EP 129: WHY Are You A Mom? Reigniting Passion and Purpose in Motherhood

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In this heartfelt episode, Audrey shares a powerful reflection on rediscovering purpose and reigniting passion as a mother and mission-driven woman. After hitting a personal “wall” while relaunching The Mission Driven Mom, she realized that clarity of purpose—knowing her why—was the missing ingredient.

Through honest journaling, prayer, and reflection, Audrey reconnected with her deeper motivations, finding renewed excitement for her work and calling. She invites listeners—especially mothers who feel unfulfilled or weary—to pause, reflect, and ask themselves: “Why am I a mom? Why did I choose this life? Where do I want to take my family?”

By rediscovering their “why,” moms can reclaim gratitude, purpose, and joy in their daily lives, and begin shaping the kind of family and legacy they truly desire.

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Transcript (AI generated)

 Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited that you have joined me.

When I was at the James Lindsay event—who I recently interviewed—there was an app we could use at the event to connect with other people attending. You filled it out and told a little about yourself, so I decided to do it.

I put some information in there, including a link to The Mission Driven Mom website. About halfway through the event, I got a message on the app from someone who was in attendance. He said, “Do not leave before I talk to you.”

Near the end, we finally connected, and he took me out into the hall. He said, “I have combed over your website, and you have perfectly described my wife. I’m a young attorney. I have a wife, and I can’t remember if he said two or three young children. We have arranged our lives so that my wife could be home with the children—that’s what we both wanted. And yet here we are, a few years in, and she is so unhappy. She’s struggling to get out of bed in the morning. She’s struggling to find joy in the day-to-day activities of mothering these small children, and I’m really, really worried about her.”

It reminded me of something one of our students said about her experience before she joined the Academy. She said, “I felt there was something missing. I kind of felt like I needed a little something more. I had a good marriage, cute kids, but I wasn’t feeling happy, and I didn’t know why. I knew I had every reason to be happy, but I felt there was something I needed to change—and I didn’t know what, or where to start, or what was wrong.”

So if you feel like these women did—if you are struggling to make it through your days with optimism, hope, and excitement; if you are feeling the drudgery that can sometimes come with lots of demands on your time and energy—and if you’ve been at this for a while and you’re starting to feel discouraged or lost, or if you feel like you have what you need to be happy and should be happy but you’re not—and you just can’t figure out why—

I want to tell you what happened to me recently and give you a tip—something that you can do that I think might turn things around for you.

Before I do that, I want to welcome you to the podcast and let you know that I’m the author of The Mission-Driven Life: Discover and Fulfill Your Unique Contribution to the World.

If you head over to themissiondrivenmom.com, you can grab the first three chapters of that book for free. I’d love to give those to you so you can learn all about the Seven Laws of Life Mission that we take moms through to help them overcome this drudgery and unhappiness—to rise above their circumstances, to ground their lives in truth, and to begin having influence in their communities.

It’s a beautiful process. So thank you for joining me today.

Also, if you’re brand new to the podcast, you may want to go back and start at the beginning and listen to some of those early episodes where I go in-depth about the Seven Laws of Life Mission. You’ll also hear lots of mission-driven stories about great men and women who lived those seven laws, and there are many other podcasts that may interest you.

Recently, I hit a wall with The Mission Driven Mom. I hit this wall a few years ago when we slowed things down and I stopped podcasting for a while—we kind of went quiet. But now we’re back, and we’re doing the things. It’s been really exciting as we’ve been relaunching the podcast and the Academy, and we’ve relaunched our yearly in-person event.

You can actually sign up for that on the website as well—just click on Conference. This year the theme is Mothers of Creation, so you can head over there and sign up before it fills up.

We’re relaunching, right? We’re in this phase, doing this—and I just hit this wall a few weeks ago. As I thought about it, I realized, “Oh, this looks very much like the wall I hit a couple years ago, which caused me to really go quiet and not know how to move forward.”

I was frustrated, overwhelmed. I didn’t feel up for the task. I didn’t really know how to proceed. So I paused. I moved everything to a new platform and thought, “Well, I’ll make this program available, and I’ll write books, and we’ll just see what happens,” because I didn’t know how to crack the code on letting more students in.

We had a bottleneck with mentors. Our business model wasn’t right. There were lots of problems.

So now, as we’re going through this 2.0 launch, everything’s going fine—but new opportunities keep coming, and I’m hesitating. My husband sat me down and said, “Why are you hesitating? We’re all in. We’re doing this. We’ve been putting all this energy in—we’re gaining momentum. Why are you hesitating?”

And you know, I felt frustrated. I felt worried. I felt overwhelmed. I felt all those feelings.

Then I did something that I’m going to recommend you do—something that has made such a huge difference. This isn’t the only time I’ve done this in my life, but it’s the most recent, and it’s made such a big difference that I really believe it will help you.

I decided to pause for a minute and dig deep—do some journaling, do some praying, a lot of pondering. Maybe go back to some of the things I’ve read, definitely spend time in scripture, and just ask myself the question: Why?

Why are we coming back to this? Why are we relaunching? Why do I want to do this? Why does it matter?

And the secondary question was: Where am I trying to get to? What is my why and what is my what? What is the goal? What is the objective? What does success look like? Where are we headed?

At first, it was really exciting to relaunch the Academy—to have women signing up again, coming into the community. We have this better platform, and it’s really exciting. And then we’re doing more things, and more is being asked of me—and more, and more. More responsibility is on my shoulders.

And I found that there are things about this new space that feel familiar—and worrisome.

So I took time—a couple of weeks. I still did all the things in life that needed doing, but instead of focusing on a bunch of MDM tasks, I just paused to be with myself and with God, and to really explore why this mattered.

Because for me, it’s not enough to just... I’m not in this to sell the Academy. If women do the Academy, that’s wonderful—and that’s why I put it on this new platform, so it would be available and anyone could sign up. But that alone doesn’t fill me with passion.

It doesn’t light me on fire.

One of the things I noticed is that I’ve been interviewed on quite a few podcasts recently. A few of them have been released, more are coming up. The conversations were beautiful and meaningful, and I meant everything I said—obviously, moms need to meet their real needs, love themselves better, discover their gifts, and recognize their God-given mission.

All of that is meaningful and beautiful—and the conversations were wonderful—but I recognized they weren’t full of passion.

In most instances, I wasn’t on fire. And that meant that the person interviewing me wasn’t on fire either.

And I’m just going to be straight with you: I don’t need to be doing this. My kids are about to finish leaving home. I have time and resources. I could do whatever I want for the rest of my life. And I knew that going back in—but I kept needing to evaluate: Why am I hesitating? Why am I not full of passion—excited to be doing this?

That doesn’t mean there can’t be stress or some down days and disappointments—it just means that overall, I had to ask: What’s wrong? Where am I trying to get to? What is my end game?

And I want to tell you—it was incredible.

I dug so deep that I discovered things about myself, about this organization, about where we’re headed, and about why I’m doing it—things I didn’t even know before. As I gained more clarity about what actually changed my life, what I’m truly trying to do for women, and how we as moms are really going to make a difference—

I can just feel the passion bubbling up again as I say this.

There are a lot of exciting things coming, and I am on fire about what we’re going to be releasing.

But with all that being said—what you can do right now, if you’re not feeling it as a mom—if you know you have every reason to be happy, if you live in comfortable circumstances, you’re not starving, you have resources, you can educate yourself, you have beautiful children… Maybe your marriage isn’t perfect, but your husband’s a good guy—and yet you just aren’t feeling excited to be alive each day. You’re not full of passion, and you don’t have clarity.

I would invite you to do what I’ve done—this time and many other times in my life—and really start journaling and asking yourself the question:

Why am I a mom?

Why did I want to become a mom? Why is this the life that I’ve chosen? And where am I trying to take us? What’s the destination I’m trying to reach with this family?

I really believe you’ll have some amazing breakthroughs if you just sit with that. Let your beautiful, marvelous mind percolate on it—however many days or weeks it needs. Keep asking God. Keep asking that question as you read scripture, as you go through your day. Maybe talk to your spouse, maybe talk to your friends—but most of all, be with yourself.

I was at a marriage retreat, and several good things happened there, but probably the most impactful was when they asked each of us to go off alone—with a pad of paper and a pen—and answer the question:

Why do I want to keep living?

One of the things we do in The Mission Driven Mom is learn how to get to fundamentals—to get to the first principles, the truths by which we can govern our lives. First principles tell us why—and when we know why, it’s much easier to find the energy, the motivation, and the passion to go discover the how.

That’s part of what I needed to do. I have found an even bigger why—something I’m even more excited and passionate about sharing with you—and concrete ways in which I can show my love for the women I serve. It’s so exciting. It’s so rewarding.

I’m ready to level up—to go learn principles that I haven’t yet known or haven’t been living in certain areas and facets of this movement.

And I can do that because I know why. Because I’ve outlined those first principles and meanings for myself.

So if you want more passion around your mothering, then go find out why.

Why did you want to become a mother? Go back to those moments when you made those choices—the excitement you felt to have these children—and ask yourself: Where am I trying to get to?

And journal, journal, journal—until some things become clear.

When we were at that marriage retreat and asked to journal about that question, it was incredible. As we reentered the room, there were these grown men—strong, tough guys—who had been weeping. Because when they thought about why do I want to keep on living, the beauty of the life they were already sitting in became really clear.

And you are sitting in the middle of a beautiful life. You are incredibly blessed. There are beautiful reasons why you chose to be a mother. If you can get back to some of those whys, it will start to clear the path for you.

If we can be a resource and a help—if this podcast or our Academy can help you on that journey to find the principles that will help you be the mom you want to be and get where you want to go—then I’m grateful.

But no matter what you do after you find your why, it’s vital that you dig deep and start asking yourself:

Why did I sign up for this? Why am I a mom? Where do I want to take my family?

It will reignite your passion. You’ll become far more clear. You’ll be much more grateful.

Just sit in it long enough—it will bubble up. God will answer you. Your marvelous mind will come up with clear answers, and you’ll find that you really are grateful to be where you are—grateful for the opportunities that surround you today.

And you may feel a little bit worried or overwhelmed about where you want to go—but there are answers when you have that why.

When we’re clear about first principles, it’s so much easier to go out, search for those principles, practice living them, and use them as the gateway to develop the kind of family and life we can be proud of.

So that’s my challenge to you:
Think about why you’re a mom and what success looks like for you.

Journal about it. And if you’re so inclined, share your thoughts below if you’re on YouTube, or send us a message. I would love to hear why you’re a mom and where you’re trying to get to.

I would love to know why this is the life you’ve chosen and what beautiful things you’ve discovered about it.

Because we’re in this together. We’re going to uplevel ourselves—and by doing so, uplevel our homes and our communities.

It’s a beautiful journey that we’re on together.

So thank you for joining me today. Please take the time to journal about those questions and share your answers with me. I would love to hear more about that.

And if this message was helpful for you today, please pass it on—go ahead and subscribe and leave a review. That really helps us grow and get the word out to other moms we may be able to serve.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and I will see you next time.