When Motherhood Changes Your Career | | Monica Virga Alborno’s Story
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The desire for motherhood career changes can hit us so hard and yet it’s a question that many women quietly whisper to themselves after becoming mothers.
“Do I still want the life I was working so hard to build?”
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes motherhood strengthens ambitions and sends some mothers back into work with renewed purpose.
But sometimes it changes us and not because as a mother we’ve become less capable or less ambitious, but because our definition of success has shifted.
That was certainly true for my guest, Monica Virga Alborno, on the latest episode of the Real Life. Real Kitchen. Podcast.
Meet Monica Virga Alborno
Monica Virga Alborno spent years building an extraordinary international career as an energy engineer, working for a Fortune 500 company across four continents and managing operations in almost 30 countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Along the way, she developed the leadership, resilience and strategic thinking needed to thrive in one of the world’s most demanding industries.
On paper, she had everything many of us are taught to aspire to: responsibility, travel, influence and an impressive career trajectory.
Then she became a mother.
This isn’t a story about walking away from success. It’s about recognising that motherhood can quietly reshape what success means. The ambitions that once felt so important don’t necessarily disappear, but they are often reordered as family, home and relationships take on a new significance.
Following a miscarriage, a traumatic birth during the pandemic and the arrival of her daughter, Monica found herself asking a question that I suspect many mothers will recognise:
“What kind of life do I actually want to create for my family?”
That question eventually led her to found Wanderwild Family Retreats, bringing together everything she had learnt throughout her corporate career with a new vision of family life centred on nature, community and genuine connection.
When Success Stops Looking Like Success with a Motherhood Career Change
One of the things I appreciated most about Monica’s honesty was that she never suggested her corporate career had been a mistake. Far from it.
She loved many aspects of her work, and she speaks warmly about the opportunities it gave her. Yet motherhood invited her to pause long enough to notice that the life she had been building no longer aligned quite so neatly with the life she now wanted.
I think that’s an experience many working mothers quietly carry when considering a motherhood career change.
The goals that motivated us in our twenties don’t always remain our goals in our thirties or forties. Children have a remarkable way of bringing our deepest values into sharper focus. For some women, that means returning to a career they love with renewed purpose. For others, it means reducing hours, changing roles or beginning an entirely new chapter.
None of those choices is inherently better than another.
The important thing is that they are made intentionally rather than by default.
Motherhood Changes Careers; It Doesn’t End Them
Listening to Monica’s story, it struck me that she hadn’t abandoned everything she had learnt in corporate life.
She had simply redirected it.
The leadership skills, strategic thinking and ability to bring people together that she developed in the energy industry became the foundations of Wanderwild Family Retreats, a business dedicated to helping families reconnect through nature, community and slower rhythms of life.
Rather than seeing motherhood as an interruption to her career, Monica began to view it as the catalyst for building something entirely new. I found that perspective deeply encouraging.
As modern mothers, it’s a common fear that stepping away from work, or even slowing down for a season, means we’re losing momentum, status and purpose in the world.
Yet so often we’re gaining wisdom, resilience and skills that become the building blocks for whatever comes next… something that often serves family life rather than the other way round.
There Is More Than One Way to Be Ambitious
One of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with Monica was that ambition doesn’t disappear when we become mothers. It simply changes shape.
Modern culture often assumes that success follows a single path: keep climbing, keep achieving, keep moving upwards. But women don’t always live in straight lines. We live in seasons.
There may be a season for building a career, a season for pouring ourselves into young children, a season for growing a business around family life, and later, when the nest begins to empty, a season for taking on new professional challenges with fresh energy and perspective.
These seasons aren’t in competition with one another, and they don’t all have to happen at once.
For some women, ambition today looks like building a thriving business that fits around family life. For others, it looks like creating a home where children feel deeply loved, safe and secure. And for others, it may be laying foundations now for work they will return to more fully in the years ahead.
Monica’s story reminded me that our gifts don’t disappear when we become mothers. They mature. They deepen. Sometimes they are expressed quietly for a time before emerging in entirely new ways.
Motherhood has a way of inviting us to stop asking, “What does the world expect me to achieve next?” and start asking, “What am I being called to build in this season of my life?”
Listen to the Full Conversation
In our full conversation, Monica and I also discuss:
- her fascinating career in the global oil industry;
- what birth trauma taught her about slowing down;
- how Wanderwild Family Retreats was born; and
- why she believes children should be welcomed into spaces traditionally reserved for adults.
If the idea of travelling more intentionally with your family intrigues you, I’ve also written a companion article exploring Monica’s vision for Wanderwild Family Retreats, what makes them different, and why she believes children belong at the heart of the wellness movement.
I’d love you to read that next.
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