I Feel Guilty Wherever I Am

I have been trying to write start this for weeks. On the never ending to do list - 8. start substack. Which feels fairly representative of my life right now.

I am a mother of two young girls. Wilhelmina is three and Leonora is 9 months old. I am also the founder of a fast-growing company. My Neighbors Co. I am a wife, an employer, a daughter, a friend, and a person who occasionally remembers she needs to make a dentist appointment. But unfortunately when I do find time to book an appointment upstate it takes seven months to get a cleaning in the books..

Most days, I feel like I am failing at least one of those things. Sometimes all of them before 9 a.m. When my baby has been up all night with the post jab fever.. literally felt like a shell of a human today.

There is a particular kind of guilt that comes with building a business while raising children. When I am working, I feel guilty that I am not with my girls. When I am with my girls, part of my brain is still working.

Examples of my ADHD Thoughts..

Did the purchase order go into Shopify?

Did we order enough packaging from China? & When is that going to show up probs while we are finally away as a family this summer..

Why has that invoice not been paid? But they reordered?

Did I reply to the buyer? What is there name again?

When was the last time I washed my hair? Should I get a blowout to do content.. more content every week how do people not hate seeing these videos by now..

Then my daughter asks me to watch her do something and I realize she has already asked three times. And I try and snap out of it. Focus on just her.

That part hurts.

I don’t want to romanticize any of this.

I love being a founder. I love building My Neighbor’s. I love that something which began in my kitchen, because I was desperately trying to help my daughter’s skin, has grown into a real company with a real team and products sitting on shelves across the country.

I am incredibly proud of it.

But pride and guilt apparently have no problem living in the same body.

This company exists because I became a mother. Motherhood changed what I was willing to accept. It made me question the products I brought into our home and the things I put on my daughter’s skin. It sharpened my instincts and eventually pushed me to build something better.

But the strange thing about building a company inspired by motherhood is that the company then begins to pull you away from motherhood. It’s a weird juxtaposition.

At least sometimes.

There are evenings when I am replying to emails from the bathroom while I’m just going to the bathroom “real quick” and forget I’ve been sitting there for 20 mins.. it’s literally that scene from the movie “this is 40” where the wife goes to smell if her husband even took a crap as he was in the bathroom for so long and just trying to have a break… I get it now.

There were mornings when I was nursing a baby while reviewing packaging proofs. Submitting purchase orders and writing recipes SOPs for my team in the labor ward. There are calls taken from the car, the grocery store, the pediatrician’s waiting room and the corner of a diner on a Sunday with my in-laws.

There are also moments when I am physically with my children but mentally somewhere else.

I hate admitting that.

There is a version of the female founder story that sounds very clean.

She had an idea.

She followed her instincts.

She built a company.

She raised her children.

She did it all.

I don’t know her.

I am not doing it all. I am constantly deciding what will not get done.

Some days the business gets the best of me.

Some days my children do.

Some days neither does.

Being a woman owned business is often spoken about like it is a neat marketing credential. Something for my ads to send off into Meta’s interweb and hopefully return ROAs. a badge you add to the website or the gram. But behind many woman-owned businesses is a woman answering emails at midnight because the children are finally asleep. Literally writing this at 8:41pm as kids are in bed and I will not have time during the day to write.

I am a woman who knows exactly how much milk is left in the refrigerator when the next size diapers need to be ordered and exactly how much cash is left in the company account.

A woman carrying the emotional temperature of her home and the financial temperature of her business at the same time.

A woman who can discuss margins, manufacturing, wholesale strategy and diaper rash within the same five-minute period.

I sometimes wonder whether men building companies feel this particular split.

Not whether fathers love their children or feel pressure. Of course they do.

But women are still so often expected to be the default parent. The one who packs the clothes for all trips, goes to all the doctor’s appointments, the snacks, the birthdays, the medicine, the emotional details and the invisible list running underneath everything else. Athough this time round with baby number two my husband is so hands on.. but maybe he see’s me splitting in two to often.

I have walked into important meetings after being awake half the night with a baby. I have smiled through calls while feeling completely overwhelmed. i have been on interviews for accelerator programs with the flu. I have stood in our store or our production space looking composed while wondering whether I am giving too much of myself to the business and not enough to the people I built it for.

I don’t have an inspiring answer yet.

I am not writing this from the other side.

I am writing it from the middle of it.

The middle is loud and exhausting and beautiful. It is covered in product samples, laundry, toys, shipping boxes and half-finished cups of coffee from my mason jar without a lid in my car.. sometimes I have the rest in my drive home and feel so gross that I just did that.

It is also full of moments I never want to forget.

My daughter walking into our store and knowing it belongs to us.

My children seeing women make things with their hands.

Watching them grow up around a team of smart, creative women who are her aunties in her mind.

Knowing they will see their mother build something from nothing.

Maybe that matters too.

Maybe being a good mother does not require disappearing entirely into motherhood. I was a bit lonely when I was home the first time round.

Did I start this due to that loneliness too? I’ll skip that tangent.

Maybe my girls can feel deeply loved and also see that their mother has ambition. My daughter did tell me that she loved me the mostest yesterday on our berry picking walk we do after work in July on our quiet little country road.

Maybe the goal is not to eliminate the guilt because I’m not convinced that is possible.

Maybe the goal is to stop allowing guilt to be the only measure of whether I am doing a good job.

I am trying to be present when I am home.

I am trying to put my phone down more.

I am trying to ask for help before I am already drowning. I am trying to delegate.

I am trying to remember that my children do not need a perfect mother.

My company does not need a perfect founder either.

They both just need me.

Imperfect, distracted, ambitious, exhausted, loving and a little insane me.

So this Substack will not be a perfectly polished founder diary. I want it to be a place where I can talk honestly about what it looks like to build a company while raising a family. The wins, the panic, the money, the growth, the mistakes, the mother guilt and all the things that do not fit neatly into an Instagram caption. Or a fucking meta ad.

I am not sure I will always know what I am trying to say before I say it.

But maybe that is the point