Confessions of a Self-Employed Mom: Rebuilding My Family, My Life, and My Photography Business in My 30s

If you had asked me ten years ago what my life would look like in my thirties, I probably would have given you a very predictable answer. I imagined something stable and straightforward: a steady career, a settled family life, and the general sense that everything was moving forward in a clear direction.

Instead, the past several years have looked very different. There has been a divorce, a career shift, a fair amount of personal reflection about the family dynamics I grew up with, and the slow process of rebuilding both my home life and my professional life at the same time.

Like many women, I spent a long time trying to make things work inside a marriage that ultimately wasn’t healthy. During those years I was also trying to move my own life forward in ways that mattered to me. I worked on finishing my bachelor’s degree while raising small children, and I tried more than once to start building a photography business. Photography had always been something that felt natural to me, something I genuinely loved.

The problem was that the support for those efforts just wasn’t there. Looking back, it was the kind of dynamic that shows up in a lot of divorce stories. Whenever I tried to pursue something I was good at or excited about, it seemed to create tension rather than encouragement. School, photography, anything that required time and confidence often came with resistance instead of support. Over time that kind of environment slowly chips away at your ability to believe in your own direction.

I spent a lot of energy during those years trying to keep the peace instead of fully investing in the things I cared about. At the time it felt easier to make myself smaller than to constantly push against that tension.

When the marriage ended, the reality of the situation changed quickly. Passion projects are wonderful, but when you are responsible for paying bills and raising kids, practical decisions come first. I needed a paycheck that showed up every week, so I stepped into what most people would consider a “real job.” Stability mattered more than anything else at that point in my life.

For a while, that job did exactly what it needed to do. It provided consistent income and allowed me to rebuild some financial and emotional stability while I figured out what the next phase of life might look like. During that same period I also worked for my dad’s company, which ended up forcing me to look much more honestly at some family patterns and dynamics that I had never fully examined before.

That kind of reflection takes time. It tends to unfold slowly while you are still juggling everyday responsibilities like work schedules, parenting, and simply keeping life moving forward.

At the same time, my kids were growing older, and parenting was entering a new stage of its own.

Right now my youngest is nearing six years old, which means he has fully entered the age where testing boundaries appears to be both a hobby and a full-time research project. Everything is a negotiation. Every instruction is an opportunity for discussion. Rules are treated less like instructions and more like suggestions that deserve further analysis.

From a developmental standpoint, I’m sure this is completely normal.

From the standpoint of someone trying to run a business or complete any focused task, it can be impressively distracting.

I can sit down with a clear plan to answer emails, edit a photo gallery, or write something for my website, and within minutes there is a question coming from the other room, a request for help finding something, or a sudden need to show me a drawing that absolutely cannot wait five minutes. Occasionally it is something genuinely important. Other times it is about snacks, missing shoes, or a very urgent bathroom situation that somehow emerges at the exact moment I finally opened my laptop.

Anyone who claims that working from home with young children is calm and uninterrupted either has extraordinary luck or a much quieter household than mine.

The funny thing is that I know I am not the only mom living in this phase. There are a lot of women quietly building businesses while raising children at the same time. Many of them love their kids, love their families, and are grateful for the life they have, but they are also trying to build something for themselves. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, even though society sometimes likes to pretend they are.

Loving your children deeply does not mean you stop wanting to grow as a person. It does not mean you stop wanting to use your talents or pursue the things that bring you energy and purpose.

I think a lot of mothers feel that tension but don’t say it out loud very often.

There are plenty of days when I find myself looking forward to the point when both of my kids are fully in school and a little more independent during the day. Not because I want them to grow up faster than they should, but because building something meaningful requires focus and mental space, and those things are sometimes hard to come by when small people need your attention every ten minutes.

Most of the progress I make right now happens in small pockets of time. Work gets done between school schedules, sports practices, snack requests, and bedtime routines. Emails get answered from the car. Editing happens late at night after the house is finally quiet.

It isn’t glamorous, but it is real.

In the middle of all of that, I have found myself returning to something that has been part of my life for a very long time: photography.

I bought my first camera when I was thirteen years old with money I had saved myself. From that point forward I was the kid who brought a camera everywhere. Family events, school activities, random afternoons with friends—I wanted to document everything. I didn’t understand photography as a business at that age. I just knew I loved it.

That love never really went away. Even during seasons when life was busy or complicated, the camera was still there. It was always one of the few things that made my brain quiet down and focus.

Coming back to photography in my thirties feels different than it did when I was younger. At this stage of life I understand more about how fragile and meaningful everyday moments actually are. I understand how quickly seasons of life change, and how important it is to capture the pieces of life that seem ordinary at the time but later become the memories families hold onto.

Rebuilding a business while raising children is not always neat or efficient. Progress can be slow. Some days it feels like you are taking two steps forward and one step back.

But if there is one thing I have learned through all of this, it is that rebuilding your life in your thirties is not a failure. In many ways it is the first time you get to build it intentionally.

For any mom out there who loves her children, loves her family, but also feels a pull to create something for herself, you are not selfish for wanting that. You are a whole person, not just a role.

You can be a devoted parent and still have dreams, talents, and ambitions that deserve space in your life.

Right now I am raising two boys who are growing into curious, opinionated little humans who are constantly testing the boundaries of the world around them. At the same time, I am rebuilding a photography business that has been part of my life since I was a teenager.

Some days that combination feels chaotic. Some days it feels exhausting.

But more and more often, it also feels like progress.

These days, photography has become one of the ways I reconnect with people and their stories. If you're looking for someone to capture your family's real moments, you can learn more about my family photography sessions here.