What if the years you spent raising your children were actually some of the best leadership training you could ever have?
Think about it. You managed schedules, budgets, personalities, emergencies, school projects, sports teams, family logistics, medical appointments, carpools and conflicts. You negotiated. You advocated. You problem-solved. You pivoted constantly.
And yet, when the kids grow up and a woman starts thinking about what comes next, how often does she look at those years and say, “But I haven’t worked in 20 years. What am I even qualified to do?”
That is exactly the thinking my guest Sharon Macy wants women to change.
Sharon is a content creator, speaker, mentor and founder of Mom to More, a platform helping women step into new chapters beyond motherhood. She believes millions of women are sitting on what she calls a “hidden resume” filled with skills like crisis management, negotiation, leadership, resilience, emotional intelligence and adaptability.
Our conversation on Living Ageless & Bold was about motherhood, but it was also about something much bigger. It was about recognizing the value of everything we have already done and understanding that whatever comes next, we are not beginning at zero.
We are starting from experience.
The Career Before Motherhood
Before Sharon became a stay-at-home mom, she had a career she had dreamed about.
She was a copywriter working in advertising in New York City. Madison Avenue had been the goal, and she got there. She worked on campaigns for brands and organizations including the U.S. Navy and Hostess, with some of the Hostess television spots becoming award winners.
Then life changed.
Sharon became a mother and made the decision to stay home with her children. Like so many women, her professional identity became less visible as motherhood took center stage.
Years later, she found herself thinking something I suspect many women will recognize.
She felt as though she had lost her skill set. She wondered whether anyone would want to listen to her anymore.
But she hadn’t lost her skills at all.
She had been building entirely new ones.
The Hidden Resume of Motherhood
This might have been my favorite concept from our entire conversation.
The hidden resume of motherhood.
So much of what mothers do is never written down because we don’t think of it as professional experience.
If you organized the school fundraiser, you might say you “volunteered.”
But what did you actually do?
Did you manage a committee? Recruit volunteers? Work with vendors? Create a budget? Solicit donations? Handle problems? Market the event? Meet a fundraising goal?
Those are professional skills.
Sharon talked about her own volunteer work while she was home with her children. She took leadership roles in schools and nonprofits and worked on development and fundraising. At one point, she co-chaired events that she says helped raise close to $3 million for her children’s school.
There are people who are paid very well to do exactly that work.
But when women do it as mothers or volunteers, we have a tendency to discount it.
I thought about my own years as a hockey mom and team manager. Getting an entire team where it needed to go meant coordinating hotels, airplanes, meals, schedules and countless details. At the time, I wasn’t thinking, “Look at all these transferable skills I’m developing.”
I was getting everybody where they needed to be.
But that’s the point.
We need to start looking differently at what we’ve done.
Maybe Motherhood Is the “Mom MBA”
Sharon takes the hidden resume idea one step further.
She calls motherhood one of the most underrated leadership training programs of all.
Her name for it?
The Mom MBA.
I love that.
Because what happens when something goes wrong at home?
You don’t get to say, “That’s outside my department.”
You figure it out.
You learn to make decisions with incomplete information. You learn how to communicate with very different personalities. You manage competing priorities. You become incredibly resourceful.
And you learn how to pivot.
Sharon described motherhood as an undervalued resume and emphasized that women entering a new chapter are not starting over. They’re starting from everything they’ve learned through their careers, households, families and life experience.
That distinction matters.
Stop Saying “I Just Stayed Home”
There was another word that came up in our conversation that I think we need to retire.
Just.
Sharon remembered how, when her children were younger, people would ask what she did and she would answer:
“I’m just home with the kids.”
How many women have said some version of that?
I’m just a mom.
I just stayed home.
I just volunteered.
I just helped at the school.
Sharon looks back now and wishes she had answered very differently. She wishes she had said that she had the privilege of raising the next generation of humans.
What a difference.
The work didn’t change.
The way she valued it did.
That may be one of the first steps in reinvention after 50. Before anyone else recognizes what you bring to the table, you have to stop minimizing it yourself.
Ask a Better Question
If you’re trying to figure out what comes next, Sharon suggests changing the question you’re asking yourself.
Instead of:
Am I qualified for this?
Ask:
What did motherhood prepare me for?
That opens up an entirely different conversation.
Maybe you discovered you’re an extraordinary organizer.
Maybe years of advocating for your child taught you that you’re passionate about helping other families navigate complicated systems.
Maybe you loved fundraising.
Maybe you discovered that you’re good at bringing people together.
Maybe you were always the person everyone called when something went wrong because you could stay calm and find a solution.
Those clues matter.
Sharon recommends actually writing down the things you’ve done because we forget them. Something that seemed ordinary at the time may reveal a skill that points toward your next chapter.
And if you’re having trouble seeing your own strengths, ask the people who know you best.
What do you think I’m really good at?
What do you come to me for?
What do you see in me that I might not see in myself?
Sometimes other people can recognize our strengths before we do.
Go Back to What You Loved Before Life Got So Busy
Reinvention doesn’t always mean taking something from your years of motherhood and turning it into a business or career.
Sometimes the clue is much older.
Sharon suggests “rewinding the clock” and thinking about what you loved as a child, teenager or young adult.
What made your heart sing before careers, kids, mortgages and responsibilities took over?
For Sharon, one answer was dance.
She had loved dancing when she was younger. Years later, she rediscovered it through Latin ballroom dancing and eventually began competing. She told me she started competing about eight years ago, won nationals in the bronze level for her age category and moved on to compete at the silver level.
Dance became something that belonged to her.
That’s important too.
Not every reinvention has to become a company.
Your next chapter might be a business. It might be a new career. It might be travel, art, volunteering, athletics, writing, mentoring or finally pursuing something you quietly wanted to do 30 years ago.
There isn’t one correct version of what comes next.
Sharon sees women over 50 taking all kinds of paths, from launching businesses to turning passions into income to returning to interests they set aside 15 or 20 years earlier.
You Don’t Need to Have It All Figured Out
I think this is where a lot of women get stuck.
We believe we need the complete plan before we begin.
What is the business?
What’s the website going to look like?
Do I need another degree?
What’s my title?
How will I make money?
What if it doesn’t work?
And suddenly the next chapter feels so enormous that we do nothing.
Sharon’s advice is much simpler.
Take a baby step.
You don’t need to have all your ducks in a row. You don’t need to feel completely ready. In fact, you probably won’t.
Start small enough that you can test something without investing huge amounts of time, money or energy. If it isn’t what you expected, you can pivot.
And mothers know how to pivot.
We’ve been doing it for years.
Sharon put it perfectly when she said that getting in there and doing it is what creates the competency, not the other way around.
You don’t become ready and then start.
Sometimes you start, and that’s how you become ready.
Get Help With the Things That Stop You
We also talked about something I think is especially important when you’re building something new.
You don’t have to do everything yourself.
Sharon and I both outsource parts of our podcasts. She works with a virtual assistant. There are people who can help with editing, organization, technology and all the little details that can become roadblocks when you’re trying to create something.
That matters because sometimes women abandon a great idea not because the idea isn’t good, but because one piece of executing it feels overwhelming.
You don’t have to become an expert in every piece of your next chapter.
Learn what you need to learn.
Get help with what makes sense to outsource.
And keep moving.
One of the phrases I live by is that imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.
Your first version doesn’t have to be your final version.
It just has to exist.
Failure Is Information
Of course, once you start taking action, there’s always the possibility that something won’t work.
Sharon doesn’t particularly like the word “failure.”
Her philosophy is that when something doesn’t work, it gives you information.
You learn.
You adjust.
You pivot.
“Failure is just information,” she said.
Imagine how differently we might approach this stage of life if we believed that.
A no isn’t necessarily the end.
A business idea that doesn’t work isn’t proof that you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.
Trying something and discovering you hate it isn’t wasted time.
It’s information.
Now you know.
And at this age, isn’t that one of our advantages?
We know life rarely unfolds in a perfectly straight line.
We’ve already survived pivots we never planned for.
We can handle another one.
This Isn’t Only for Stay-at-Home Moms
One thing I especially appreciated about our conversation is that this message goes far beyond women who stayed home to raise children.
Sharon made that point very clearly.
If you’re looking for a career reset after 50, the same strategies apply.
Maybe you’ve worked for the same company for 30 years and suddenly your position is gone.
Maybe you’re successful but no longer fulfilled.
Maybe you’re nearing retirement age and have absolutely no interest in retiring.
Maybe you’ve spent decades doing what made sense and now you’re finally asking what you actually want.
You still have a hidden resume.
It’s simply filled with a different collection of experiences.
The question remains the same.
What have all these years prepared you to do next?
You Are Starting From Experience
This is the message I hope women take from this episode.
You are not starting over.
I don’t care whether you’re 50, 55, 59, 65 or beyond.
You are bringing decades with you.
The careers.
The motherhood years.
The volunteer work.
The relationships.
The hard seasons.
The things that worked.
The things that absolutely did not.
The skills you were paid for and the ones nobody ever thought to put on a resume.
All of it counts.
Sharon created Mom to More around the belief that women can rediscover and reinvent themselves beyond the hands-on years of raising their children. Through her podcast, community, newsletter, mentorship and resources, she’s helping women recognize what they already have and imagine what could come next. And she believes every mom has the power to reinvent herself.
Maybe you don’t know exactly what your next chapter looks like yet.
That’s okay.
Start by looking backward differently.
Write down what you’ve done.
Identify the skills hiding inside those experiences.
Ask people you trust what they see in you.
Remember what you loved before life got so busy.
Then take one small step toward whatever is pulling at you.
Because after 50, you aren’t standing at the beginning with nothing.
You are standing at the beginning with experience.
And that might be the most powerful place to start.
Watch her episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvX4JhJ9nPs
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