I Thought I Needed Something Big To Come Back With
On frozen ambition, disrupted seasons, and 5 things that actually helped
Three months.
In nearly two years of writing to you, I’ve barely missed a week. Three months is a lot. There were so many moments I wanted to start again. But …
Yes, but what.
I guess in the beginnning it was literally the lack of ambition, and then it became a problem with perfectionism.
Let me start with something a friend said to me, two days after Dubai had its first missile interception.
“Do you remember the kind of life we had last week? It felt so normal. Now it feels like abundance. And we weren’t grateful enough.”
Here’s what happened.
We were in Dubai. The 28th of February, the explosions started. What we heard was defense - the UAE did an extraordinary job keeping everyone safe. But safe and unchanged are not the same thing.
I carried my son and my passport with me everywhere. I stayed awake an entire night just listening to the fortunately very unfamiliar sounds. We moved in with friends, drove to Oman, and flew to Germany, where we stayed for two and a half months.
Adding to this another tiny thing happened at the same time: I had finally found a job. And my first day at work was two days after the 28th of Februrary. Onboarding calls while telling my son and our nanny to stay inside during the alarms. Replying to emails while crossing the border to Oman. An interim life in Germany - work, kindergarten, routines - which we literally built from scratch.
In these months, I couldn’t write about motherhood and ambition. I could barely think about ambition at all. I was just trying to make it work.
But what I somehow knew, but only had the numbers to proof it a lot later: my ambition didn’t disappear. It froze.
And I wasn’t alone in that. In the research my co-researcher and I ran in the weeks after February 28 for the Motherhood in Motion podcast, 36% of mothers said the same thing.
Ambition on hold. Not gone - just frozen. The drive was still there. The infrastructure holding it in place wasn’t.
Which season was I in?
Three days before everything changed, I finished the Both And Seasonal Framework. The one I’ve been building for a really long time. It was ready. I wanted it ready before I started my job.
And then I never published it.
I’m sharing it properly now, for the first time.
The framework is built on the idea that motherhood isn’t one flat experience - it’s four layers running at once, all the time.
Layers shaped by your child’s age.
Your inner capacity - your actual energy, not your ideal energy.
What’s happening beneath the surface.
And the systems that are or aren’t holding you up.
Before February 28, I was deep in Building season. The newsletter, the framework, a new job, it felt like everything had momentum.
Then all four layers shifted at once.
My capacity dropped from Building straight into Integrating. Not Discovering - Discovering has a kind of openness to it. What I was doing was the opposite. Taking two completely different realities and forcing them to cohere. 5:30am work calls. My son asking why we lived somewhere different now. Telling myself every day: this is temporary, but it has to work right now.
I wasn’t in a season I chose. I was in a season that was put on me.
(The full deep dives into each capacity season - what they feel like, what they actually need - live inside the Both And Inner Circle. Or just reach out. It’s all there.)
I see you.
My situation was specific. I know that.
But life happens to all of us. Hopefully it’s not an explosion, but there are so many other interruptions.
Maybe it’s that your childcare stopped holding. Your marriage is going through something, or ending. Your job changed in ways you didn’t ask for. A parent got sick. Something that had been quietly working just... stopped. And just like that, the season you’d worked so hard to reach is no longer available to you.
So I wanted to write this, after all this time, to say: I see you. And also: this too shall pass. Seasons change, shift, they rarely stay the same for long. And that’s ok.
Seasons shift. Not always when we want them to, not always predictably. But we can be sure they shift.
Mine is shifting as we speak.
Five things that helped me
When I started writing them down, I just blurted everything out that came to mind. And when writing about it I realised that each one maps to a layer of the framework. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence. So I hope this framework and my example can maybe give you some ideas on your own season.
YOUR CAPACITY someone who kept the flame alive
My friend and co-host on Motherhood in Motion, also lives in Dubai. She has 3 kids under 4. But she has the incredible talent to never stopp. While my ambition was frozen, hers wasn’t. She saw the opportunity, kept moving, and nudged me - gently, consistently, but still. It felt very uncomfortable at first, honestly. But we talked it through. We agreed: one day it will be the other way around. That’s the deal with partnerships like this.
Having someone hold your ambition when you can’t hold it yourself? Honestly priceless and something I never had on my list before.
The system a childcare setup that actually worked
I found what I genuinely think is the best Kindergarten in Germany. Open 7 to 7. Nothing to bring. Warm and safe and genuinely lovely for my son.
Without it, nothing else was possible. Not the job, not the podcast, none of it. I was able to build again, without guilt, knowing my son is having an amazing time.
Childcare isn’t a personal choice - it’s infrastructure. I know this from our research, and I know it now from lived experience all over again.
The system friends and family, as active infrastructure
Friends I’ve known since Kindergarten and school showed up, despite their own lives. Family who stepped in days and even weeks to babysit. My Dubai friend for evening calls over red wine or tea. My husband paying the Kindergarten and school bills, no questions asked. Grandma and Grandpa who just took us in. For 2.5 months.
Everyone had full lives before. And still they would find the time for more wine evenings then usual, to take a small boy around for a whole day and to just make us feel home.
You can't build this in a crisis. It’s been years in the making. Don’t forget to invest time in this.
The system flexibility at work
My job gave me all the flexibility I needed. 5:30am sometimes, 9pm others. No one made me feel bad about it. I had just started, I needed the flexibility, but, and here I want to be clear, I also delivered. I put in the hours, the passion, the energy.
If you have flexibility - use it. If you don't have it yet, ask for it. Flexible hours aren't a perk - they're what kept me in the job. But don’t take it for granted.
The invisible load Geborgenheit
This one is harder to translate. Geborgenheit is a German word - it means something like security, warmth, the feeling of being sheltered and at home.
I put stickers on the wall in my son’s play area. Rearranged the room so it felt like ours. We created a morning routine. Made a list of things to do in Germany before we left. Ate at the same restaurant twice a month.
This wasn’t efficiency or things I had to do. It was the importance of feeling at home. To make both of us feel like we belong here.
Coming back. Not starting over.
I thought I needed a special article to come back with. Something worthy of the absence.
In the end I just picked up where I stopped.
A few days before my world changed, I’d finished the Seasonal Framework. I had put hours of work into it and i was ready. Then life happened and I just stopped.
Coming back, I realise I’m not returning with less.
I lived it. Seasonz I wrote about, I moved through. Relocated, new job, no childcare, rebuilding from scratch.
You can build a framework from research and interviews. But you only know if it works by walking through it yourself when things get hard.
I walked through it.
I’m in Building season now. I know what that requires - a running system, childcare back in Dubai, the right structures in place. Not because I can’t manage without them, but because I’ve learned that ambition needs infrastructure. Not as a luxury. But to be able to have Both And.
The Seasonal Framework is here now. And I can’t wait to share it with anyone who is interested. To be more intentional, live season specific. Live Both And.
So - what’s your Both And right now?
To get there, I truly believe it helps to know your season. That’s what the Quiz is for.
It might just change how you see the decisions in front of you.
What would your Both And be in this season?
More very soon.
Constanze
P.S. If any of this landed - if you’re in a season that chose you rather than one you chose - I’d love to hear from you. Reply back. I read everything.
the distinction between ambition disappearing and the infrastructure holding it in place collapsing is the most important thing i've read all week!!! thank you!!!
i just left a 15-year corporate career and the drive is absolutely still there. what crumbled was the scaffolding around it, the daily structure, the identity that came with a title and a team. and the geborgenheit concept is exactly what i've been doing instinctively without having a word for it. this piece is the opposite of a comeback post, it's proof that the pause was the work!
Certainly a learning moment for us in the Gulf - I felt paralyzed with any decision making while I played it cool and told everyone, "Life is as normal!" The scenarios playing out in my mind, the grappling with the question of staying or going. In that time, I lost a lucrative contract with a company in UAE because I simply didn't see myself doing anything for work. Here's to you pushing through and to whatever's next.