Damn Girl, How Do You Do It?

Building a brand as a single mom, without pretending I have it all figured out.

“Damn girl, how do you do it?”

I get asked this a lot. Two kids, a brand, meetings, content, orders, emails, driving somebody somewhere approximately 4,000 times a week, trying to exercise, trying to maintain friendships, and occasionally attempting to locate the bottom of the laundry basket.

The answer is that I don’t do it all. I don’t think any woman really does, and I’m less interested than ever in pretending otherwise.

I’m a single mom building a beauty brand, and my working life does not look like the beautifully blocked-out Google calendar of an internet productivity guru. My mornings look different depending on who needs what. My workdays are shorter than they used to be. Sometimes I’m in the middle of something important and suddenly it’s time to get in the car because somebody has somewhere to be.

There are days when I’m wildly productive, and there are days when I look at my list at 4 p.m. and think, well, we gave it a shot. I’ve stopped seeing that as a problem I need to solve.

Motherhood isn’t getting in the way of the work-It’s part of the work. There’s this idea that successful women somehow figure out how to create a perfect wall between work and family, but I haven’t found that wall and I’m not sure I want to.

My kids are with their dad every other weekend, and yes, sometimes I use that time to work. But I also use it to reset my life. I clean my house, organize things, get groceries, put everything back where it belongs and attempt to restore civilization before Monday morning arrives.

For a long time, I probably would have thought I should be using every child-free hour to get ahead. Now I understand that resetting my life is productive too. Sometimes what Monday-morning me desperately needs is Sunday-night me to wash the sheets.

I’ve also been lucky enough to meet someone who is genuinely helpful and supportive, and I don’t take that lightly. Support matters enormously when you’re trying to build something while raising kids. I’ve learned that being capable doesn’t have to mean doing every single thing myself.

I’ve also built flexibility into my work because I need it. That might mean my career moves differently than it would if I had endless uninterrupted hours, and I’m okay with that. I don’t want to build a beautiful company and look up one day wondering where my kids went.

So what actually helps?

I don’t have five secrets for achieving perfect work-life balance, because I don’t think perfect balance exists. I do have a few things that make our slightly chaotic little ecosystem work.

1. I give them “me time”

One thing I do deliberately is give my kids undivided time. Not Mom is technically sitting beside you while answering an email time. Actual me.

Sometimes I’ll literally put a timer on for ten or twenty minutes and close the computer. They can tell me the extremely long story that requires seventeen pieces of background information before we finally reach the point, show me something they made, complain about something, or just hang out.

I’ve realized that connection doesn’t always require an elaborate day together. Sometimes it just requires being fully there for a little while.

2. I let them into what I’m building

My kids know Electric Lemonade. They see packages, samples, filming, ideas and all the weird little pieces that go into trying to build a brand. I ask what they think, and I actually want their opinion.

Kids have an incredible bullshit detector. They’ll tell you immediately if something is weird, boring or trying too hard.

They also help me sometimes, and they cheer me on. I love that they get to see the work behind building something. They see me try things that don’t work, change my mind, get excited, get disappointed and try again.

I think there’s something valuable in that.

3. I have a space that’s mine

Blending motherhood and business doesn’t mean having no boundaries. I have a workspace, and my kids know there are times when I’m in there working and they need to respect that.

Motherhood can make every square inch of your life feel communal, so having one place that says I’m working now helps me switch modes and focus.

I’m still Mom. I’m just Mom with a deadline.

4. I work with the life I actually have

This has probably been one of the biggest shifts for me. I stopped making schedules for an imaginary woman who has twelve uninterrupted hours every day.

She does not live here.

Instead, I look at the actual week in front of me. What do the kids have going on? Where do I need to drive? What are the non-negotiables? Where are the real pockets of uninterrupted time?

Then I try to protect my best working hours for things that actually require my brain. I don’t want to burn a beautiful two-hour stretch answering emails if that’s the only quiet time I have to create something important.

Some weeks, less gets done. That’s just the reality.

5. I stopped treating help like cheating

This one has taken me a while.

Their dad is part of their life. My partner is supportive. My kids help. People around me help, and I’m learning to let them.

There’s a version of motherhood that can make you feel like being good at it means carrying everything yourself, while also somehow maintaining a career, a house, friendships, a body, a social life and a fully stocked fridge.

I’m not interested in winning an award for exhaustion.

If someone can help, I let them.

Maybe balance was never the goal

I used to think success meant getting everything under control. Now I think it might mean building a life where the things you love are allowed to exist beside each other, even when they’re occasionally messy.

My kids interrupt my work sometimes, and my work occasionally spills into family life. Sometimes I crush the day, and sometimes dinner is whatever I can assemble from the fridge. Sometimes my child-free weekend is incredibly productive, and sometimes I clean the entire house, put fresh sheets on the beds and put on a cheesy rom com.

I’m building a company, but I’m also raising two humans.

When I think about what I want my daughters to remember, I don’t want it to be that Mom was always working. I want them to remember that I was building something I believed in and that they were part of it. I want them to know their opinions mattered and that they watched a woman have an idea and decide to see what might happen if she went for it.

Most importantly, I want them to know that through all of it, they could still come find me.

The brand matters, but they matter more.

And strangely enough, accepting that hasn’t made me less ambitious. It’s made me much clearer about what I’m building all of this for.

And now you know.

Xo

Shelley

skincare · radiance without rules · aging gracefully · anti-anti-aging · healthy skin