What happens when motherhood collides with career? In this episode of Gracefully Unraveled, Kelli Lynch opens up about the emotional whiplash of returning to work after her first baby — and how ego wrapped itself around both her mothering and career identities.

Through vulnerable storytelling, cultural data, and spiritual wisdom from Michael Todd and Richard Rohr, she explores how shame and ego shape our sense of worth, and how grace invites us to live beyond performance.

If you’ve ever felt torn between the office and the nursery, this conversation is for you.

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When I went back to work after having my first son, it was emotionally excruciating. The twelve weeks I spent at home were filled with trials of skill — feeding, soothing, sleeping. But returning to work? That was a trial of emotion I could not have anticipated. I hadn’t realized how much of my identity had become tangled up in being a mother — and how ego had wrapped itself around that new role.

The word "identity" comes from the Latin word identitas, which means "sameness" or "being the same." To identify is to make same. And now, I was ensnared in all the egoic constructs of motherhood — built from thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. What should motherhood look like? What should I look like in it?

I knew society generally accepted working moms. And I loved my career in marketing and communications. But handing my baby to someone else for what felt like more waking hours than I had with him — that shook me.

Welcome back to *Gracefully Unraveled* — a podcast where we explore the sacred messiness of motherhood, identity and ego. I'm your host Kelli Lynch, and every other week I’ll be exploring how motherhood reshapes us — not into someone new, but into a deeper awareness of who we are. Through personal reflection, spiritual insight, a dash of data and a whole lot of honesty - let’s unravel with intention and kindness together.

Statistically, 55% of moms return to work after maternity leave. But only 70% of all U.S. women take any form of maternity leave. And of those who do, 26% return to work less than two months after giving birth. That’s not a recovery — that’s a sprint. In fact, 26.5% of new moms report their mental health as “fair” or “poor” in their first month back on the job.

And let’s be honest — the broader culture still assumes that caregiving is women’s work. That expectation, paired with insufficient policies like lack of paid leave or affordable childcare, leaves most moms walking a tightrope between guilt and exhaustion. Some feel empowered in their return. Others feel fractured.

I was somewhere in the middle — empowered but confused. That confusion followed me for years.

There was even a season when I became a little too identified with my career. I stayed late, took on more, felt validated by doing well — only to be wrecked with guilt that I had so little time with my son before bed. And later, I learned just how deeply he had struggled — isolated and anxious in after-school care. The mom guilt didn’t shrink with time — it multiplied.

In his book Damaged But Not Destroyed, Pastor Michael Todd offers a powerful lens for looking at our past without shame: the HOT method. He encourages us to be:

- Humble enough to acknowledge the pain

- Open to how it impacted us

- Transparent about the ways it still shows up

That framework hit me hard. Because from that moment of returning to work, a lot of decisions I made around my first son snowballed into a giant coil of shame and regret. I can still rattle off everything I think I did wrong over the years.

And because I didn't have the awareness (or let's be real, time nor patience) back then to process those emotions, they just festered and resurfaced as shame wrapped in an endless pursuit of perfection. That’s what ego does. It either defends or condemns. Either way, it traps us in illusion. But as Todd shares, the past doesn’t define us. It teaches us.

Motherhood — in all its mess — teaches us how to dismantle the ego around our roles, identities, and expectations. Not by perfection, but by grace. We learn to see ourselves as God sees us — always growing, always beloved.

Today, I have two boys and work part-time. I still enjoy strategic marketing — helping clients grow, telling and selling their value. But slowly, motherhood cannibalized my career identity. At first, that shift felt like a loss. But in hindsight, it was an invitation to look more closely.

Because if I’m honest, part of the reason I began to so strongly identify with work in the first place was that I *needed* to be more than a mom. It wasn’t just about purpose or passion — it was again about ego. I craved a sense of worth, a way to prove I still mattered outside of sleep schedules, sticker charts and seemingly endless discipline.

Ego is a multifaceted construct. It doesn’t just show up as pride or superiority. Sometimes it fragments us into separate identities that aren’t integrated. The “career woman” version of me and the “mother” version of me were both built from expectation and survival — not always from con-scious, authentic self. Neither was wrong, but neither was whole.

The more I paid attention to how ego showed up in my mothering — in the pressure to perform or be perfect — the more I saw it in my career, too. Ego wears many masks. It can drive us to stay late at the office and then condemn us for not being home sooner. It can make us feel like we’re not enough in either place. That’s the trap — and the unraveling is the way out.

Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, in his book *Falling Upward*, writes:

“It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect.”

That freedom comes when you no longer need ego to prop you up. When you’re okay being ordinary. Because your “I” — your identity — is already one with God.

And so I’ll ask: what if your worth was never tied to how much time you spend with your child or how much you accomplish at work? Is it possible for you to consciously accept that it's already been settled — in God's love?

1 Samuel 16:7 reads - "For the Lord does not see as a man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

This week, let’s journal together. Take one moment from your motherhood story — especially one you’ve carried shame around — and write it down. Then try Michael Todd’s HOT method.

Be humble. Be open. Be transparent. See what it reveals. See where grace breaks through.

Thanks for listening to Gracefully Unraveled. Be sure to check out the show notes and if so inspired, share your thoughts or DM me. Also, be sure to follow my YouTube and social media channels for additional content and tell all your mom friends so we can grow together. 

Until next time - keep unraveling.