I Refuse to Call Choosing Between the Two Success
What if the problem isn't that women want too much—but that we've inherited a definition of success that asks us to leave pieces of ourselves behind?
I asked a military mother what success looked like to her. Her answer wasn't a promotion. It wasn't a certain rank. It wasn't more money, recognition, or another accomplishment to add to a list.
She talked about being able to do her job effectively because she had a strong support system. She talked about going home and actually having time with her children instead of needing to take leave just to be present with them. And then she said something that captured the entire conversation for me: “Ultimately, not having to sacrifice one for the other.”
There it is.
How many women have been taught, directly or indirectly, that eventually we're going to have to choose?
Career or family.
Ambition or presence.
Leadership or motherhood.
Strength or softness.
The mission or yourself.
I don't accept that.
Not because I believe every day will be perfectly balanced. Mine certainly isn't. I reject it because I don't believe a woman's success should require her to erase part of herself to prove she deserves another part of her life.
The Leadership Insight
I've spent years becoming things: Soldier, officer, historian, wife, mother, leader. Each role came with expectations, some spoken and some not. There was always an idea of what the “right” version looked like.
I've written before about being told, in different ways, to soften my presence and fit a leadership model that wasn't made for me. Motherhood came with a model too. So did marriage. So did success.
That's the thing about inherited expectations: you don't always realize you've inherited them. Sometimes they just sound like truth.
A good mother should...
A serious leader would...
A successful woman has to...
Women in our family always...
You can spend years organizing your life around the end of those sentences without ever asking who wrote the beginning. And that's where returning to yourself becomes important.
When I talk about returning to yourself, I don't mean becoming the woman you were at 22. I wouldn't want to. She didn't know what I know now. She hadn't led Soldiers through difficult seasons. She hadn't become a mother. She hadn't had to decide which expectations deserved to come with her and which ones needed to stay exactly where she found them.
Returning to yourself is not regression. It's reclamation.
We are having the conversation September 26th Save Your Seat
It's finding the thread of who you are underneath every role you've learned to perform. It's asking what you believe about success after years of being told what it should look like. It's recognizing the traditions that ground you without allowing them to dictate a life they were never designed to live.
My mother raised me with values I still carry, and so did the women before her. Their lessons are part of my foundation, but their lives do not have to become my blueprint. I can honor where I come from without refusing to evolve beyond it.
I think women are sometimes presented with two options when we begin questioning what we've inherited: keep all of it or reject all of it. I don't believe either is necessary.
There are things from the women who raised me that I will carry forever. And there are things that worked for their lives, their circumstances, their generation, and their understanding of womanhood and success that do not fit mine. That doesn't make them wrong, and it doesn't make me ungrateful. It makes me responsible for deciding what gets passed forward.
That's legacy.
Not blindly repeating what came before you. Understanding it well enough to choose what comes next.
One of the women I heard from said she wanted to be able to give her best both at work and at home—or at least recognize and accept when she couldn't. I appreciated the second half of that answer even more than the first because nobody gives their best everywhere, every day. That's not integration. That's an impossible standard wearing a prettier name.
There will be days when leadership requires more of you. There will be days when motherhood does. There should also be days when you require something from your own life.
The goal isn't perfect balance. The goal is building a life where one identity doesn't have to permanently disappear so another can thrive.
That is a much more honest definition of success to me.
Action to Take Now
I want you to finish four sentences without trying to make the answers sound good:
A good mother should...
A successful woman should...
A strong leader should...
In my family, women are expected to...
Now read what you wrote and ask yourself where those answers came from. Which ones actually belong to you? Which ones came from your mother, your workplace, your culture, your profession, a leader you admired, or even a leader you never wanted to become?
Then ask yourself one more question:
What would I write if nobody else's definition was in the room?
Sit with that one.
You may not know immediately, and that's okay. If you want somewhere to continue the reflection, the Legacy Journal was created to help you examine the experiences and expectations that shaped you and intentionally decide what you want to carry forward.
Closing Reflection
I don't want women to walk away from my work believing they need to become someone new. I want them to recognize themselves again.
The woman with ambition. The mother. The leader. The woman shaped by generations before her who still gets to decide what her generation will do differently. All of her.
Because maybe the question was never, Which version of me gets to win? Maybe it's: What would it look like to build a life where I don't have to abandon one version of myself for another?
That's the conversation we're having in my September masterclass, Returning to Yourself: Reclaiming Your Identity in Leadership.
And this conversation is part of something bigger I've been building. I've spent a long time thinking about what happens after a woman recognizes the expectations she's carrying. Awareness is powerful, but eventually, you have to decide what stays, what changes, and what you're going to build in its place.
That's where we're headed next, and I'll share more soon.
For now, remember this:
Your legacy isn't just what you inherit. It's what you choose to carry forward.