Amanda Goetz on motherhood, ambition, and why balance is a myth

December 18, 2025

Amanda Goetz on motherhood, ambition, and why balance is a myth

Motherhood has a way of forcing clarity. For Amanda Goetz, becoming a mom while navigating divorce, executive leadership, entrepreneurship, and reinvention revealed just how broken the systems around women really are. In a deeply honest conversation on The Motherly Podcast, Amanda sits down with Motherly cofounder Liz Tenety to talk about resentment, cognitive load, ambition, and why the pressure to be everything at once is burning mothers out. She also shares the framework she developed to help women reclaim their identities beyond a single role and why embracing intentional imbalance may be the key to feeling whole again.

About the Expert

Amanda Goetz is a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and bestselling author who helps women rethink ambition, success, and identity on their own terms. She is the founder of the popular House of Wise platform and the author of Toxic Grit, a book that explores burnout, motherhood, and the internal scripts that keep women stuck. Amanda has held executive roles at major consumer brands, founded a venture backed startup during the pandemic, and currently serves as a chief marketing officer. She is also a mother of three and shares candid insights about modern motherhood, work, and selfhood with a growing community of women.

Liz Tenety: I always like to start by asking my guests what surprised you about motherhood?

Amanda Goetz: Well, for those that don’t know my story, I was kind of at the height of my career. My marketing career was leading marketing at a public company with three kids under the age of four and filing for a divorce. And I think the thing that surprised me the most was how much resentment can come when you don’t have somebody helping you with all the cognitive load at home.

I know we’re talking about it so much more now, but 12 years ago when I had my first, that wasn’t as big of a conversation. That resentment is so real, and I think that’s what surprised me the most.

Liz Tenety: All of us raising kids in America are mothering in a system that doesn’t mother us back. What’s your take on that?

Amanda Goetz: So many things come to mind. For me, I can drive myself into a full spiral when I start to think about how broken the system is, and I think we all can [do that].

What’s the work I need to do? What are the scripts that I need to realize that I didn’t write for myself and write a new script that works for me?

I think that there’s a lot of inner work, too, and [figuring out] what boundaries we need to set for ourselves. And also what expectations we have of ourselves as mothers.

Liz Tenety: This term “balance” comes up so much for women. How do you think about balance and alignment now?

Amanda Goetz: I wrote about this story in the book where it was a typical day in my life, dropping two older kids off at their preschools and the nanny had the baby. I took the subway down, and I am at our company running from meetings to the pumping room back to the product meeting, then home by five o’clock to relieve the nanny. I wrote in my notes app the words: You can have it all. Five simple words. And I just sat there wondering where the friction was really coming from.

And I realized it was the “all” piece, but more so it was the “you.” This kind of work version of me, that if I looked at her in a vacuum, she didn’t want to leave every meeting early or leave work early. She finally was feeling like at the top of her career, confident in her skills, killing it on these projects. So in a vacuum, she’s not getting her needs met.

Then the mom version of me hates going to work and doesn’t want to log back in and doesn’t want to look at that email and is really sad that she missed the swim class or whatever, right? But then I had these other versions of me that I also started to see. It was the version of me that was like, I am in my early 30s, single, and wanting to explore my sexuality and figure out what lights me up again.

Then there’s the version of me that wanted to be so fiercely independent of anyone. And then the version of me that wanted to find love again and find a partner and do that. And so to me, the word “alignment” was a fool’s errand because every time I was trying to kind of smush all of these versions of me into this neat package, everyone felt guilt and inadequacy. So that was the origin of the framework that I write about in the book, which is character theory. And how do you actually honor this diversity that lives within us and the intentional imbalance it takes?

I think the more I have ever tried to find balance in a day are the days that I feel really shitty. If I allow myself to just cognitively state the intention that today or for the next hour, I’m in work mode; I’m on this podcast, threw Chick-fil-A at my children, and I’m a mediocre mom for the next hour. But when I’m done with this, for the next hour, I’m going to be more of a mom and less of a worker. And it’s just permission for hierarchy, permission for prioritization of the different versions of you.

Liz Tenety: Can you explain what character theory is and why it matters for mothers?

Amanda Goetz: In the book, there are 10 characters that make up the movie of your life. They’re written based on human needs. When one of the characters starts to grow toxic and take over more of their fair share of the plot, that’s when we actually start to feel that dullness in life because our other needs aren’t being met. It’s important to have kind of an operating rhythm of auditing your characters so that one character doesn’t stay in the spotlight for so long.

And that doesn’t mean that we can all quit our jobs or not be around our kids. But what it does mean is intentionality around some characters and that we may not be able to give them a hundred percent. And this is the thing that a lot of ambitious women struggle with: !e’re gold star chasers. If I can’t do something at a hundred percent, why bother? But if we look at some of the characters and we say, what would 20 percent look like? If you only have 20 percent to give and you give 20 percent, then you gave 100 percent.

Liz Tenety: You’ve said motherhood collapses women into a single identity. Can you talk about that?

Amanda Goetz: When I launched my last startup during COVID, it was a sexual health and wellness company. We had CBD gummies for sleep, sex, stress, and strength, and it was helping women give themselves permission to experience all of those things. But I remember I posted a photo that was more on the sexual health and wellness side of the business. And I remember getting so many DMS being like, “You’re a mom, I can’t believe you would post like a photo of this!” And I was like, I’m a mom and I’m a sexual being. The word “and” is so important. I think as a mother, you have to keep pushing back.

I just had someone recently say to me, “I could never be away from my kids that much” because I was on a book tour. I’m a mom and I have big goals that I’ve set out to pursue. And what I want to really implore with all mothers is that everything is cyclical and seasonal. The character that you are choosing to prioritize for whatever season, we should celebrate. If you want to chase your big goals and are showing up for the important things for your kids, but you’re also prioritizing your CEO, I’m here for it. Let’s do it.

Liz Tenety: How has entrepreneurship shaped what is possible for you as a mom?

Amanda Goetz: I think “optionality” is the word that I come back to over and over again with entrepreneurship. No one owns your calendar. No one owns your creativity. No one owns all of your time. The optionality to think about what’s my portfolio of revenue streams is the mindset we all have to start shifting into.

Liz Tenety: At Motherly, we believe motherhood reveals our superpowers. What do you see as yours?

Amanda Goetz: I think motherhood cracked open the part of me that I never thought was actually there, which is the self love piece. When I have a daughter that looks exactly like me, if I’m picking apart anything about myself, what is that communicating to her? And so I’ve learned to kind of reparent myself through that, which has been a really beautiful and humbling experience.

source https://www.mother.ly/podcasts/the-motherly-podcast/amanda-goetz-motherly-podcast-qa/

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