Motherhood Has Made Me More Ambitious

My baby has reminded me of the importance of dreams. And that you are what you love, not what you do.

Mar 12, 2025

My experience of motherhood has been that of an unlocking mechanism. A swish and flick of a magic wand, dragon heartstring, the best of Ollivanders, waving in front of every door I believed to be impenetrable, whispering Alohomora to the keyholes and stepping through every threshold.

Motherhood is guiding me closer to the things I love most — things I put aside before I was pregnant to do the other things that would give me the life I’m currently living.

The thread that has woven itself through all of my dreams is writing. My love of words is everywhere I can touch; it always has been, and I hadn’t fully realized this truth until I gave birth to my daughter.

I have never wanted to be anything more than I have wanted to be a writer. Until I became a mother — now I can’t imagine being anything other than a mother and a writer. But I can’t be both when I’m wasting time being too many other things.

In college, I changed my major seven different times. During my junior year, I randomly took a class called American Civil Liberties taught by a renown professor and judge. On the first day of term, our class was directed to write the names of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices on a piece of paper — and then go home.

I had no idea there were nine. I was stuck in chemistry labs ogling over bubbly green goo for two years prior and was just then starting to uncover a new and uncharted curiosity about international relations, hoping that some nugget of knowledge would help me finally pick a path that wouldn’t lead me to dive into untamed foliage again before I even left the trailhead.

I wrote “Sandra Day O’Connor” on my paper and turned it in, embarrassed for my ignorance about my own government.

The next day, my professor called myself and a soon-to-be friend to the board to declare that we were the only two in the class who didn’t know a single justice, trauma bonding us for the rest of the course while a few pompous boys in the front row snickered in their boat shoes and teal polos reminiscent Mike White’s The White Lotus’s punchable man-baby character, Shane.

At the time, Sandra Day O’Connor had been retired for seven years.

My professor then asked us to write the nine names we didn’t know on the board, seeking to uncover if we had the foresight to go home and learn them after we turned in our blank papers.

Oh — why, yes we did.

Despite doodling rapidly in chalky pride, smirking at each other, our professor crossed out our scribbles with dramatic slashing. He turned to us with narrowed eyes, and the hint of a sympathetic smile, and uttered, “You didn’t include middle names or titles. Every word matters in the law.” He then turned to the class, more surely and belting, “None of you included middle names or titles on your papers. Which means none of you knew a single justice either. Do not scoff at your peers. You are all in this together. You may not all have the same baseline, but you are all always learning.”

It was my mission at that very moment to ace this class. There was something reverent about his presence. I felt like I was acquiring some form of professory wisdom that I always thought was quintessential for academia. I quickly became enamored by the Constitution and I wanted to learn everything I could — everything that felt so new and untouched by predispositions or sour experiences or disenchantments. I thought this might serve as my why for my next chapter as a Woman in the World.

Me, a STEM dummy, ended up earning the rare “trifecta of As” in all three of his courses, which queued my law school pursuit. My professor ultimately taught me how words are often the most powerful tools for change — and I thought this was how I was meant to wield them until I found myself scratching poems about love on my Property Law notes, leaving little traces of me on every surface that beckoned to be etched into like I always had.

It has always, always, always been the writing — not the legalese.

And it wasn’t until my daughter was born did I realize I put a stopper on the things I loved the most. She has rearranged my psyche and now I’m coming home to myself to transform into the best mother, and human, that I can be.

The legal profession is entirely different than legal academia.

My education was funded by scholarships, part-time work, and federal student loans. I couldn’t afford to work “for free to gain valuable experience” and quickly watched my dreams of working in the non-profit sphere trickle away with my dwindling bank account that sadly wasn’t funded by a fuzzy coat clad oligarch hailing from seven generations of litigators.

In dramatic “but what if this is my destiny” fashion, I turned down a post-graduate job offer after law school to follow a boy I knew for 48 hours 3,000 miles across the country who is now my husband, and yes, I am quite unhinged for romance.

My aforementioned professor thought this was hilarious, and has since supported my every move, becoming my most cherished mentor who is perhaps the wisest, kindest, and most wonderful person on this planet.

I soon found myself working for a solo practitioner, accidentally stumbling into a niche legal practice area on my Quest for Great Love, and was encouraged by my former employer to open my own practice after relocating back across the country for my husband’s job — during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, right after I passed the bar exam, and just before my career was supposed to begin before the world shut down.

I’ve been working as a solo practitioner for almost six years now; I kind of like the legal work, but I despise the business work. And that used to be enough. It has paid the bills. I’m not quite yet hot and rich, but no part of my identity is wrapped up in my job as an attorney, and I’ve always felt a bit like an imposter in a pink blazer.

I have rewritten this post five times because I can’t quite explain why I’ve done what I’ve done because I’m finally admitting to myself that I have no idea.

It wasn’t necessarily that American Civil Liberties course — which definitely was a catalyst to the path I’ve taken, but not the why. It certainly wasn’t a passion for the law. It wasn’t an entrepreneurial drive to grow a business to take over the world and end up on Forbes.

I now realize that I have, for 32 years, been mistakenly confusing interests and curiosities and the excitement of newness for callings, drowning out the actual stirring in my soul that screams:

“Pick up the fucking pen.”

Motherhood is a full-time job.

Since the birth of my daughter, I have realized that I cannot perform three jobs at once — mother, attorney, business owner. Because trying to perform three jobs at once is taking away my ability to do any of those jobs well and pushing my real dreams further to the side; dreams that have been ignited by motherhood in ways I didn’t know were possible.

So, I am now embarking on The Great Pivot and I could not feel more joyful about leaving my business behind.

I’ve experienced what it’s like to put life aside to put food on the table. I’ve been employed since I was 17 years old. I have had many privileges, including an incredible support system.

But I have also worked to the bone.

My ambition in my youth was driven by my understanding that if I don’t have money, I don’t have freedom, and if I don’t have freedom, I lose time.

Time is my most valued currency.

I ultimately wanted a future career that would make me enough money to sustain whatever lifestyle I desired, so that I could trap time as much as I could to be able to do other things.

I have never had a “dream job.” I dream of writing, even though writing is work and I want writing to be my “job.” And motherhood is also work, but writing and motherhood are also so much more. They don’t feel like jobs, even though writing and motherhood encompasses the hardest, and most rewarding, work I’ve ever performed.

I don’t question where my younger self’s ambition went after my daughter was born because ambition, to me, is not married to the traditional essence of what it means to have a career — to indicate otherwise would be to reduce the value of motherhood or artistic work generally.

My ambition was really just driving me here, to this exact moment where I could step away when I needed to because I earned what I always wanted to have: freedom.

Apparently, I am a work to live person.

I don’t take it for granted — the freedom — the thing that once drove my ambition. But it has been almost six years of doing it all myself, and I’m too tired to carry every burden. I’m experiencing a total apathy about entrepreneurship, wondering where my money is going to come from every single week to feed my daughter, battling the comparison of cons I thought I could tolerate.

As a business owner, everything is in flux all the time. Flux can be fun except when your baby turns your life into one giant flux and suddenly all you crave is consistency, groundedness, and stability. I simply don’t feel called enough to let my work as an attorney consume me, and I will not allow it to burrow into my hippocampus, shoving the Real Me out of the way and forgetting what really matters.

I have no desire to retreat into old skin, so I won’t. I’m shifting into new forms, lucky enough to, at long last, have that option.

I’m winding down my business. I’m cutting my attorney hours in half, and I will soon be working for a peer instead of myself. I will finally be a person who simply Does Her Job To Pay the Bills and Logs Off.

Hopefully one day, my bills will instead be paid by my passions.

Hopefully one day, my daughter will have all of me and the words that built the version she loves the most.

I am stepping back from my career to make time for my daughter who I love more than anything. To release the tension I’ve been holding since 2020. To offset astronomically high childcare costs. To earn a stable income. To make time for my writing, now crafted in the witching hours that I previously spent exploding from frustrations about all of the things I did not have time or energy to fix.

There is a mother reading this post who is conflicted about her career pause, cherishing her time as a new mother, pining for her old self, unsure of her new identity and afraid to change course.

There is a mother reading this post who cannot take a career pause because she is a single mother, a superhero in dire need of support, wearing every exhausting hat at once by necessity.

There is a mother reading this post pumping milk in a dingy closet in a corporate box.

There is a mother reading this post who was forced to go back to work after two weeks.

There is a mother reading this post who is thrilled to go back to work since having her baby; she feels more motivated than ever to be a working mom, empowered in her balance.

There is a mother reading this post who is thrilled to go back to work since having her baby; she feels more motivated than ever to be a working mom, but she is overwhelmed trying to find the balance.

There is a mother reading this post who has fully stepped away from any semblance of a career to focus fully on her family.

For all of these mothers, there is also a baby in her arms. Babbling, maybe. But blissfully unaware of anything except the arms made for holding.

My ambition is changing shape.

My younger self worked at warp speed to put my current self here today.

She worked hard and made sacrifices so I wouldn’t have to struggle for the rest of my life — if all went well. I want to give my daughter the world; and my younger self is the reason this is a possibility. I overachieved so now I don’t have to.

That was the whole point of the overachieving.

My desire for softness now is not a betrayal of my former self, or a regret, or a misdirection. It is simply a new chapter, and I’m grateful for all of the lives I’ve lived before my daughter.

Now is the moment, at long last, to seize upon the freedoms I bought with time all those years ago when I vowed to become self-sufficient.

I am finding unbridled joy in motherhood because I truly love being a mother.

I cannot stop writing about being a mother. I cannot stop reading about mothers. And now I’m watching the truest two halves of myself collide in perfect fusion.

A seismic pivot is shaking the sparkliest of pedestals, begging me to climb it, to become the vibrations, screaming in singsong:

Imagine what your ambition can do with the things you love.

I write because I have to.

And so I begin my ascent.

💌

Xo,

Violet Carol

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