The cycles.

I think the greatest thing that motherhood has taught me is that everything is a cycle. Currently I’m feeling really tired. Although I’m living one of the most beautiful moments of my daughter's life, full of discoveries and learnings, it’s such a demanding time. As any other 23 month old toddler, she is very emotionally unstable, impatient and is really keen to be always moving. Being brutally honest, sometimes I don’t look forward to spending time with her, because let’s face it: at the end of a very demanding work day, the last thing you want is to be constantly battling your own emotions and trying to keep it all together during the stressful and hectic dinner/bath/bed time. 

I understand that I am in a very privileged position in which I have the most amazing help to support my professional life and career aspirations, but putting that aside, what I really want to talk about now is how differently I’m treating this ‘tiredness’. In my dark investment banking past, I recall feeling overwhelmed with work and trying to keep a minimal healthy lifestyle, with some sleep and bare minimal exercise - and that was so draining. Investment banking is the best school I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t wait to leave it behind me. I don’t really recall getting depressed, but I was just pushing through day by day without really having an exit plan. Probably I just had a lot of energy in the tank from my 20’s and was counting on that to keep me going. 

The real deal of deep sadness and motionlessness came when I moved to southeast asia to work in a Seed/Series A start up. The hours were long, the work was intense, but I was working a lot for pure passion. I really believed in what we were building and it felt so good to be close to the lives of our clients. Any action that I would take would have a very tangible impact on the services and products we were offering. But my intense personality comes at a cost: I was slowly falling into a very lonely and empty space in my mind: my life was all about work. Living in a different country, always being surrounded by work colleagues, and not being really interested in other things outside of work, I was betting all in red - and when the roulette came out black I was in serious trouble. 

There was a day that I couldn’t get out of bed. I was just so stuck - feeling like I wasn’t really progressing in life and the overall business game was running over me. I was always so ambitious and wanted to have an amazing career, being part of the most important decisions in large organizations, being always ‘on call’ and ready to put all my big brain to test. But at that specific moment, I was just small, tired, without purpose and clear control of my career. My role was slowly becoming more operational and I didn’t have the same spot as I had in the past when the company was about to run out of money and I was the one controlling all the information and processes to put us back on track. 

That was my old self getting completely overwhelmed with the direction my life was heading towards and not having clarity about what I wanted out of life. Maybe that wasn’t the moment of most tiredness, but I also didn’t have enough purpose to keep going. This is what is so different now with my life as a mother.

First, it’s very easy to relate every single decision of my life back to Aria. She gives me the most important sense of purpose and urgency. She is the living proof that time passes fast and if you don’t put intentionality in the things you do on a daily basis you are just going to be witnessing the events of your life without really understanding what is the role you play in the world.

Secondly, I’ve had some wins in my life that allow me to understand hat things work in cycles. Sometimes you have to push with a lot of intensity, sometimes you have to observe, and sometimes you have to rest. The best indicator of when is the time for each phase is your intuition. Call it feminine BS but I truly believe that our inner emotions from our deepest core are always the right pointers.

Finally, being a mom and a wife are not projects I can ever let go of. I can’t give up being a mom. I can’t give up being a wife. I need to find a way to work my own emotions, priorities, and life projects, in order to make them all fit. You would be surprised with how resilient and strong you actually are when there is no other option rather than succeeding. 

All of that to say that I don’t feel guilty nor overwhelmed with how tired I am at this point. I know this is just a phase - that along with all the previous ones, shall also pass - and I just have to preserve my energy to just carry on for a little while. I know that eventually things will settle down, and I’ll feel a bit more energetic. Maybe this is just my intuition telling me that I’m pushing too hard with myself and should just be more gentle to myself.