Arms Full

On motherhood, leadership and doing emotional work in real time.

My arms are full.

Two boys wrapped around my body at the same time. One around my neck. One pressed into my chest. Their weight leaning in. My hands trying to hold them both.

I am laughing and regulating.

You cannot see it in the photo, but my nervous system is working. I am being held and needed and loved. I am also being pulled and climbed on and stretched in three directions at once.

This is motherhood for me.

This is growth for me.

I have spent years helping build a company centered around emotional wellness. What I have not always said out loud is that my arms have been full there too.

Full of vision.
Full of responsibility.
Full of inherited patterns I was still trying to untangle while teaching others how to untangle theirs.

When you build a brand around emotional growth, people assume you must have mastered it. That you have resolved your wounding. That you move through conflict calmly and always know what to say.

The truth is that knowing and walking the walk are two very different things.

I could name the patterns. I understood the theory. I helped other families see their own dynamics. But knowing something intellectually and living it in real time, especially under pressure, are completely different experiences.

Nothing exposes that gap like parenthood.

Except maybe founding and leading a company at the same time.

When I co-founded Slumberkins, the emotional wellness brand built to support children and caregivers, I was a mom and a therapist who deeply wanted healing and growth to be centered in my life. I believed small interventions could change the trajectory of a child’s inner world. I believed we could bring that support into more homes.

That belief still lives in me.

But I did not fully understand what it would mean to carry it.

As the business grew, so did the weight in my arms. At one point we had over 70 employees. Many were moms. Many were primary breadwinners. I wanted to build a workplace that honored emotional health while also running a company that could survive inside capitalism.

Those two realities do not sit easily together.

I remember winning a prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year award. It was one of those moments that looks shiny from the outside. Celebration. Recognition. Validation.

The very next day, we had to lay off half our team because we were in financial crisis.

One day my arms were full of celebration.
The next, they were full of grief.

I felt physically ill. Responsible for people’s stability, their families, their livelihoods. We were a company centered on emotional wellness, and I was delivering news that shook people’s sense of safety.

Leadership forced me to confront how much of my worth was tied to performance. It forced me to disappoint people. To choose long term health while holding short term pain.

And all of this was unfolding while my sons were still climbing into my lap at night.

When I had my sons, I went through what felt like an identity crisis. I was not ready to step fully into only being a mother. I still carried a mission that felt bigger than me.

That vision turned out to not be fully aligned with what I thought an ideal mother should look like. And not fully aligned with my husband’s idea either.

Trying to build the company the way I felt called to left me diminished at times. I was operating at a reduced capacity for the emotional depth and presence I wanted at home.

My arms were full of purpose.
And sometimes that meant they were not as available as I wished they could be.

It came at a cost.

I was not endlessly patient. I was not perfectly present. I was stretched. Sometimes reactive.

Sometimes people compare Slumberkins to Daniel Tiger or Mr. Rogers. I feel honored when they do. What they built was gentle and steady and emotionally wise.

But I was not formed in that kind of steady.

My dad was a longshoreman, an alcoholic, and came from a long lineage of trauma. I inherited a nervous system shaped by that history. I feel connected to dark and layered stories. To complexity. To awareness that is earned.

The kind that starts in the dark. That knows pain and depth. That walks through it and comes out glowing with love, not because it avoided the monsters, but because it faced them.

The monsters still break through sometimes. I can lose my center. I can say things I need to repair.

But the heart and the love win.

Behind the scenes of “Miss Kelly,” the school counselor and Slumberkins co-founder who meets kids at their level, is a woman whose arms are full of history and healing. Full of grief and growth. Full of boys who still want to be carried. Full of a company that still requires courage.

Still unlearning.
Still repairing.
Still choosing love in real time.

Eventually, I made the difficult decision to get a divorce. It was not the outcome I imagined, but it was aligned with my healing. I tried to equip my children with emotional safety and a model of what health can look like in a family.

One of the hardest parts of being both a therapist and a mom is watching the same core beliefs I carry about my own worth show up in my children. I have done everything I can to interrupt the wounding I inherited.

And still, in some ways, it passes through.

Intergenerational patterns do not disappear just because we understand them.

So the real question becomes, what do I keep carrying? What do I set down? What does repair look like here? What does health look like in this specific family?

There is no universal formula.

Emotional wellness is not about arriving with empty hands.

It is learning how to hold what is ours. To set down what is not. To stay in the stretch without hardening.

My arms are full.

Full of love.
Full of responsibility.
Full of complexity.
Full of growth I did not choose but am choosing to walk through.

I am aligned with the choices I have made. I also carry grief and doubt. Both are true.

I am giving all I have got.

And my arms are still open.