Tampere, said it plainly: in Germany, sauna is a show, quiet and serious. In Finland, it’s where people actually talk and laugh. It’s community building.

So the Fins live on intuition (no clock, no temperature sign), come together to laugh and talk and have no rules around it. This definitely feels like something being German doesn’t teach you but could be such a valuable skill. 20 minutes focused on community and your own wellbeing, possibly even at the workplace.

I feel like as a mother with ambition things have to be so planned and organised. To be able to bring both parts of me together there needs to be clear scheduling. Drop-off, working time, pick-up, playtime, dinner, bedtime, working time again. And even if I go to the gym it’s with a clear goal: to get more muscles, followed by enough protein, because I am over 40 now. This is what needs to be done.

Intuition is something which mostly doesn’t have a space anymore. It doesn’t fit the schedule. But what if we would make space for it?

Parity. What happens when the system carries some of the weight.

Every Finnish family gets a Babybox, worth 210 euros if you’d rather take the cash, filled with everything a newborn needs. It started in 1938 for low income mothers, and became a benefit for every family in 1949, regardless of how much money they have. Every child has a legal right to a place in daycare. Education is free the whole way through. Parents each get 160 days of paid leave, and up to 63 of those can be transferred to the other parent, mostly to get fathers more involved.

And then there is this super interesting number, which, looking at Germany, seems almost impossible for me to picture. In Finland, fewer than 10 percent of employed mothers work part-time. Where I’m from, and in Austria and the Netherlands, it’s more than 65 percent. Mothers there don’t just work as much as women without children, in Finland and Denmark they actually work more. It’s the opposite of the pattern I grew up assuming was just how motherhood works.

Before I go any further, we all know that no system is perfect. When childcare briefly disappeared during the pandemic, Finnish mothers, who are so used to full-time work with full state support, actually struggled more than mothers in countries where part-time was already the norm and there was a buffer to fall back on. So this isn’t a case for copying Finland exactly. It’s a case for taking pieces, from here and from there.

I can’t build any of this myself. But it’s exactly what our research on motherhood and ambition keeps showing too: mothers with reliable support around them stay more ambitious, not less. When a system carries some of the weight, ambition doesn’t get frozen. It actually can grow.

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Sisu. Not avoiding the storm, being able to meet it.

In Finland, children don’t get taught sisu, they absorb it, by being allowed to do their own thing. Finland’s education minister said it plainly in the article: kids build it subconsciously, just from being outside constantly, adapting to whatever the weather actually is instead of a version adjusted for them, and being allowed a real amount of risk. A happiness researcher, recovering from her own burnout, described what that risk builds as something close to quiet resilience. Not avoiding problems, but knowing you’re equal to them. When the weather is nice, you learn. When the storm comes, you have your tools.

My son cycles by himself now. He goes into the woods where I can still just about see him, and something catches his eye and I let him go look, even when I can’t see what he’s seeing anymore. I let him be. He falls. He gets up again. I don’t run over. Not because it’s easy, because I’m actively choosing not to.

I don’t think this is only about him learning resilience. I think it’s about me learning it too, at the exact same time, watching myself hold back. As a working mother with ambition, you need exactly this. Not the version of resilience that’s about gritting your teeth through another deadline. But maybe more the quieter one, the kind that means you don’t need conditions adjusted for you, you just have to trust you’re equal to what shows up. I think that’s what ambitious motherhood actually asks of us. Not more hustle. More sisu, built the same way his is, by being allowed to do our own thing without someone stepping in.

Vertrauen. Trust as something shared, not something risked alone.

Another interesting fact. Finns are actually reserved, even described as quiet, and they have fewer close friends on average than people in most other countries. First impressions are rarely warm. But once a connection forms, it holds. In an experiment, wallets full of cash were left around Helsinki. Nine out of ten were returned, contents intact.

That reframed something for me. You don’t need to be effusive to be trustworthy, or to build something real. For me, trust looks like being able to tell a friend the unglamorous truth. I didn’t want to play today, I wanted to finish something for work. Or, I wasn’t really present at work today because my son needed me. I think we need more people we can say that to, without flinching, even if it takes a while to find them.

We all need the village. The community. The one friend.

Einfachheit. Enough, instead of more.

The journalist who wrote the article got asked, on her flight home, what she’d been doing in Finland. Researching happiness, she said. Her Fin seatmate raised his eyebrows. Happiness? In Finland? There’s nothing exciting there.

He wasn’t wrong. That’s kind of the whole point.

There’s so much input all the time, in Dubai, but honestly in Germany too. Less is just better, for kids and for me. And here’s the thing I keep noticing as a mother who still wants to build things. These days, when I get time for myself, I love being outside, in nature, without a laptop. I want to sit in the green. Listen to what my body actually needs.

Maybe we’re all looking for happiness in something extreme, when maybe it isn’t extreme at all. Maybe the right word isn’t happiness, maybe it’s freedom. Not striving for more, more, more, but being at peace with the current moment and what’s already here.

So here’s where I’ve landed, rereading this article for the third time now.

This whole piece kept moving between my son and me, and I think that’s actually the answer to the thing I was circling.

Motherhood and Ambition aren’t two separate topics that need to be balanced against each other. Watching him relearn his rhythm, his resilience, his twenty minutes of nothing, is literally where I’m relearning mine.

Maybe ambition doesn’t always mean more. In Dubai, it’s easy to let it mean that by default. But maybe some of the most ambitious things I can do for this summer season are quiet ones.

Trusting my rhythm instead of fighting it. Being present without performing. Letting the system, or my community, carry some of the weight. Meeting hard things instead of avoiding them, right alongside my son learning to do the same. Being honest with the people I trust. Being okay with enough, or maybe just being free of needing more.

Both And. Ambitious and unhurried. His resilience and mine. Striving and enough. I don’t have to pick, and neither does he.

Constanze

P.S. Would love to get your thoughts on the Finnish Way of Living? Reply and tell me, I actually read every one.

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Get ready! This is the first Both And newsletter written not only by me, but also by my partner in crime in all things motherhood and ambition: Anushka. We've been co-researchers on this topic for over a year now, and since early 2026 co-hosts of the Motherhood in Motion podcast. Today we're both here. It felt like the right moment.

I’ve been writing Both And for two and a half years. About seasons. About identity. About the version of yourself that motherhood reveals. I’ve been consistent - except for the last few months, when I wasn’t.

The reason I went quiet is the same reason I’m writing this today.

Last year Anushka and I started a research project on motherhood and ambition in the UAE. We followed it with a second wave in the middle of a regional crisis in Q1. That led to a podcast. All of that happened during the months I went quiet here and when I left the UAE, tried to set up a system in Germany, started a new job, went back to the UAE and somehow also launched a podcast.

The podcast is called Motherhood in Motion.

It was real motion in real time. Both And, every day, for months.

So whilst we’re wrapping up Season 1 - titled She Kept Moving Anyway - we wanted to write this together. To share what this time meant for us. What we took from it. Because you grow with every motion, with every challenge in the way. And what 9 incredible women and nearly 200 survey respondents taught us about what Both And really looks like when things are hard.

This is the first co-authored Both And newsletter. One more piece in the puzzle we are building together.

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What was actually happening

We did not plan to launch a podcast during a crisis.

On 28 February 2026, a geopolitical event disrupted our lives in the UAE overnight. Schools closed. Routines collapsed. The architecture that makes our ambitious motherhood possible - the childcare, the community, the systems built over years - changed within days.

Anushka: In Dubai, even during the crisis, I had support in place. School was closed but my system held (my parents down the road, nanny support, and my incredible team at Nannies & More kept things running). And with my background leading program strategy and research on women and girls in crisis settings, I knew exactly what I was watching. The care burden was concentrating on mothers. Again. Even here, in one of the most resilient, privileged and well-resourced cities in the world. I felt urgency more than fear. Because I knew that once again, the impacts were falling along gender fault lines. I needed us to document it. That is where the survey came from.

Constanze: My situation was different. I moved to Germany for a while - not a trip, a relocation. Set everything up from scratch. New city, new routines, a new job started remotely from my mum’s kitchen. There was no system. And my ambition froze. Not disappeared - frozen. The difference between us in those months was that Anushka kept pushing. Kept talking. Kept asking. And that turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.

Because part of the village is other women who support you through the hard seasons and remind you of your own ambition when you’ve lost sight of it.

We kept going anyway.

She kept moving anyway

Both And. Motion. All the time.

Not because ambitious mothers have it figured out. Not because things are always going in the right direction. But because it’s the most honest words for what they actually do - even in the hardest seasons, even when the systems aren’t there, even when ambition goes quiet.

They kept moving. And so did we.

There were weeks this season where neither of us felt like we were moving at all. And yet - nine episodes. Nine women who said yes and showed up and spoke honestly. And us, on the other side of our own hard seasons, still here.

She kept moving anyway.

We didn’t land on that sentence until we were almost at the end of the season. But looking back at it, this is what we saw.

We kept moving. They kept moving.

But we all needed the right systems.

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What the data showed us

We ran two waves of research.

Wave 1 in 2025 - around 180 mothers - established the baseline. The one thing we all probably knew but seems to not be understood by the system we live in.

Ambition doesn’t disappear when you become a mother, it recalibrates.

The problem was never motivation. It was systems and conditions. Five of them kept coming up as load-bearing: flexible work, time and mental space, financial security, reliable childcare, a partner sharing the mental load.

Wave 2 we launched in the weeks immediately after February 28th - 54 mothers, mid-crisis, as it was still unfolding. We wanted to know what happens to ambition when those five conditions collapse overnight.

What came back was not the story of ambition dying. It was the story of ambition freezing - suspended, intact underneath.

36% said their ambition was more on hold, frozen. 20% said it was too early to tell.

But frozen is not surrendered. These women hadn’t given up. The conditions for expressing their ambition had collapsed - all five of them, simultaneously.

One Wave 2 respondent put it like this: “My nervous system is entirely blown out and I have to remain a rock while being completely unhinged.”

That’s the Both And. 36% felt proud of how they managed. 42% felt more stretched and depleted than ever. Not instead of - at the same time. Often the same woman, on the same day.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s the whole picture.

What the conversations taught us

Across nine conversations, a few things kept coming back.

The ambition is always there. Not always visible, not always moving - but there. Frozen is not the same as gone. We heard this from women who had built through crisis, through displacement, through starting over in new countries with no system around them. The conditions fail them. The drive doesn’t.

The guilt gets in the way of the joy. More than one woman named it - the guilt of not working enough, not being present enough, not doing enough. And the strange thing is: no one is asking for it. We carry it alone. And it costs us the very moments we’re working so hard to protect.

Values are the compass. Over and over, the women who felt most like themselves - even in the hardest seasons - were the ones who knew what they were doing it all for. Not the title. Not the revenue. The why.

The village is not optional. Every single conversation, in some form, came back to this. The women who held your child so you could take a call. The friend who reminded you of your ambition when you’d lost sight of it. The community you built because the one you needed didn’t exist. That’s infrastructure. And building it is ambition too.

The quotes we carry

Constanze:

“My ambition is not rushed. It’s more aligned to my own values. And it feels good.” - Liying Tay

We live in a world where everything moves fast. Dubai is a great example - groceries in hours, AI making everything even faster. So when my ambition went quiet, it felt deeply uncomfortable. I had just moved countries with a three year old and no system in place. And still, the voice in my head: how come I’m not writing the newsletter anymore? Why can’t I do more for the podcast? There was a lot of pushing myself during those months. What Liying gave me was permission to think about it differently. To go back to my values - self-efficacy, authenticity, fairness - and ask what they actually mean in this season. Things don’t always have to move fast. But they do have to move.

“You cannot have joy if you’re holding guilt.” - Lucy Bruce

Guilt came up a lot this season. In panel discussions, in interviews, in almost every conversation we had. It seems deeply ingrained in mothers - and I am absolutely counting myself in that. During those months I felt guilty about everything. Not doing enough for my son. Not onboarding into my new job properly. Not connecting with my friends in Dubai. So much guilt, all at once. But Lucy’s quote made me stop and ask honestly: looking back, is there really anyone resentful? I doubt it. I made it work. And I did have joy - watching my son learn to ride his bike, seeing him play outside until it got dark with a huge smile. I’m still working on this. But I’m really trying to feel less guilty about seasons that, actually, were full of good things too.

I even wrote a whole newsletter about this.

Joy. Not Guilt.

Anushka:

“Ambition isn’t a job title. It’s not a business. It’s the decision to live a life on purpose, whatever form that may take.” - Harriet Mandak

I’ve used this almost every week since we recorded it. Because it removes the pressure from the external markers - the title, the revenue, the visibility - and puts it back where it belongs. On intention. On how you’re choosing to live, not on what you can show for it. As a founder, that distinction matters more than I expected.

“There is no lost time in motherhood. It can always teach us something.” - Leilani Rooks

When the crisis hit I found myself in the US with three kids under four, living out of suitcases, completely off our routine and on a different time zone. Those ten days were pure survival mode. Diapers, meals, keeping small people alive in an unfamiliar place while trying to hold work together from the other side of the world. It was hard. And it was also, somehow, magic. They still talk about the carousel rides in Central Park and the sea lions at the Boston Aquarium. I watched three little people and our family unit light up in the middle of the chaos. Leilani's words made that make sense. Nothing is lost in motherhood, not even the weeks that throw everything off track. Something is always happening. Something is always being built.

A note to you

Every journey in this season looked different. But every woman in it kept moving. Some faster, some slower. Not because it was easy. Because it was in her.

We believe it’s in you too - even in the seasons where it doesn’t feel that way.

You don’t lose your ambition when you become a mother. It might go quiet, or sideways, or underground. But with the right support, the right community, even just the right conversation - it comes back. In your own way, on your own terms.

69% of the mothers in our research said they want to model ambition for their children.

The question was never whether the ambition is there. It’s whether the conditions around it allow it to be lived out loud.

That’s what we’re here to change.

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What’s next

Season 2 is called The Problem She Could Not Unsee.

Founders who saw something missing in their own motherhood journey and built it. For other mothers like them. The thread was already in Season 1.

• Lala became a doula because she couldn’t find the support she needed.

• Liying built Crunchmoms because she arrived in Dubai ambitious and with no room for it.

• Lucy built Homegrown because the nursery she wanted didn’t exist.

The problem she couldn’t unsee was always the beginning.

Season 2 is coming. We’re excited.

Last week we also dropped a short bonus episode - just the two of us, looking back at Season 1. Find it wherever you listen.

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Thank you

To our guests, who gave us the real version. To the Crunchmoms community, who have been with us from the start - and introduced us to each other. To the Nannies & More team, to Macklin and Grace. To our listeners. And to our children, who sometimes played with each other and gave us the hour we needed.

With love, Constanze & Anushka

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Motherhood in Motion

So of course I am working on building new AI skills, trying to create some efficiency. Why would I just read a book.

But that’s a choice. I chose to do this.

And I am loving it. No guilt. Because the last few weeks were a lot. Solo parenting and all. Today, this is joy. Last night, this was joy.

Not so sure about the 5.45am wake-up this morning, but ok. Some things gotta give.

But there are many days that don’t look like this.

Days where I work after picking up Anton. Take a call in the car. Have my laptop on my lap while he plays and asks for the fifth time: when are you done, mommy?

So much guilt.

The truth is, I am and have been tired this week. And when I look at the Seasonal Framework honestly, all four layers are shaky right now.

Back in Dubai after months away, still rebuilding routines and friendships and the energy that comes with feeling at home somewhere. No nanny in place yet. A busy patch at work. A podcast I genuinely love, which still takes time. An emotional week that included realising I couldn’t make a friend’s big party. All my uni friends, going without me. The plane ticket alone would have been 25% of my monthly salary.

All four layers. Shaky, all at once.

This is the part nobody tells you about building season: it doesn’t pause because your capacity is low. It just looks differently.

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Last week we recorded an episode of Motherhood in Motion with Lucy from Homegrown Nursery in Dubai. Fifteen years into building her company. Kids older. A husband who sounds genuinely, consistently supportive. And additionally to a successful company she built a system in India to give 2000 kids education.

I’ll be honest. It was a little intimidating.

The thing is, Lucy’s journey and mine are not the same. The conditions are different. The invisible load is different. The system holding everything up is different. Comparing where she is now to where I am now is like comparing a marathon runner at mile 20 to someone who just laced up.

But here is what I took from her: building is always solving for the challenges in front of you. Hers were different. Mine are mine.

Is it inspiring? 100%!

Do I need to find my own path? 10000%!

The one sentence that stayed with me long after we ended the recording was:

“You cannot have joy if you’re holding guilt.”

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Today I can work on what I love with no guilt. So there is joy.

The days with Anton, the laptop on my lap, the fifth time he asks: the guilt takes the joy.

It is not about what I am doing. It is about what I am carrying while I do it.

We had this discussion yesterday. The amount of time we as mothers are on the phone whilst being with out children.

Do we want to set this example? No.

Does it feel like we need to do all at once? All the time.

Noone is perfect. We are all becoming the woman we want to be. And we all try really hard.

Apparently I had thought about this already in the beginning of the year. Because my word of the year is becoming.

I chose it without fully knowing what it would mean. I think I am starting to understand it now.

Michelle Obama called her memoir Becoming because she believes we are never a finished thing. Always in the process of becoming who we are meant to be. She structured the whole book around it: Becoming Me. Becoming Us. Becoming More.

Right now I need less Becoming Me or Us but really a lot of Becoming More.

For me that means finding the right system again, whatever that looks like. And with this system finding space for exercise, for friends, for this newsletter, for the podcast. For the work I actually love. It means getting more financially savvy, understanding money better, making more of it. And this summer, six weeks in Europe, I am hoping for something that has been missing for a while: time to recalibrate.

It is not a neat list. It is a direction.

But it is becoming.

And today, working on something I love with no guilt - that is also building. That is joy in the middle of it. Not at the end.

Don’t wait until you have finished “becoming”. Find the joy every day.

Where are you finding joy right now? Or where is the guilt blocking it?

Constanze

*Want to know which season you are in? The Seasonal Framework is the lens behind everything I write here. Start there.

Read here

*Lucy's full episode is out now on Motherhood in Motion. Worth a listen - especially her closing words.

Listen to the Podcast

Three months.

In nearly two years of writing to you, I’ve barely missed a week. Three months is a lot. There were so many moments I wanted to start again. But …

Yes, but what.

I guess in the beginnning it was literally the lack of ambition, and then it became a problem with perfectionism.

Let me start with something a friend said to me, two days after Dubai had its first missile interception.

“Do you remember the kind of life we had last week? It felt so normal. Now it feels like abundance. And we weren’t grateful enough.”

Here’s what happened.

We were in Dubai. The 28th of February, the explosions started. What we heard was defense - the UAE did an extraordinary job keeping everyone safe. But safe and unchanged are not the same thing.

I carried my son and my passport with me everywhere. I stayed awake an entire night just listening to the fortunately very unfamiliar sounds. We moved in with friends, drove to Oman, and flew to Germany, where we stayed for two and a half months.

Adding to this another tiny thing happened at the same time: I had finally found a job. And my first day at work was two days after the 28th of Februrary. Onboarding calls while telling my son and our nanny to stay inside during the alarms. Replying to emails while crossing the border to Oman. An interim life in Germany - work, kindergarten, routines - which we literally built from scratch.

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In these months, I couldn’t write about motherhood and ambition. I could barely think about ambition at all. I was just trying to make it work.

But what I somehow knew, but only had the numbers to proof it a lot later: my ambition didn’t disappear. It froze.

And I wasn’t alone in that. In the research my co-researcher and I ran in the weeks after February 28 for the Motherhood in Motion podcast, 36% of mothers said the same thing.

Ambition on hold. Not gone - just frozen. The drive was still there. The infrastructure holding it in place wasn’t.

Which season was I in?

Three days before everything changed, I finished the Both And Seasonal Framework. The one I’ve been building for a really long time. It was ready. I wanted it ready before I started my job.

And then I never published it.

I’m sharing it properly now, for the first time.

The framework is built on the idea that motherhood isn’t one flat experience - it’s four layers running at once, all the time.

Layers shaped by your child’s age.

Your inner capacity - your actual energy, not your ideal energy.

What’s happening beneath the surface.

And the systems that are or aren’t holding you up.

Before February 28, I was deep in Building season. The newsletter, the framework, a new job, it felt like everything had momentum.

Then all four layers shifted at once.

My capacity dropped from Building straight into Integrating. Not Discovering - Discovering has a kind of openness to it. What I was doing was the opposite. Taking two completely different realities and forcing them to cohere. 5:30am work calls. My son asking why we lived somewhere different now. Telling myself every day: this is temporary, but it has to work right now.

I wasn’t in a season I chose. I was in a season that was put on me.

(The full deep dives into each capacity season - what they feel like, what they actually need - live inside the Both And Inner Circle. Or just reach out. It’s all there.)

I see you.

My situation was specific. I know that.

But life happens to all of us. Hopefully it’s not an explosion, but there are so many other interruptions.

Maybe it’s that your childcare stopped holding. Your marriage is going through something, or ending. Your job changed in ways you didn’t ask for. A parent got sick. Something that had been quietly working just... stopped. And just like that, the season you’d worked so hard to reach is no longer available to you.

So I wanted to write this, after all this time, to say: I see you. And also: this too shall pass. Seasons change, shift, they rarely stay the same for long. And that’s ok.

Seasons shift. Not always when we want them to, not always predictably. But we can be sure they shift.

Mine is shifting as we speak.

Five things that helped me

When I started writing them down, I just blurted everything out that came to mind. And when writing about it I realised that each one maps to a layer of the framework. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence. So I hope this framework and my example can maybe give you some ideas on your own season.

YOUR CAPACITY someone who kept the flame alive

My friend and co-host on Motherhood in Motion, also lives in Dubai. She has 3 kids under 4. But she has the incredible talent to never stopp. While my ambition was frozen, hers wasn’t. She saw the opportunity, kept moving, and nudged me - gently, consistently, but still. It felt very uncomfortable at first, honestly. But we talked it through. We agreed: one day it will be the other way around. That’s the deal with partnerships like this.

Having someone hold your ambition when you can’t hold it yourself? Honestly priceless and something I never had on my list before.

The system a childcare setup that actually worked

I found what I genuinely think is the best Kindergarten in Germany. Open 7 to 7. Nothing to bring. Warm and safe and genuinely lovely for my son.

Without it, nothing else was possible. Not the job, not the podcast, none of it. I was able to build again, without guilt, knowing my son is having an amazing time.

Childcare isn’t a personal choice - it’s infrastructure. I know this from our research, and I know it now from lived experience all over again.

The system friends and family, as active infrastructure

Friends I’ve known since Kindergarten and school showed up, despite their own lives. Family who stepped in days and even weeks to babysit. My Dubai friend for evening calls over red wine or tea. My husband paying the Kindergarten and school bills, no questions asked. Grandma and Grandpa who just took us in. For 2.5 months.

Everyone had full lives before. And still they would find the time for more wine evenings then usual, to take a small boy around for a whole day and to just make us feel home.

You can't build this in a crisis. It’s been years in the making. Don’t forget to invest time in this.

The system flexibility at work

My job gave me all the flexibility I needed. 5:30am sometimes, 9pm others. No one made me feel bad about it. I had just started, I needed the flexibility, but, and here I want to be clear, I also delivered. I put in the hours, the passion, the energy.

If you have flexibility - use it. If you don't have it yet, ask for it. Flexible hours aren't a perk - they're what kept me in the job. But don’t take it for granted.

The invisible load Geborgenheit

This one is harder to translate. Geborgenheit is a German word - it means something like security, warmth, the feeling of being sheltered and at home.

I put stickers on the wall in my son’s play area. Rearranged the room so it felt like ours. We created a morning routine. Made a list of things to do in Germany before we left. Ate at the same restaurant twice a month.

This wasn’t efficiency or things I had to do. It was the importance of feeling at home. To make both of us feel like we belong here.

Coming back. Not starting over.

I thought I needed a special article to come back with. Something worthy of the absence.

In the end I just picked up where I stopped.

A few days before my world changed, I’d finished the Seasonal Framework. I had put hours of work into it and i was ready. Then life happened and I just stopped.

Coming back, I realise I’m not returning with less.

I lived it. Seasonz I wrote about, I moved through. Relocated, new job, no childcare, rebuilding from scratch.

You can build a framework from research and interviews. But you only know if it works by walking through it yourself when things get hard.

I walked through it.

I’m in Building season now. I know what that requires - a running system, childcare back in Dubai, the right structures in place. Not because I can’t manage without them, but because I’ve learned that ambition needs infrastructure. Not as a luxury. But to be able to have Both And.

The Seasonal Framework is here now. And I can’t wait to share it with anyone who is interested. To be more intentional, live season specific. Live Both And.

So - what’s your Both And right now?

To get there, I truly believe it helps to know your season. That’s what the Quiz is for.

Your Season Check-In

It might just change how you see the decisions in front of you.

What would your Both And be in this season?

Leave a comment

More very soon.

Constanze

P.S. If any of this landed - if you’re in a season that chose you rather than one you chose - I’d love to hear from you. Reply back. I read everything.

After almost a year of job searching, I got the offer letter. And I signed.

Was it the role I had been applying for all this time? No. Was it the salary I was looking for? No. Was it a fancy company with a big name? Many would say no.

And still - I hung up the phone and it just felt right.

Hell yes. That was my answer.

I borrowed tha…

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Not gone. Just... uncertain.

You’re trying things. A side project here, a new boundary there. Saying yes to something unexpected, saying no to something you used to think was non-negotiable. Some days it feels exciting. Some days it feels like you should have it more together by now.

That’s the Experimenting season. And it’s one of the most underrated places to be.

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Maybe mostly E’s with a few B’s. Maybe C’s at work and A’s at home. Maybe a genuine spread across all five, with no clear winner.

And maybe, reading the results, you felt something between frustrated and oddly relieved - because none of the single seasons quite captured it, and this one, at least, acknowledged that things are complicated.

Here’s what I want to say about that: mixed results are not a sign that the framework doesn’t apply to you. They’re a sign that you are exactly as complex as you actually are. And that complexity deserves to be worked with, not flattened.

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And then something changed, and you were somewhere else again.

The Flowing season is real. It’s also fragile. And most women are so surprised when they arrive here that they don’t quite know what to do - which means they often either don’t recognise it until it’s already gone, or they spend the whole time waiting for it to end.

This is for you if you’re in it right now. And it’s for you if you want to understand what you’re building toward.

Before you go forward and don’t know your season yet…

Your Season Check-In

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Maybe it happened slowly - a gradual shift where the fog of earlier seasons lifted and you found yourself with an actual direction. Maybe it happened in one specific moment: a conversation, a decision, a morning where you woke up and just knew.

Either way, you’re here now. The Building season. And from the outside it looks like the best one - you have momentum, you have intention, you have a sense of where you’re going.

From the inside, it is absolutely both of those things and also much more complicated than people make it look.

What’s actually happening

The Building season is where ambition gets tactical. You’re not just thinking about what you want anymore - you’re actually building it. The career move, the business, the project, the new way of working. Real work, real stakes, real progress.

And real constraints. Because you’re building all of this inside a life that already has things in it. A family. Commitments. History. The Building season isn’t a blank page - it’s a full page with some new writing happening in the margins.

That tension is what characterises this season. The gap between what you’re building and the bandwidth you actually have to build it. Between the vision and the logistics. Between “I know what I want” and “I can’t figure out how to make it fit.”

One mother I spoke to described the Building season as “the season where I finally stopped waiting for the right time and started doing it anyway - and then spent a year figuring out what ‘it’ actually required.”

That sounds frustrating. It’s also exactly how real things get built.

Before you go further, understand your Season first.

Your Season Check-in

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This is not burnout. This is not a time management problem. This is the Integrating season, and it is exactly as full and complicated and alive as it feels.

The Integrating season is what happens when you are unambiguously both things at once. A professional who takes her work seriously. A mother who takes her children seriously. A woman who takes herself seriously. All three identities are real. All three have needs. And none of them is willing to be fully subordinated to the others.

That’s not a character flaw. That’s just a lot to hold.

There is more… But before you go further: know your Season.

Your Season Check-In

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Not the newborn haze - everyone mentions that one. I’m talking about the moment, weeks or months in, when the adrenaline has worn off and the reality has settled and you find yourself sitting somewhere quiet - school drop-off parking lot, maybe, or the bathroom at 7am - and you think: who am I now?

Not in a crisis way. Just... genuinely not knowing.

The career that used to anchor your identity feels far away, or different, or like it belongs to a version of you that doesn’t quite exist anymore. The person you were before - the one who had opinions about her future, a clear sense of direction, a certain kind of confidence - she’s still there. But something has shifted so fundamentally that the old map doesn’t match the new territory.

That’s the Discovering season. And it’s one of the most misunderstood seasons in ambitious motherhood.

There is more… but before you go further: know your Season.

Your Season Check-In

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The morning starts before anyone else is awake. You’ve already answered three emails, mentally planned the day, and reminded yourself to pick up something for the school lunch. By 8am you’ve done what most people do by noon.

From the outside, you look like you have it together. And honestly? You kind of do. The career is moving. The kids are okay. The house is functioning. You’re showing up - really showing up - in more places than most people would even attempt.

And yet.

Somewhere around 9pm, after the bedtime routine and the last Slack message and the moment you finally sit down, something quietly asks: is this actually working? Or am I just really good at keeping all the plates spinning?

That’s the Performing season. Not failure. Not burnout. Not “you need to slow down.” Just the particular weight of being genuinely capable in a system that was never designed to hold everything you’re carrying.

There is more. But before you go further… Know your Season!

Your Season Check-In

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Story 1: Gold, 12 years late.

I was watching the Olympics with my son this week when I …

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