Unscripted

You asked for help, and you meant it. Then someone loads the dishwasher in a way you would never load it, or forgets the snacks, or sits down to answer an email you’ve already drafted in your head, and you find yourself typing the reminder text and deleting it before you hit send.

You’re tired of being the one who remembers everything. So why does handing any of it over feel so hard?

I’m Andi Salcedo, coach, working mother, and founder of Momtoring. In this episode I start with a playground trip and four very helpful words I almost said to my husband. It was much harder not to say them than I expected. Then I tell you about a school pickup mix up that sent my mind somewhere a calendar error had no business going.

Along the way I share a way of talking about myself that I learned from Internal Family Systems, the model developed by Richard Schwartz in No Bad Parts, and why “just let go” and “just delegate” never worked for me.

This one is for the working mom who has read the mental load articles, shared the calendar, and still finds her hand reaching for the thing she just handed off. It closes with a short practice that stays gentle on purpose, because some of this work belongs with someone in the room with you.

This episode continues the conversation from Episode 12, The Default Parent Dilemma: Why Everyone Still Comes to Mom First?

If you want that someone in the room, you can work with me at momtoring.com.

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

Your kid walks past another perfectly capable adult to ask you where something is. The school needs one parent email, and yours is the one that goes on the form before anyone has discussed it. Something gets forgotten by somebody else, and somehow you still feel the pull to explain it, fix it, or wonder what you should have done differently.

If you're a working mom who has made the shared list, explained the plan clearly, and handed something off the right way, you probably know the feeling of doing everything right and still being the default parent.

In this episode, Andi Salcedo, coach, working mother, and founder of Momtoring, goes back to a bag she packed the night before a family reunion. She set it by the front door, made a plan with her husband, and wasn't even home when the car left. When her daughter got home from the trip, she said one sentence that Andi has been turning over ever since.

Andi also talks about a school cafeteria form she filled out this summer, and the second she caught her own hand moving before she had decided anything.

This one is for the working mom who is tired of being the answer when something goes wrong, and would like to hear someone say it out loud. Maybe your kids come to you first. Maybe your name is the one on every form.

So why does it still land on you when you did everything right? And what would it take for it to land somewhere else?

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You could list everything you're carrying in your sleep. Some nights you probably do.

The camp form due Friday. The work project that got bigger without anyone asking if you wanted it bigger. The birthday you're tracking, the appointment only you remember, the thing you keep meaning to hand off and never do. It all feels equally important, which is exactly why none of it ever gets to go.

So you keep carrying it. You tell yourself you'll sort it out when things calm down. They don't calm down. You just get better at carrying more.

Here's what nobody hands you along with the job, the kids and the calendar. A way to decide.

Episode 10 gave you language for what you're carrying. This one is about what comes after you can see it all laid out and still don't know what to do with it. Andi shares a question a client asked her that she didn't have a quick answer for, and the surprising place they started.

From there, she introduces four ways to sort what you're carrying: Keep, Drop, Delegate and Temper—the last one being the place many of us have never learned to recognize.

Before the episode ends, Andi walks you through a live sort of one thing you're carrying right now. Pick something small. You may know sooner than you think.

What is on your list right now that you've never asked whether it belongs there?

Explore The Edit in our website: www.momtoring.com/the-edit

And join the waitlist for our next The Edit event. We will have an in person event in Hoboken and an online event during October. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3sAH1ndpn-5cGhKNKI1YMCEE9DzmpHkGTUGC4HAOMirccCg/viewform

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You hand something off. A task, an errand, a whole afternoon of pickups. And five minutes later you're just as tired as you were before, like nothing moved.

If you're a working mother who delegates and still ends every day carrying the exact same weight, this episode is about why that keeps happening, and it's not because your partner isn't capable, and it's not because you didn't ask clearly enough.

It starts on an ordinary weeknight, packing up an entire household for a summer move, four birthday parties stacked into ten days, and a question that's supposed to be the nice one. What can I help you with. That question is where this episode begins, and where a much bigger pattern gets named, the difference between the part of a task anyone can see and the two invisible parts that came before it, the noticing and the planning, that never actually get handed to anyone.

Andi shares the framework that finally gave her language for what she'd been carrying for years, borrowed from Eve Rodsky's Fair Play, why rest never resolves this kind of tired, and the real difference between taking responsibility and taking over responsibility. There's also a story about the one time she managed to hand the whole thing off, not just the task, and what it took to let it be done differently than she would have done it.

This isn't an episode about doing less. It's about noticing what you're still holding that you never actually agreed to hold.

If you've ever felt exactly as tired five minutes after asking for help as you did before you asked, this one is for you.

A special thank you to Eve Rodsky, whose groundbreaking book Fair Play inspired part of this episode and sparked the beginning of a profound shift in my own life. I'm deeply grateful for the perspective, language, and courage it gave me to start creating change.

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You measure whether you're doing this right by something you don't actually control. A mood. A reaction. Whether your kid is happy with you in this exact moment.

And if that's the measure, you're going to fail constantly. Not because you're doing anything wrong. Because moods aren't evidence. They're weather.

A few weeks ago, Andi told her daughter she was leaving for the evening, and got a look that landed right in the middle of her chest. What happened next is not the story you'd expect. She didn't cave, and she didn't carry it home with her either.

This episode is about two feelings working moms have been treating as one, and what changes the moment you stop confusing them.

Topics Covered: working mom guilt, mom guilt, working mom mental health, ambitious working mom, mental load, boundaries working mom, default parent, working mom identity, mom self compassion

Meditation music by Natureseye from Pixabay

Want to have clarity about your values? Go to www.momtoring.com and download the exercise.

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You have the promotions. The glowing feedback. The degrees. The proof.

So why does that quiet voice still whisper, "It's not enough"?

In this deeply personal episode of Unscripted, Andi Salcedo explores the invisible filter that causes ambitious women to dismiss their accomplishments while holding tightly to every mistake, misstep, and moment of self-doubt.

Through stories from her years at Procter & Gamble, an unexpected realization during a job search in San Francisco, and powerful insights about the relationship between achievement and self-worth, Andi reveals why more evidence of your success has never been enough to silence the inner critic.

Because the problem was never the facts.

It was the lens.

This episode will help you recognize the "paragraph" you've been living inside, understand why confidence isn't the missing piece, and practice a simple visualization to zoom out and reconnect with the fuller truth of who you are.

If you've ever felt like a fraud despite everything you've accomplished, this conversation is for you.

Because one hard season, one imperfect moment, or one difficult chapter was never the whole book.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

• Why high-achieving women struggle to internalize their successes
• How self-doubt and ambition often come from the same place
• The hidden filter that makes praise disappear and mistakes stick
• Why more accomplishments don't automatically create confidence
• How to "zoom out" and see the bigger picture of your life
• A guided visualization to reconnect with the truth of your story

Topics Covered: working mom podcast, imposter syndrome, high-achieving women, self-worth, self-doubt, ambitious mothers, working motherhood, confidence, identity, perfectionism, inner critic, achievement, mindset, emotional resilience, personal growth, motherhood and career, women in leadership, self-compassion, career women, success mindset, identity shifts, overachievers, burnout prevention, Momtoring, Andi Salcedo, Unscripted podcast

Meditation music by Leigh Robinson from Pixabay

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You probably have a word for yourself.

Type A. The one who can handle everything. The helpful one. The strong one.

Maybe it arrived as a compliment and stayed as a cage. Maybe it landed so early you stopped noticing it was there at all.

But it's running. Underneath the decisions you make before you've thought them through. The things you reach for. The things you quietly write off before anyone else gets the chance to weigh in.

In high school, Andi's classmates used one word to describe her.

Miedosa. Fearful.

And here's the uncomfortable part.

They weren't entirely wrong.

In this episode, Andi explores what happens when something true becomes too true. When one real thing about you quietly becomes the whole definition, you live inside. And what that definition has been deciding for you, without your permission, without you noticing, ever since.

What happens when one true thing about you becomes the only thing that counts?

To check out the final exercise we share in this episode go to http://www.momtoring.com/why-working-moms-stay-stuck-episode-7

Topics Covered: working mom identity, limiting beliefs working mom, working mom self-worth, working mom mental health, inherited beliefs, reclaiming identity motherhood, ambitious working mom, overworking, high-functioning moms, over-achiever moms

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay

You finally get the quiet.

The time.

The space you've been saying you need.

And then something unexpected happens.

You don't quite know what to do with it.

In this episode, Andi explores identity, working motherhood, and the quiet ways we can slowly lose connection with ourselves... not all at once, but in tiny, reasonable decisions that build over time.

If you've ever thought:

"I'll get back to myself when life calms down..."

This conversation is for you.

If something in this season landed for you, this is the episode to share.

Topics covered: working mom identity crisis, losing yourself in motherhood, working mom self care, finding yourself after kids, mom mental health, reclaiming identity motherhood, working mom overwhelm, working mom burnout, working mom coach

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. New episodes every week.

If something landed for you, share it with another working mom who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, find me at www.momtoring.com or come say hi on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I'd love to hear what cracked open for you.

Questions, reflections, or just want to reach out? Write to me at [email protected].

Music by prettyjohn1 from Pixabay