When Everything Fell Apart, I Heard a Whisper
I Didn’t Bounce Back. I Broke Open.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to give a talk on resilience at the 2025 Philadelphia Women of Influence Luncheon.
It was my first talk of this size and grandeur — and I was terrified.
But what happened in that room moved me deeply: fierce tears, quiet nods, long hugs… a whole room exhaling together. Grieving. Seeing. Feeling seen.
I’m sharing it here in our IMHMO Journal in case it helps you feel a little more seen, too. Here it goes…
In late summer 2018, I found myself breastfeeding on a Zoom call, trying to mute my tears while leading a quarterly business review — and all I could think was:
“I don’t recognize this version of me.”
Before motherhood, I was a marketing leader in tech, helping billionaires make more billions. I had a fast-moving career, a solid paycheck, a clear identity. I was ambitious. I had a plan.
When I got pregnant, I treated maternity leave like a project launch:
Twelve weeks off. Then I’d bounce back.
What happened wasn’t a disruption.
It was a disintegration.
I Didn’t Bounce Back. I Broke Open.
I returned to work 11 weeks postpartum. I hadn’t slept more than 4 hours a night in months. I was still bleeding. I was still in pain. And I was unraveling.
I cried between meetings. And during them. I questioned whether I was cut out for parenting. I wondered what it meant that I loved my baby… but couldn’t feel myself.
Not the old me, not a new me. Just… lost.
Back at work — even in a supposedly “progressive” tech company — there was no real support. No transition plan. No playbook. No precedent.
Turns out, I was the first birth parent in leadership in the company’s 10-year history. There was support on paper — but not in practice. And definitely not in culture.
That’s when it hit me:
This wasn’t just personal. It was systemic.
The Word That Changed Everything
I started questioning everything — my career, my identity, my ambition. I didn’t want the life I had built. But I didn’t yet know what I wanted instead.
Then I came across a word I’d never heard before:
Matrescence.
The psychological, hormonal, emotional, and social transformation of becoming a mother.
Like adolescence. But for moms.
Suddenly, everything I was feeling had a name. A framework. A context.
But no one had ever said it to me.
No one had prepared me for this.
What followed was a slow, painful unraveling of everything I thought I believed about myself.
In coaching, I felt what it was like to be held without having to perform.
In therapy, I realized my hustle had been my mask.
And during the pandemic — when the world paused — I stopped trying to “bounce back.”
And in that quiet, I heard it.
A whisper.
“Coach. Support moms. This is the work.”
The Whisper Became a Path
That whisper changed everything.
I trained as an evidence-based coach. I rebuilt my career.
I redefined success — not as performance, but as alignment.
Alignment with who I am.
What I value.
The mission I serve.
I didn’t return to who I was.
I rose as someone new.
Now I coach high-capacity moms through the same transitions I once felt alone in.
I work with organizations to build systems that actually support caregivers.
And I advocate for policy change — because the problem isn’t just personal.
It’s structural.
If You’re In It Right Now…
If you’re in your own season of unraveling — staring at a life that no longer fits — I want to offer you this:
That whisper inside you?
The one you’re half-hearing?
It knows something your resume doesn’t.
Make space to realign — not just with what you do, but with who you are.
You don’t have to bounce back.
You don’t have to go back.
Maybe something is falling apart.
But maybe… it’s not the end.
Maybe it’s the beginning of you.
—
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With fierce love,
Coral