Podcast Episode #2
Navigating Mom Guilt: Proven Strategies for Working Moms to Thrive
Balancing work and motherhood often stirs up mom guilt — that constant worry of not doing enough. In this post we explore how to ease those feelings and create a life that feels both productive and joyful.
What Is Mom Guilt?
Mom guilt stems from caring deeply. As Tia shares, even accomplished moms experience doubt before big work trips or busy seasons. Recognizing that guilt often reflects love — not failure — is the first step to letting it go.
Three Strategies to Ease the Guilt
Name Your Feelings. Acknowledge guilt instead of pushing it away. Journaling helps you understand what’s behind the emotion and reminds you that it’s part of being human.
Protect Quality Time. Plan short, focused moments with your kids — 20 minutes of undistracted connection matters more than hours of half-attention.
Plan Ahead. Mark key family events on your calendar so you can balance work and family without last-minute stress.
The Power of Self-Compassion
Research shows that children of working moms thrive when their emotional needs are met. Let go of the pressure to be perfect — doing your best is enough. Self-kindness leads to happier, healthier families.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Guilt signals love, not failure
2️⃣ Connection and quality beat quantity of time.
3️⃣ Planning and self-compassion bring balance and peace.
OVERCOMING MOM GUILT TOOLKIT
Grab the FREE Overcoming Mom Guilt Toolkit
This free resource will help you understand your guilt, plan your weeks and months to feel more confident, and teach you how to create an aligned life where you give yourself grace.
Get the Free Overcoming Mom Guilt Toolkit
“Guilt is a painful emotion that means you truly care.”
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:00.088)
Welcome to the Feel Good Club podcast. This is the place where ambitious working moms learn how to elevate their wellbeing, increase success in all areas, and create a positive, aligned life. Whether you're here to hear expert interviews or inspiring talks, this is your space to learn and grow. I'm Tia Graham, keynote and TED speaker, bestselling author,
and founder of the Feel Good Club community for high achieving moms. I am an expert in the science of happiness. This show is here to help you feel grounded, happier and connected to yourself and others. I know you are going to love it. Thank you for being here. Let's dive in.
Tia Graham (00:53.176)
Feeling guilty that you are not spending enough time with your kids means that you are a great mom. I want you to know that you are empowered to use self-awareness and noticing to change how you feel and possibly change how you act. You are not alone and you are doing great. Here are three proven ways to decrease mom guilt.
The guilt you feel about not being with your kids more. Working mom guilt is knowing or thinking that you have done something wrong or that you are harming them and you have not. Mom guilt is a horrible feeling and you feel like you are actually hurting your kids. Your heart hurts and you feel a lot more guilt than your partner.
who also works a lot of the time. You constantly question if you are doing enough, if you are enough, and if you are making the right decisions. And it's super hard. Let me tell you a little story. And I got a lot of stories about mom guilt. So I booked a six day work trip, giving three keynote talks in three different cities. A really amazing work opportunity.
My husband and I had spent a lot of time all summer with our two daughters and it's leading up to this six day trip and I feel this giant knot in my stomach and it is growing and growing. I am full of anxiety for two weeks leading up to the day that I fly and I keep repeating over and over to my husband, I should not have booked all these talks. I should not have booked all these talks. I feel
Horrible. I am leaving in the taxi and I am crying on the way to the airport I feel like I am damaging my daughters so much by being away for six days Am I good enough? Are they gonna be okay? Will their memories be that I am not around that much? I go to the first city give an awesome talk and feel a lot of purpose
Tia Graham (03:16.344)
feel a lot of joy. get a lot of satisfaction out of my work. I love speaking to people. I then go to the next city and the next city. And in terms of work, I love every single second. And it feels nice to be in a hotel room alone, have to admit. I am FaceTiming my kids multiple times a day, checking in. My mom, my husband, and my nanny are taking care of them.
Every day I am praying that they are okay. The inner critic comes and goes along with my excitement and gratitude for my work and for the break. I return home and things are not perfect. It's a hard re-entry. Huge emotions from the girls and I spend a ton of time with them. It is all okay.
I continue to book more keynote talks, not six day trips. I limit it to three days. And I love that I get to work and not just be a mom. This I know is the right journey for me. I'm not built to be a full-time mom and that's okay. When you start to feel guilty or feel like you are harming your kids in some way,
Pause and remember that this is a sign that you care a lot. Remind yourself that you are not doing anything wrong or bad and you are certainly not causing tremendous harm. I want you to pause and ask yourself, what do I need? And you can answer that to yourself quietly. You can write it down.
or you can talk to someone, what do I need? So in addition to that question, here are three things that you can do that have been very supportive and that have helped me tremendously. Let's take a quick pause for something that can really support you. If you constantly question if you are good enough as a working mom and desperately want to feel happier,
Tia Graham (05:39.936)
I'd love to invite you to a complimentary discovery call with me. In 45 minutes, we'll get clear on what is out of alignment, what you want your days to feel like, and two to three simple changes you can make immediately to feel calmer and more confident. It's completely free and it's a chance for us to connect and see if the Feel Good Club for Working Moms or One-on-One Coaching
might support you. To grab a spot, go to tiagram.com forward slash discovery call. That's tiagram.com forward slash discovery call and pick a time that works for you. So number one, write down what you are thinking or feeling on paper or in your notes app.
Every single emotion is information. There's no such thing as a bad or a negative emotion. You have painful emotions and you have positive emotions. This is a painful one, but it's a part of the human experience. So what you want to do is you want to write down, okay, what am I thinking? What are all these thoughts that are filling my brain around?
mom guilt and maybe missing them too much. In addition to guilt, what am I feeling and what's happening in my body? How am I reacting? What's triggering me? Just get really curious. Imagine as if you are this investigator of you and try not to judge yourself. You're just accepting this feeling of guilt and what's going on? What are the thoughts? What are the feelings? What's happening physically? And just write it down.
Get it out of your head, get it out of your conscious and maybe subconscious and see what comes out. And remember, you care so much. That's what you're feeling. If you didn't care, you wouldn't be feeling guilt. You have so much love. You're such an amazing working mom. So that's number one. Write down what you're thinking and feeling and experiencing and read it and see what this emotion is telling you. It's not bad. It's just information. Okay?
Tia Graham (08:03.328)
Number two, think about how you can add a little more one-on-one time with each kid, if you have more than one, or with your kid if you just have one, when you're not working. All right? And this doesn't need to be hours and hours and hours. So you can ask them for ideas, you can ask AI for ideas, you can just think of your own ideas. It can be for
20 minutes or 30 minutes or maybe, you it's a day. You can decide. If you're feeling a lot of guilt because of the time you're working, one idea is just adding in a little more one-on-one time without your spouse, without other kids, without, you know, nanny around, just you and them. And it could happen in the house, out of the house and your phone's away and you are just gonna have this focused.
20 minute or 30 minute, or maybe you're gonna go for a 90 minute dinner with them. Whatever you're gonna do. And I find that this is really powerful in decreasing the guilt before a work trip like in my story. So just sprinkle that in, see what shifts and see if you need it. right. Number three, and gosh, I wish I did this.
from when I've been a working mom for 11 and a half years and I wish I did this from year one, I'm doing it now. So here it is, number three, put all the important kid dates in your calendar for the year. I remember being on a work trip when I was a director of sales and marketing and I didn't do this. I was working for a hotel in Los Angeles and I missed my daughter's Halloween school party.
And at the time, it literally felt like I was missing her, you know, high school graduation. It felt monumental because I wasn't planning ahead. And so now when I get the school calendar, I put in everything. And if there's stuff missing, I ask the teachers, like, when is the Valentine's thing? When is the spring show, et cetera? And I put it all in. And that way, when I'm saying yes or no to...
Tia Graham (10:25.922)
work obligations or friend obligations or whatever, I know these important dates and can I choose to miss some of them? Absolutely, but I'm planning. So put it all in for the next six months, nine months, so you can plan, so you can prioritize and that you can feel good about your boundaries and what you are choosing. The problem is that
You think you're harming your kids by being a working mom, but the research shows that you are not. It's the opposite. Being a working mom does not cause harm, and there's actually a lot of benefits, right? What causes harm to kids are if there's constant conflict in the home, or if the kids aren't having their emotional needs met, and so on and so forth.
By you working, you're not harming them. And you and I need to be conscious and intentional about when we're not working, how are we showing up? And of course, this is not about perfectionism. We are talking about doing our best, fall on our face, trying again, being the real awesome, imperfect working mom that you are. So you're not harming them by working.
are moving really fast, you're doing and thinking because you're a high achiever. And all you need to do is just slow down and be a little more mindful, a little more strategic, all right? So I want to let you know that I have created a toolkit for you. Now this is a toolkit that I wish someone gave me
11 and a half years ago because I started feeling so much guilt right from the beginning. Okay. And I wish that someone was like, Hey Tia, you're going to feel a lot of guilt from the beginning. And here are things that you can do to help yourself. All right. So I created this toolkit for you and hundreds of moms have used this and gotten a lot of benefit out of it.
Tia Graham (12:49.741)
It is simple. It's something that you can share with your partner. It's something you can print out. I would suggest that you print it out and that you use it. And all you need to do is go to pages.thefeelgoodclub.com forward slash guilt toolkit. Let me give that to you again. pages.thefeelgoodclub.
com forward slash guilt toolkit. And of course I will put the link in the notes for you share this with any working mom, friends or colleagues that you have that are also feeling a lot of guilt. I want to end this with the way that I started. You are empowered to use self-awareness and noticing to change how you feel and how you act.
You are not alone and I hope to see you next week. Feel Good Club podcast. Bye. Thank you for joining me on the Feel Good Club show. I hope today's episode left you feeling inspired and equipped to take on your day with confidence, self-love and joy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with your fellow ambitious working moms.
Remember, you are not alone on this journey. We're all here to support each other in feeling good and living our best lives. Until next time, take care and be hopeful. And remember, prioritize your happiness.