I Stopped Trying to Find Work-Life Balance

For years, I thought the goal was balance.

Be a great physician.
Be an involved mom.
Be a supportive wife.
Build a career.
Keep the house running.
Show up for everyone.
And somehow make all of it fit neatly into the same 24 hours.

It sounds reasonable until you actually try to live it.

Because the truth is, I don’t think work-life balance exists in the way we’re often told it should.

Some weeks, work needs more of me. There are patients who need extra time, surgeries that run late, problems that can’t wait until tomorrow.

Other weeks, my family needs more of me. There are school events, sick kids, birthdays, hockey, appointments, bedtime conversations and ordinary afternoons that I don’t want to miss.

It is rarely 50/50.

And I’ve stopped believing that it needs to be.

I Didn't Want Less Ambition

For a long time, the conversation around work-life balance seemed to suggest that the solution for women was to want a little less.

Work fewer hours.
Care less about the promotion.
Lower the expectations.
Accept that something has to give.

But I didn't want to stop being ambitious.

I love medicine. I love taking care of patients. I love building something. I like setting big goals and seeing what I am capable of creating.

I also love being a mom.

Those things aren't opposites.

I don't believe women should have to choose between being deeply invested in their careers and deeply present in their families.

The real question for me became:

How do I build a life where both can exist?

Success Is Different When You Define It Yourself

Earlier in my career, success was easy to measure.

Work hard.
See more patients.
Do more surgery.
Earn more.
Keep moving forward.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those things.

But eventually I realized that professional success wasn't enough if the life surrounding it didn't feel like mine.

I wanted control over my time.

I wanted to be able to make decisions based on what was best for my patients, my family and myself.

I wanted to build a career that fit into my life instead of constantly trying to squeeze my life around my career.

That realization changed a lot for me.

It was part of what eventually led me to build my own practice.

And entrepreneurship certainly hasn't made life easier. In many ways, it has made it busier.

But there is an enormous difference between being busy inside a life you've intentionally built and being busy living according to someone else's definition of success.

Sometimes the Answer Isn't Better Time Management

Women are given a lot of advice about efficiency.

Wake up earlier.
Meal prep on Sundays.
Use a better calendar.
Delegate.
Create routines.
Optimize everything.

Some of that advice is useful. I use plenty of it.

But sometimes the problem isn't that you're managing your schedule poorly.

Sometimes the structure itself doesn't work.

No productivity system can fix a career that requires you to consistently sacrifice the parts of your life that matter most to you.

At some point, instead of asking, “How can I become better at handling this?”

I think it's worth asking:

“Does my life actually need to look like this?”

That is a much more powerful question.

There Are Still Tradeoffs

I don't want to pretend I've created some perfectly balanced life.

I haven't.

There are days when I leave the office later than I intended.

There are times when I'm answering messages while sitting at a kid's practice.

There are moments when I feel like I'm falling behind somewhere no matter how much I'm accomplishing everywhere else.

Building a business while raising four children is not a recipe for endless tranquility.

But I've learned that a good life doesn't have to be perfectly balanced.

It needs to be aligned.

I want my calendar to reflect the things I say matter to me.

I want my children to see that their mom worked hard for something she believed in — but also that achievement did not require disappearing from their lives.

I want my daughters to know that ambition isn't something they need to apologize for.

And I want all of my kids to understand that success is not just about what you accomplish.

It's also about the life you get to live while you're accomplishing it.

Build a Life That Fits

Maybe work-life balance isn't about giving everything equal time.

Maybe it's about having enough control to decide what deserves your attention in each season.

There will be seasons when your career takes off.

There will be seasons when your family needs more of you.

There may even be seasons when you decide that something you worked very hard to achieve no longer fits the person you've become.

Changing course doesn't erase what you accomplished before.

Sometimes it means you've finally become clear about what you're building toward.

I still have big goals.

Probably bigger ones than I've ever had.

But the goal isn't to build the biggest career possible and figure out where my life fits afterward.

The goal is to build both at the same time.

A meaningful career.

A present life.

A family I get to enjoy.

Work I am proud of.

And enough freedom to decide what matters most when the answer inevitably changes.

That may not be balance.

But for me, it feels a lot more like success.