CEO Mama Newsletter: 28th Edition

Hey ,

There’s a kind of knowing that doesn’t live in your head. It lives in your body.
It shows up in small moments - a pause before you say yes, a tightening in your chest, a quiet pull to shift direction, even when everything looks fine on the surface.

You’ve felt it. As a mother. As a leader. As a woman building something in a world that doesn’t always trust softness.

They call it “mom gut.”
But what it really is... is strategic intuition.

Think about it. Your toddler is across the room, quietly playing. Nothing dramatic is happening - no cry, no chaos, no obvious red flag. But something in you shifts. You stand up. You walk over. And just in time, you catch the fall. Or you stop the crayon from hitting the wall. Or you scoop them up right before the meltdown begins.

You didn’t need anyone to tell you something was wrong. You didn’t wait for data.
You just knew.

And that same kind of “knowing” shows up in business too.
But most of us have been taught to ignore it there.

You might be in a conversation with a potential hire or client. On paper, it’s perfect. They say all the right things. There’s no logical reason to hesitate. But your chest tightens. Something in your body says no.
You leave the meeting and think: I can’t explain it… but they’re not it.

And then the questioning starts.
Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe you’re overthinking it. Maybe you should ask someone else what they think, just to be sure. Because that’s what so many of us have been taught to do: second-guess our own knowing.

But that’s not indecisiveness.
That’s not anxiety.
That’s not “just a feeling.”
It’s refined pattern recognition. And it’s one of the sharpest tools you have.

Motherhood teaches you to read signals before they’re spoken.
Business teaches you to trust what you can prove.
The most powerful CEOs I know? They do both.

Most of us didn’t grow up being encouraged to trust our inner voice. We were praised for being thoughtful, logical, well-reasoned and able to explain ourselves clearly.
So even now, when that quiet knowing rises up, it can feel unfamiliar.
This isn’t about learning something new. It’s about remembering something we’ve always had.

And when motherhood cracks open your identity, when the way you once led or created or made decisions starts to shift, it can feel deeply disorienting.

One of the hardest things about becoming a mother isn’t the logistics - it’s the identity shift. You don’t lose yourself, exactly, but the way you once led, created, decided…it changes. And that can feel destabilizing, especially when your work used to feel like the most grounded part of you.

Maternal intuition isn’t mystical. It’s biological. Psychological. Neural.

In fact, research shows that intuition is often the result of rapid, unconscious pattern recognition built through experience. Not magic, but expertise moving faster than conscious logic.

And for mothers, that expertise compounds fast.
You’re not making things up - you’re making sense of subtle patterns you’ve seen a thousand times before:

• You can feel friction on your team before conflict erupts.

• You can sense a client isn’t aligned before the sales call ends.

• You know when a launch plan looks good on paper but feels off in your gut.

• You pivot early - not because the numbers tell you to, but because your body already has.

That’s not guesswork. That’s embodied intelligence.

And when you treat your body as part of your leadership system, everything sharpens.
Your vision.
Your timing.
Your boundaries.
Your clarity.

Whether you're building a company, leading a team, or running the show solo - your ability to sense what's happening beneath the surface can make or break your next move.

Because most of entrepreneurship isn’t black and white. It’s a thousand micro-decisions every week:

Should I hire this person, or wait?
Do I push forward with this launch, or pause?
Is this offer still aligned, or am I holding onto it out of fear?
Do I need rest, or am I just afraid to be seen?

These aren’t questions data can always answer. They require discernment. The ability to read nuance. To feel the difference between tension that’s stretching you and tension that’s warning you.

That’s what your intuition gives you.

And the more you trust it, the more precise you become.
In your messaging. In your leadership presence. In your hiring.
In the way you say yes with conviction, and no without guilt.

This isn’t about running your business on emotion. It’s about letting your embodied wisdom sit at the table with your strategy.
Because the truth is: your body is often the first place your business speaks.

Your nervous system is always scanning.
It’s taking in far more than your conscious mind can process.
But when you’re in fight-or-flight…when you’re anxious, depleted, overwhelmed - those signals get scrambled. You confuse fear with intuition. Urgency with clarity.

The more regulated your system is, the more cleanly your inner voice comes through.

So the next time you feel stuck, spiraling in indecision, try this:

Pause.
Breathe.
Ask your body:

Where’s the yes?
Where’s the no?
What’s true beneath the noise?

Say it out loud if you have to:
“I don’t need more proof. I need more trust in what I already know.”

And then move from there.

This week, lead from your knowing.

What are you sensing about your business that you haven’t said out loud yet?

What decision are you delaying - not because it’s wrong, but because it doesn’t make logical sense on paper?

Where are you following someone else’s path instead of your own?

You already have the map.
You’ve been building it quietly for years, through motherhood, through presence, through late-night pivots and instinctual calls you couldn’t explain at the time.

Not everyone will understand it.
But it wasn’t made for them.
It was made for you.
And it’s been speaking to you all along.

The only question is:
Will you follow it?

P.S. If you’ve been craving a space where your intuition is seen as data, not dismissed as fluff - the CEO Mama Membership was built for you. Inside, we blend strategy with embodiment, and support you in making decisions that feel right, not just look good on paper. Apply here to be considered for our next round of enrollment.