Motherhood and Entrepreneurship
“Some days the math still doesn’t add up, but at least now I know which numbers matter.” ~Trisha Patel
There is a particular kind of math a lot of us are doing…
When we carry a multitude of things day to day, we tend to always be calculating something in the background of the noise.
How much we are spending…
How much time today do we have for work, family, hobbies…
How much are we doing and is it moving the needle?
Sound familiar?
I have been doing the daily math like this for most of my adult life. If you are like me, you know how exhausting it can be. Worse, when you aren’t really sure to what end.
This is a story of one strong creative woman, Trisha, who knows this type of exhaustion too well. She’s a critical care pharmacist, an entrepreneur launching into her own creative business, and a wonderful mother and wife. This is her story about strength, commitment, and purpose.
“My alarm goes off at 3:30 AM…
Some of that is unavoidable. I'm a critical care pharmacist, and ICU shifts don't ease you in gently. But if I'm honest, part of why I'm up that early is so I can steal thirty minutes for my business before the day takes them from me. It's the only quiet window I get, and I've learned to protect it fiercely, even though I know exactly what it costs me in sleep.
From the moment I'm up, it's a run to the next item on a list that never actually ends. I don't think this list ever fully disappears for any of us as mothers — it just goes quiet for a few hours and then picks back up. Laundry. Housework. Did the homework get checked? Is there a permission slip due today that I haven't seen because it's buried in an email from three days ago? Is everything ready for the field trip, the school event, the thing I will feel sick about if my child is the only one left out because I missed it?
I don't say that with guilt exactly, just with the honesty of someone doing the math and not loving the answer.
Underneath all of this is a quieter ache: finding actual time to be present with them. Not present in the sense of being in the room while I mentally run through tomorrow's logistics, but really there. It's a hard thing to accept, how much more time they spend with teachers and coaches and other adults than they do with me.
Afternoons don't slow down, they just change shape. Pickup means emptying lunch boxes, resetting for homework, shuttling to whatever activity is next. It means tantrums that show up right on schedule once everyone's tired and over-stimulated. It means already thinking about the weekend, what needs prepping, what's been forgotten, while rest for myself quietly drops to the bottom of the list again. It always does.
This is part of why I made the decision to go part-time.
I'd reached a point where my business, my art, felt like it was competing with my clinical work and my kids for the same finite hours, and something had to give. So I stepped back from full-time healthcare, specifically because it was feeding so much of the chaos in our daily life without giving me the flexibility I actually needed in return.
I'll admit, I've thought about the simpler path, just letting the business go. One less thing on an already-overloaded list. I tried that, actually. I stepped away from my art for a stretch of time, thinking it would lighten the load.
It didn't.
What I found instead was that I became less patient. Less positive. More frustrated at small things that shouldn't have mattered. If I'm being fully honest, I felt genuinely depressed during that stretch, and it wasn't until I was living it that I understood my art was never going to be the thing I could compromise on. It had to become my full-time focus, not a hobby squeezed into the margins of everything else.
So now the early alarm, the running list, the constant recalculating of who needs what and when — it's all still there. But it's in service of something I chose deliberately: enough space to be present with my kids, and enough room to keep making the work that keeps me whole enough to actually be present when I'm with them.
Some days the math still doesn't add up. But at least now I know which numbers matter.
I met Trisha early on in my business designing sigils, symbols designed from intention. When I heard her story, I was amazed by her tenacity towards her art and creating the life she wants. When she came to me for a sigil of her own, she already knew what she wanted it to hold. She wanted something to keep her steady on the mornings the math doesn't add up… enough success in her creative work that she can be present with her family without either one eating the other alive.
We talked it through, and this is what she landed on:
“I create art to inspire wellness and meaningful connection, enriching lives through nature's beauty. My act of creating honors my passion and builds a legacy of light and resilience for my children.”
The symbol now lives on two pieces in her studio… a paintbrush holder and a vase, both carrying nature's own colors as a nod to the way her work speaks to nature and intention. She requested a small framed copy of the phrase handwritten on top of the sigil itself that she can return to on the hard days. She told me people notice it when they walk into her studio as something of curiosity and conversation. It makes them pause and ask about the mystery behind the symbol.
I love that part most. A sigil isn't meant to announce itself. It's meant to be understood by exactly one person, and to be curious to everyone else.
I write this as fall closes in fast and school starts again soon for a lot of families. The particular chaos of permission slips, picking up loose ends, and the fear of being the reason a child misses out on something hovering in the background. Trisha knows that fear well. She also knows what it is to build something entirely her own in the margins of all of it, and to insist that it matters enough to keep.
I don't have a tidy way to close this. Trisha's studio holds a phrase she wrote for herself, on a vase and a paintbrush holder and a small framed page she returns to.
I wonder…
what is sitting in the margins of your own days right now, waiting for something to hold it.
So I’ll leave you with this:
What is on your list that never seems to get crossed off?
Can you find 30 minutes in your day today to start? Not finish or cross off. Nothing that will cause more stress. Just one step towards the thing you push off because it isn’t as loud as the rest.
By your side,
Beth
Curious about Trisha’s journey and business? Stop by her website to see her beautiful custom-painted wallcovering designs.
