Working Mom Guilt: Missing School Moments and Carrying the Mental Load

In this episode of Steel Roses Podcast, I’m sharing the working mom guilt that hit after I missed two important school moments for my kids in the span of two weeks. From a student council speech that never got written in time to missing my son on stage at Battle of the Books, these moments made me rethink what it really means to be present.

We talk about the mental load of motherhood, ADHD, family schedules, work deadlines, school responsibilities, and the feeling that your brain has 100 browser tabs open at once. When you are carrying too much, something eventually drops.

This conversation is about mom guilt, parenting mistakes, burnout, and learning when to close a few tabs so you can show up where it counts most. If you are a working mom trying to manage it all, this episode is your reminder that you are not alone.

Transcript

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Welcome Back And June Hiatus

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody, this is Still Roses Podcast. This podcast is created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope you all had a wonderful June. I missed recording. I truly, truly did, but um, I think I mentioned it in my prior recording. Things are just so hectic that I just sort of snowballed into, okay, I just cannot record. Which you all know, I try not to beat myself up anymore when something slips out of my control and I just cannot get to it. The podcast is incredibly important to me, but it's on the that same vein. I really do truly try to give myself grace under pressure when I'm really overwhelmed with everything else in my life. The podcast will be something that I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get to this. I'm gonna take a brief eye hiatus, or I have to take a break this week and I'll come back to it next week, and I'll come back with more episodes. So it's very much a push-pull, and I do it as much to the best of my ability. I would like to record all the time. But you know, it's just one of those things that like I had to prioritize. So June was like insanely busy. School was ending for the kids. It was very, very busy for me at work and just kind of getting things getting myself together. A very large part of, and I didn't actually, you know, it's interesting. Whenever I start recording, I have an idea of what I'm gonna say. I always have some some mild, vague idea of where the conversation's gonna go. But then once I start talking, I absolutely 100% go with literally what's about to pop into my mind because that seems to be the topic that needs to be said. Um now, what just popped into my mind, what I was gonna talk about, was like everything that went on in June, how I was very busy, mom life, juggling,

Missing Student Council Deadline

SPEAKER_00 1:36

et cetera, right? That's my typical. But I'm actually gonna go a different direction because it just popped into my head and maybe someone needs to hear this. So June didn't record at all. Literally for four weeks, didn't do anything for the podcast. And as I started to talk just now, something that did happen early June slash May. Um, towards the end of school activities, there were some important activities that I missed. I was very overwhelmed with just other things, and it was important to my kids, and I missed it. I think I mentioned it here on another episode, but I'm gonna mention it now just to reinforce the storyline. So my daughter had wanted to run for student counsel, and there was a paper that came home from school, and I actually was the one who pressed and said, Hey, like, I think you guys should do student counsel. I did it, it's really cool, it's a lot of fun, and it shows you what it's like to be a leader. And I really wanted the my kid, one of my kids to do it. My son absolutely is not interested in a leadership position at this point. We'll see. I think that's probably coming next for him. But my daughter Kat Leia expressed interest. She said she really wanted to try for it. I was excited. I said, I will help you with your speech, no problem. I read the piece of paper, at least I thought I read the piece of paper, and I totally missed the date that she was supposed to have her speech ready. She came home and said, Oh, I have to have my speech tomorrow. And I was like, No, you don't. It doesn't say that. I was like, it says the week of, and I that means we have another day or so, you know. And she was like, No, no, no. The teacher said, and I argued back with her, and I said, No, look at the paper. It doesn't say this. And I happened to be very busy that night at work. And so I uh I pressed back. I said, no, she didn't have her speech prepared for the start of the election series, and she wasn't able to run. That that that was tough. That was hard for me. That was a that was a tough working mom moment. It really was, because I pressed my daughter back, told her she didn't know when I did, and I was wrong. And I I don't think I've ever felt as badly until the following week when it happened again.

Battle Of The Books Heartbreak

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Um, where my son had an event for school. It was his last year at the school that he goes to, and they had this thing where teams in the different fourth grade class will are all reading the same book and they're doing quizzes on this book, and it's called Battle of the Books. And so my son's team is one of the winning teams, and he gets up, he's gonna be on stage for this particular event. I saw the notice come home. To be honest, I didn't really think too much into it. I just didn't think anything of it because he's not a lover of books, so I just didn't think it was a big deal until I started getting text messages from my mom friends with pictures of my son on stage with his crew for the debate or you know, whatever it was. And I already knew that I had messed up. And so when he got off the bus and I saw his devastated look on his face, I already knew like this was, you know, mom mistake number two within two weeks. And those two, very small in the grand scheme of things, but to me very major, I think was the catalyst for me to step all the way back and only do the priority, only doing the priority things. I promised both of them for the remainder of the year, I would make sure that I did not miss a single other event and that I was fully present and ready to go for everything that they needed. And I was. I was there for everything else. And I made sure they knew, you know, I made sure my daughter knew she wouldn't have another opportunity at student cancel at her next school and I would be there, you know, to make sure to help her like have everything ready for herself. You know, it was just one of those mom pivotal moments where I had to stop thinking of me and I had to make sure I was thinking of them.

ADHD Mental Tabs And Priorities

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Because in our day-to-day, you know, if you think about think about your mind like a computer and think of, you know, when you have a browser window open, like right now, I have a browser window open that is open to my primary care physician because I have to call them tomorrow. That browser window is open. I have another browser window open because I have to also find another neurologist to support my ADHD diagnosis. Browser number two, browser number three is for work, browser number four is recipes, browser number five is how am I gonna pack lunches for camp? You get the gist, right? So at any given time, as a especially as a working mom, I probably have a hundred plus browser windows open at the same time, simultaneously, trying to make sure that I'm hitting the mark with all of them. Now, this is even worse for someone with ADHD because you already feel like your mind is going 100 miles an hour. And then, you know, to have all these browser windows open, it gets really, really hard to focus in on what needs to be done. And so I had to close some of my browser windows. And oddly enough, podcast and meditation were both windows that got closed because I've shifted quite a bit with my routines and how I'm handling things. So that's like change number two. So month of June, month off, had to focus on family, had to do it. I just couldn't miss another event. I couldn't take another, another failing on the tent. My husband was, you know, he's more experienced in this arena. And, you know, he remind he very gently reminds me, like, you know, this isn't a big deal, it's gonna be fine. But, you know, it's hard because I think about how I have these like very specific memories. Like, you know, when you're thinking about your past, your childhood teen, whatever, any, you know, your life growing up, and there's these specific moments that you can remember that you can pinpoint as like a moment that you're like, oh my God, I think I'm always gonna remember this. And it just, or even if you don't think of it, but it just sticks with you for the rest of your life. And every once in a while, when something like this happens with my kids, I think to myself, is this gonna be stuck stuck with them? Is this memory, is the memory gonna be stuck that mom worked all the time and missed stuff? Or will they remember all the good stuff? I guess I won't know for another 20 plus years. We'll see. We'll see. But that's really where I, that's why I haven't been posting podcast episodes, and that's really the core to why I pulled back quite a bit.

Choosing Presence And Returning In July

SPEAKER_00 7:19

So today I made sure that I made time and that I had time to actually record and post my episodes later this evening. So welcome to July, my friends. I hope you all had a fabulous June. And I am super excited to continue on with recording and to being here with you on your journey. Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll catch you on the next one. Take care.