I’m writing this on a walk through a state park, pushing my 10-month-old in a stroller.

This is what reopening a coaching practice looks like for me right now. I get my steps. She gets the trees. I record raw thoughts on my AirPods and turn them into something I can actually publish later.

No office. No corporate calendar. No team I’m checking in on.

Just a slower pace, a baby who’s awake, and time to think out loud again.

The version I left

A few years ago, I was at Toast managing a B2B SaaS sales territory in Brooklyn. Theo was 2 when I became district manager. Clarence’s mom watched Theo while I worked. I closed deals between field visits with my reps. I led leadership meetings on Zoom from my home office with Theo’s toys just out of frame, and nobody knew.

Then everything broke at once. My fiancé’s mom had been caring for her own mother — my fiancé’s grandmother — alongside watching Theo. As her mother got worse, she told us she couldn’t keep doing both. Theo was home with us. My fiancé and I both worked from home, and I was still expected in the field with my reps. I was overloaded in a way I hadn’t yet learned how to name. My aunt died. A few weeks later, my fiancé’s grandmother died.

My last day at Toast was June 3, 2024. Theo was almost four. I’d been coaching word-of-mouth around a full-time job and a family for a while, and that wasn’t the season I was in anymore. By the end of August I was building the public side of the practice. I launched my website on January 13, 2025. Four days later, at a life celebration for what would have been my mother’s 75th birthday, I told my family I was 12 weeks pregnant.

I took clients up until two days before Lydia was born three weeks early.

Each version I left was the version that thought working harder was the answer. The version a lot of senior managers and directors I work with recognize. The one who looks fine on LinkedIn. The one who’s still in the role, still being promoted, still wondering what the quiet question is underneath.

Now I’m reopening from a stroller.

What I’m doing instead

I’m not going to pretend reopening from maternity leave is a romantic creative sabbatical. It’s not. It’s a stroller, a mom bun, a state park, and a 10-month-old who decides whether I get to finish the thought I started.

But here’s what’s different about this version of working: I’m not pretending I’m not a mother. I’m letting motherhood be the structure, not the apology.

Last week I worked out using the NEX Playground (paid link)console my five-year-old plays. It has a personal trainer game, Zumba, boxing training. I figured out I can do the workouts solo while a baby cheers from a high chair. I logged steps yesterday by walking the same loop I’m walking right now. I recorded the voice memo that became this post on those same AirPods.

My metric for a successful day used to be how many deals I closed. Now it’s different. Did the baby nap? Did I nap? Did I eat something that actually fed me? Did I move my body? Did I do one small thing for the business? Not all of those happen every day. That’s also fine.

I’m not doing less work. I’m doing different work, on a different schedule, from a different posture.

What this is doing for the coaching practice

The version of me reopening this practice now is not the version that wrote the first draft of it before Lydia was born. That version was still trying to look the part.

This version is just doing the work, in front of people, in the way I’d actually want my clients to do it.

When I tell a senior director that the way out of running on empty starts with slowing down enough to notice the patterns, that’s not a theoretical framework I learned in iPEC. It’s the thing I’m doing on this walk. It’s the thing the voice memo on my phone is doing right now.

I’m choosing to do the work visibly. Because that’s the version of this practice that I trust.

What’s actually getting built

I’m reopening for a small number of senior managers and directors who look fine on LinkedIn and are quietly questioning everything. I’m building toward a small number of right-fit clients who are ready for the work.

That’s the engine I’m building toward September 1.

In the meantime, I’m writing letters when I have something worth saying, walking with my daughter, working out via a console game, and doing the work in public so anyone considering this kind of coaching can see who they’d actually be working with.

A slower pace. A baby who’s awake. Time to think out loud again.

That’s the practice.

---

If this landed and you want to know when I’m reopening on September 1st, and the occasional letter that doesn’t make it here or to LinkedIn, get on the list.

[→ Get on the list]

No newsletter yet. No spam. Just letters when I have something worth saying.

Sharilyn Chavez is a leadership coach (CPC, ELI-MP, ACC, Trauma-Informed Certified) working with senior managers and directors who look fine on LinkedIn and are quietly questioning everything. Reopening September 1, 2026.