By Annie Wright, LMFT · Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (#95719)Clinically reviewed May 2026Annie Wright addresses the unique emotional struggle faced by founder mothers who feel torn between their leadership roles and their maternal identity. The article explores the deep internal conflict and feelings of guilt that arise when these two powerful parts of their lives seem incompatible, offering compassionate insight into reconciling ambition with nurturing responsibilities.
Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT
- Leila Is in the Third Car From the Front
- What the CEO-Mother Paradox Actually Is. A Working Definition From a Trauma Therapist
- Why the Two Identities Refuse to Coexist in the Female Nervous System (And What Cortisol Has to Do With It)
- The Specific Hazard of the Series A to Series B Stage Crossed With Toddlerhood
- What Mothering Looks Like When the Company Is in Crisis (And the Repair Architecture)
- Both/And: You Are a Present Mother AND You Are a CEO Whose Company Needs You Now
- The Practices That Make the Two Identities Speak to Each Other (Hint: Not “Time Blocking”)
- The Founders Who Stopped Trying to Reconcile Them. What They Built Instead
- Frequently Asked Questions
Leila Is in the Third Car From the Front
It’s Wednesday, 3:42pm, and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. On Leila’s passenger seat, her laptop is open, the screen displaying an investor email titled “Need to discuss,” which she has read eleven times without typing a response. Her son emerges from the school building clutching a paper turkey he made, scanning the line for her car, unaware she hasn’t waved yet. Inside, Leila thinks: “There is a version of me that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback. There is a version of me that should be in the SoMa boardroom right now. I am in this car in a third version that no one wrote a script for.”
Leila’s moment in the pickup line is a quiet battleground where her identities collide. She is both mother and CEO, yet neither role feels fully present in this paused, in-between space. The grandparent ahead embodies a life stage she has yet to reach, a symbol of time’s linear passage she can’t yet claim. Meanwhile, the email on her laptop reminds her of the relentless demands waiting beyond the schoolyard, urgent investor conversations, strategic decisions, and the weight of fiduciary duty. Her son’s paper turkey, bright and fragile, is a tangible reminder of the personal world she strives to nurture even as the company’s growth stage accelerates.
For Leila, the tension between these selves is not just a scheduling challenge; it’s a nervous system knot. The CEO identity calls for decisiveness, resilience, and relentless forward motion. The mother identity requires attunement, presence, and emotional availability. Neither can be fully accessed while the other tugs with equal force. This paradox is invisible to most but shapes every micro-moment of her day. It’s a silent conflict that no board meeting or parenting book has prepared her to navigate.
In my work with founders like Leila, I see this collision as a unique form of identity dissonance, one that is less about time management and more about nervous system integration. The “third version” she inhabits in this car is a liminal space where the scripts for CEO and mother don’t align, leaving her in a state of profound internal contradiction. This experience is a cornerstone of the CEO mother paradox, a phenomenon many women founders encounter but few name aloud.
What the CEO-Mother Paradox Actually Is. A Working Definition From a Trauma Therapist
Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line, the clock reading 3:42pm. The woman ahead, with silver-gray hair, reads a paperback behind a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, embodying a different timeline. Leila’s laptop lies open beside her, the investor email titled “Need to discuss” unread for the eleventh time. Her son steps out, clutching a paper turkey, eyes scanning the line for her car, she hasn’t waved yet. In that moment, Leila thinks: “There is a version of me that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback. There is a version of me that should be in the SoMa boardroom right now. I am in this car in a third version that no one wrote a script for.”
The CEO-mother paradox names this collision of identities that many women founders experience but few discuss with clarity. From a trauma-informed perspective, it’s not merely a scheduling conflict or a matter of “work-life balance.” It’s the lived experience of two powerful roles, CEO and mother, each demanding full presence, yet wired to activate different, often conflicting parts of the nervous system. The paradox arises because these identities don’t simply coexist; they can feel like competing survival strategies within the same body and mind.
In my work with women leaders, the CEO-mother paradox reveals itself as an internal rupture. The founder identity is fused with the company’s trajectory, every investor call, every pivot, every board meeting is existential. Meanwhile, the mother identity calls forth deep relational attunement, safety, and vulnerability, often activating attachment systems shaped by early caregiving experiences. This tension generates a chronic state of nervous system dysregulation, where the body toggles between fight/flight activation for the company and the social engagement system necessary for attuned mothering.
The founder-mother cannot simply “switch hats” without consequence, because these roles are embedded in different neural and emotional architectures. Understanding this dynamic through a trauma therapist’s lens reframes the paradox: it’s not about choosing one identity over the other but about recognizing how the nervous system experiences and negotiates this impossible duality. This awareness opens the door to integration, not fragmentation, and invites founders to explore how their inner parts, the CEO self, the mother self, and all the protective subselves, can begin a conversation rather than a conflict.
This clinical framework is essential for women navigating the founder journey while mothering, offering a path beyond the isolation of trying to “do it all.” For practical strategies and deeper understanding of founder identity, see the Founders hub, where integration is the goal, not separation.
The CEO-Mother Paradox describes the internal conflict experienced by women who simultaneously hold leadership roles and motherhood responsibilities, where the demands of each identity often clash and resist harmonious coexistence.
In plain terms: The CEO-Mother Paradox happens when being a leader and a mom feel like two jobs that don’t fit well together, creating stress and tough choices.
Why the Two Identities Refuse to Coexist in the Female Nervous System (And What Cortisol Has to Do With It)
It’s Wednesday, 3:42pm, and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. Leila’s laptop lies open on the passenger seat, an investor email titled “Need to discuss” glaring from the screen, she’s read it eleven times already. Her son emerges from the building clutching a paper turkey he made, scanning the line for her car; she hasn’t waved yet. There is a version of Leila that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback. There is a version of her that should be in the SoMa boardroom right now. She is in this car in a third version that no one wrote a script for.
The female nervous system is wired to respond to social and relational cues with a sensitivity that often conflicts with the demands of leadership and motherhood existing simultaneously. When Leila toggles between the CEO identity, strategizing, negotiating, and problem-solving, and the mother identity, nurturing, attuning, and emotionally present, her body responds with a biochemical tension rooted in cortisol release. Cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, is essential for survival but becomes problematic when chronically elevated. For women CEOs who are also mothers, the persistent activation of this stress response creates a nervous system stuck in a state of hypervigilance, making it difficult for these two identities to inhabit the same emotional space without triggering overwhelm or dissociation.
Research in Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges, PhD, illuminates how the autonomic nervous system regulates social engagement and stress responses. For women like Leila, the CEO role demands a ventral vagal state, engaged, confident, and strategic, while mothering often calls for a different kind of social engagement rooted in attunement and safety signaling. The rapid shifts between these states can trigger cortisol surges, activating fight-or-flight responses that undermine the possibility of seamless integration. This physiological tug-of-war explains why founder mothers frequently experience an internal fragmentation, a divided self that feels like existing in parallel worlds rather than a singular, coherent identity.
Understanding this neurobiological conflict is crucial for women CEOs navigating the founder mother identity. It’s not a matter of willpower or time management, but rather the body’s survival mechanisms responding to competing demands. Recognizing how cortisol and nervous system regulation shape this paradox opens a path toward integration strategies that honor both identities without forcing them into an impossible coexistence. For more insight on how nervous system regulation can support this integration, see the founder nervous system rest guide.
Matrescence refers to the psychological and emotional transformation a woman undergoes as she becomes a mother, involving significant shifts in identity and self-perception, as described by Aurélie Athan, PhD.
In plain terms: Matrescence is the process of becoming a mother, which brings many changes in how a woman sees herself and her role in life.
The Specific Hazard of the Series A to Series B Stage Crossed With Toddlerhood
It’s Wednesday, 3:42pm, and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. Leila’s laptop lies open on the passenger seat, the subject line of an investor email,“Need to discuss”,staring back at her; she’s already read it eleven times. Her son emerges from the building, clutching a paper turkey he made, scanning the line for her car. There is a version of me that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback. There is a version of me that should be in the SoMa boardroom right now. I am in this car in a third version that no one wrote a script for.
This moment crystallizes a unique intersection of developmental and entrepreneurial pressure points. The Series A to Series B transition demands relentless focus on scaling, hitting milestones like ARR growth, product-market fit validation, and navigating shifting investor expectations. At the same time, toddlerhood, marked by incessant caregiving, emotional unpredictability, and developmental leaps, pulls the CEO mother into a demanding, often non-negotiable present. The simultaneous intensity of these spheres creates a collision course within the nervous system, where the founder’s capacity to integrate these identities feels almost impossible.
Leila’s internal experience reflects this: her attention fractures between an urgent investor email and the immediate, sensory reality of her son’s eager eyes. The Series B round is not just a financial hurdle; it is a crucible of identity, where the founder-mother’s nervous system cycles rapidly between sympathetic arousal, driven by business threat signals, and the ventral vagal pathways that support social engagement with her child. This dysregulation often manifests as a felt split, an embodied “CEO mother paradox” that can feel like an existential tug-of-war.
What I see consistently in women CEO motherhood is that this stage amplifies the trauma of identity fusion described in FC1. The stakes are existential: the company’s future, the child’s developmental window, and the founder’s own nervous system resources all converge. Unlike other phases, the toddler years demand a constant attunement that clashes with the high-stakes, unpredictable demands of Series B fundraising and scaling. This is not a problem solved by time management or boundary setting alone; it requires an integrative approach to nervous system regulation and identity harmonization.
In this tension, the founder-mother often experiences a version of ambiguous loss described by ambiguous loss,the simultaneous presence and absence of the “ideal” mother or CEO self. The loss is ungrievable in conventional terms because both roles are alive yet fractured, leaving a lingering ache that can undermine resilience if unaddressed.
What Mothering Looks Like When the Company Is in Crisis (And the Repair Architecture)
It’s Wednesday, 3:42 p.m., and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. Leila’s laptop lies open on the passenger seat, an investor email titled “Need to discuss” glaring back at her; she’s read it eleven times already. Her son emerges from the school building clutching a paper turkey he made, scanning the line for her car, though she hasn’t waved yet. There is a version of me that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback. There is a version of me that should be in the SoMa boardroom right now. I am in this car in a third version that no one wrote a script for.
When the company is in crisis, mothering doesn’t look like the calm, uninterrupted presence that cultural narratives often imagine. Instead, it’s a fractured mosaic of attention, a constant toggling between urgent external demands and internal emotional alarms. The founder mother embodies a dual crisis: the survival of her company and the emotional safety of her child. As the CEO’s cortisol spikes with each investor email, her nervous system tightens, often triggering a freeze or fight response, making the simple act of greeting her son feel simultaneously vital and impossible.
This tension creates what I call the “repair architecture”,the internal and external scaffolding that allows mothering and leadership to coexist without annihilating each other. Repair here is not a one-time fix but a dynamic process of re-engagement, attunement, and recalibration. It involves moments of co-regulation with the child, even if brief, where Leila’s presence is felt as safe and responsive, despite the backdrop of company chaos. This is a radical departure from the myth that mothering demands uninterrupted availability; instead, it honors the fragmented reality of women CEO motherhood navigating high-stakes environments.
Repair architecture also depends on self-compassion and nervous system regulation strategies that help Leila shift from the high-alert state induced by fundraising crises back into the social engagement system, enabling her to connect authentically with her child. Drawing from the work of Stephen Porges, PhD, on Polyvagal Theory, these moments of connection act as neurobiological anchors, reducing cortisol and restoring relational safety. Without this neurobiological repair, the CEO mother paradox deepens, risking emotional disconnection and burnout.
In practice, repair may look like a brief eye contact, a shared breath, or a quiet acknowledgment of the child’s paper turkey, small but profound gestures that affirm presence and love. These moments build resilience in both mother and child, creating a shared narrative that the mother’s leadership role and her caregiving role are not mutually exclusive but parts of a complex, integrated whole. For women founders seeking support in this integration, resources like the Founders hub offer pathways to hold both identities with greater ease and authenticity.
“The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.”
bell hooks, cultural critic and author, All About Love: New Visions
Guilt involves feeling bad about a specific behavior or action, while shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person. Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, distinguishes guilt as focused on actions and shame as focused on identity.
In plain terms: Guilt happens when you regret something you did, but shame makes you feel like there’s something wrong with who you are.
Both/And: You Are a Present Mother AND You Are a CEO Whose Company Needs You Now
It’s Wednesday, 3:42 p.m., and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. Leila’s laptop lies open in the passenger seat, the subject line “Need to discuss” on an investor email glaring back at her; she’s read it eleven times already. Her son emerges from the building, clutching a paper turkey he made, eyes scanning the line for her car, she hasn’t waved yet.
Leila’s experience embodies the CEO mother paradox not as a choice between identities but as a simultaneous existence of both. She is fully present to her son’s small triumphs, the crinkled turkey, the shy smile, but also tethered to the urgent demands of her company’s next funding round. The investor email is a reminder that her leadership is not a flexible role; it’s a critical, non-negotiable responsibility that requires her focus and strategic clarity. This is the founder mother identity in full tension: the pull of nurturing at home and the push of steering a business through precarious growth.
What the founders I work with consistently show is that this “both/and” stance is a radical act of self-definition. It resists the cultural scripts that demand women choose one identity over the other or perform an impossible balancing act. Instead, it recognizes the complexity of women CEO motherhood as a layered, interwoven experience. Leila texting Nadia in the parking lot, sharing a quick vent about the investor email, is a small but powerful ritual of connection within this dual existence. These moments create a shared language and support system that validates the tension rather than erases it.
Holding both identities in conscious relationship requires a nervous system attuned to complexity rather than binary thinking. It’s a practice of presence that includes discomfort, grief, and fierce commitment. This is why integration, not boundary enforcement, is the pathway forward, as explored further in the Founders hub. Leila’s son will remember the warmth of her presence in this crowded car, even as her company’s future depends on her leadership. She is both a present mother and a CEO whose company needs her now, and holding this paradox is the foundation of resilience and authenticity in her journey.
Mental load refers to the ongoing cognitive effort involved in managing and organizing household tasks and responsibilities, often without visible acknowledgment.
In plain terms: Mental load means keeping track of everything that needs to be done at home, like planning and remembering tasks, even if others don’t see it.
The Practices That Make the Two Identities Speak to Each Other (Hint: Not “Time Blocking”)
It’s Wednesday, 3:42pm, and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the kindergarten pickup line. The woman ahead, with silver-gray hair, reads a paperback behind a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, embodying a different rhythm of life. Leila’s laptop lies open in the passenger seat, an investor email titled “Need to discuss” glaring back at her; she’s read it eleven times already. Her son emerges from the building clutching a paper turkey, scanning the cars for her, she hasn’t waved yet. There is a version of her that should be a grandmother in the car ahead reading a paperback.
What makes Leila’s CEO self and mother self begin to speak to each other is not the classic prescription of “time blocking” or rigid compartmentalization. Instead, it’s the cultivation of what I call “nervous system attunement” and the intentional practice of presence that honor both identities simultaneously. This means moments where Leila allows herself to feel the fullness of being both a decision-maker navigating investor pressures and a mother witnessing her child’s small triumphs. It’s less about strict scheduling and more about creating internal dialogue between these parts, acknowledging each identity with curiosity rather than judgment.
Clinically, this aligns with the work of Stephen Porges, PhD, whose Polyvagal Theory emphasizes the importance of social engagement and safety cues in regulating the nervous system. When Leila notices her son’s paper turkey and consciously softens her internal tension, she activates a ventral vagal state that can bridge her fragmented roles. These micro-moments of integration build resilience against the allostatic load that comes from constant role-switching.
In practice, this might look like Leila texting Nadia from the parking lot, not to strategize work but to share a breath or a fleeting win. It’s about weaving relational connection into the fabric of the day, even when the cap table, runway, and board updates loom large. This relational attunement interrupts the “CEO versus mother” narrative and invites a both/and experience, where Leila’s founder identity and mother identity don’t just coexist but inform and enrich each other.
For women CEO motherhood, these practices form a foundation for sustainable leadership. They invite a reimagining of identity integration that moves beyond fragmented time management into embodied presence, a practice that can be strengthened through intentional therapy or executive coaching, available in the Founders hub.
Co-regulation (parent-child) refers to the process where a caregiver and child mutually influence each other’s emotional states, helping the child manage stress and develop self-regulation skills, as described by Stephen Porges, PhD.
In plain terms: Co-regulation happens when a parent and child work together to calm and support each other’s feelings, helping the child learn how to handle emotions over time.
“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind. / As if my Brain had split. / I tried to match it. Seam by Seam. / But could not make them fit.”
Emily Dickinson, “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind”
The Founders Who Stopped Trying to Reconcile Them. What They Built Instead
It’s Wednesday, 3:42 p.m., and Leila sits in the third car from the front of the school pickup line, her son’s kindergarten just letting out. The car ahead sports a “Proud Grandparent” bumper sticker, and its driver, a woman with silver-gray hair, is quietly absorbed in a paperback. Leila’s laptop lies open on the passenger seat, an investor email titled “Need to discuss” glaring back at her; she’s already read it eleven times. Her son steps out of the school building holding a paper turkey he made, eyes searching the line of cars for hers, but she hasn’t waved yet.
Leila is not alone in this unscripted third version. The founders I work with who wrestled endlessly with the CEO-mother paradox, trying to merge two identities that the female nervous system often resists integrating, have begun to build something different. Rather than forcing a false reconciliation, they’ve created frameworks and cultures that honor the irreconcilable tension itself. Instead of trying to fit the founder identity into the mold of motherhood or vice versa, they design their companies and leadership styles around the coexistence of these identities as distinct yet interdependent forces.
This means embracing a founder identity that includes vulnerability around motherhood without shame, and a mother identity that holds space for ambition without guilt. Some have established “founders hubs” within their organizations, safe spaces where women CEO motherhood is acknowledged as complex, not contradictory. Others prioritize executive coaching that specifically addresses the founder-mother identity fusion, helping them lead with a nervous-system-informed awareness that reduces cortisol-triggered shutdowns and fight-flight responses.
Leila’s text to Nadia, another founder-mom, reads: “Some days I just want to stop trying to make the two fit. What if we built a new way instead?” Nadia replies, “Exactly. I’m done with the paradox. It’s about integration, not reconciliation.” This shift reframes the experience from a source of internal conflict to a wellspring of creative tension fueling innovation and resilience. It’s a step toward dismantling the “either/or” trap and embracing a both/and reality that honors the full complexity of women founder-moms.
For those ready to explore this path, resources like the Founders hub offer community and clinical support tailored to these unique challenges. The founders who stopped trying to reconcile their CEO and mother selves are building companies, and lives, that reflect this new architecture. It’s a design that holds space for the uncharted third version of self, the one no script has yet imagined, but many are now living into with courage and clarity.
Allison Daminger, PhD, is especially useful here because the founder-mother problem is not only about time; it is about the hidden cognitive labor of anticipation, planning, remembering, and emotional tracking that follows many women into both the home and the company.
Q: Is the CEO-mother paradox actually a paradox or just bad scheduling?
A: The CEO-mother paradox goes beyond simple scheduling challenges. It reflects the deep internal conflict many women face when trying to honor two demanding roles that often have conflicting expectations and emotional needs. Being a CEO requires decisiveness, long hours, and strategic focus, while motherhood calls for presence, emotional availability, and nurturing. These identities can feel at odds, creating tension that scheduling alone cannot resolve. Addressing this paradox involves acknowledging the emotional complexity and societal pressures tied to both roles. Finding balance is less about managing time perfectly and more about creating space for self-compassion, setting realistic boundaries, and redefining success on personal terms. This nuanced understanding supports women in embracing both identities without guilt or compromise.
Q: Why does the same brain that runs a board meeting collapse at school pickup?
A: The brain that confidently leads a board meeting can feel overwhelmed during school pickup because it shifts from a structured, goal-oriented environment to one filled with emotional unpredictability and multitasking demands. Executive functions, planning, decision-making, and focus, are engaged differently in professional settings compared to the spontaneous, relational dynamics of parenting. Emotional regulation becomes more challenging when managing children’s needs, social interactions, and time pressures simultaneously. This shift can trigger stress responses, making it harder to maintain the same level of control and calm. Understanding this helps normalize the experience and encourages self-compassion, recognizing that these roles require distinct mental and emotional resources.
Q: How do female founders experience matrescence differently than non-founder mothers?
A: Female founders often experience matrescence with an added layer of complexity compared to non-founder mothers. The dual demands of leading a business while adapting to the profound identity shifts of motherhood can create internal conflict. Founders may feel torn between the relentless drive required to grow their companies and the emotional availability their children need. This tension can amplify feelings of isolation and self-doubt, as both roles demand full presence yet pull in different directions. Understanding these unique challenges allows for greater self-compassion and tailored support, helping founder-mothers honor both their entrepreneurial ambitions and their evolving maternal identity with kindness and patience.
Q: Should I “lean out” at toddler stage and “” later?
A: Balancing the roles of CEO and mother often feels like managing two full-time jobs simultaneously. The idea of “leaning out” during the toddler years and “leaning in” later can seem appealing, but it’s rarely that simple. Toddlers require intense emotional availability, which can make professional demands feel overwhelming. However, stepping back completely may lead to feelings of loss or disconnect from your career identity. Instead, consider creating flexible boundaries that honor both roles, allowing you to adjust your focus as your child grows and your work evolves. This approach supports emotional presence with your child while maintaining engagement with your professional aspirations, fostering a sustainable rhythm rather than an either/or choice.
Q: Can I be a present mother while running a hyper-growth company?
A: Balancing the demands of leading a rapidly growing company with being a present mother is undeniably challenging but achievable with intentional boundaries and self-compassion. It requires recognizing that both roles call for different energies and presence at different times. Prioritizing quality moments over quantity, setting realistic expectations for yourself, and creating support systems, whether through trusted childcare, partners, or colleagues, can create space for meaningful connection with your children. Embracing flexibility and allowing yourself grace when things don’t go perfectly fosters resilience. Ultimately, presence is about attuning to your children’s needs when you are with them, rather than striving for constant availability. This approach honors both your leadership role and your motherhood, allowing these identities to coexist with greater ease and authenticity.
Q: Does my child absorb my work stress through co-regulation?
A: Children are highly sensitive to the emotional states of their caregivers, especially through a process called co-regulation, where they attune to and mirror the caregiver’s feelings. When a mother experiences work-related stress, her child can pick up on subtle cues, tone of voice, facial expressions, or body language, that signal tension or anxiety. This doesn’t mean the child consciously understands the source of stress, but they may feel unsettled or reactive as a result. Creating moments of calm connection, such as mindful breathing or gentle touch, can help both mother and child regulate emotions together. Recognizing this dynamic allows mothers to foster emotional safety at home, even when work demands feel overwhelming. It’s a gentle reminder that managing stress isn’t just self-care, it’s relational care that supports the child’s emotional well-being too.
Q: How does therapy help with the CEO-mother paradox specifically?
A: Therapy offers a dedicated space to explore the emotional tensions that arise when the roles of CEO and mother feel at odds. It helps clarify personal values and boundaries, allowing women to honor both identities without self-judgment. Through compassionate reflection, therapy supports recognizing internalized expectations and societal messages that contribute to feelings of conflict. It also provides practical strategies for managing stress and cultivating self-compassion, fostering a more integrated sense of self. For founders balancing leadership and motherhood, therapy can be a vital tool to process complex emotions, reduce overwhelm, and strengthen resilience, ultimately promoting greater alignment between professional ambitions and family life.
References
Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)
- Porges SW. Polyvagal Theory: Current Status, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions. Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2025;22(3):169-184. doi:10.36131/cnfioritieditore20250301. PMID: 40735382.
Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)
- Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly. Penguin Audio, 2012.
- Dickinson, Emily. The complete poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown, 1960.
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Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719) and trauma-informed executive coach with over 15,000 clinical hours. She works with driven, ambitious women. Including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs. In repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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