If I had to name one essence that runs through me like blood through my veins, it would be motherness. Not motherhood in the biological or traditional sense. Not about giving birth or raising children. But motherness as a way of being, an essence that informs how I live, how I care, how I lead, and how I love. Over time, many people have shared with me that I carry a certain motherness. Initially, I didn’t know what that meant.
After joining the Women Emerging India Expedition, I heard the term and started thinking about it. Slowly, I began to recognise it in the way I naturally hold others’ emotions, create space for people to feel safe, and instinctively step in when someone is in distress. Motherness doesn’t announce itself. It flows, sometimes gently and silently, and sometimes like a wave too large to ignore. It’s in the way I listen deeply, how I carry stories that aren’t mine, how I instinctively step up to nurture and guide those around me.
But I also see how this motherness can overtake me. It leads me to overextend, to blur my own boundaries, to take emotional responsibility for things I don’t need to carry. This essence of mine, though powerful, can become heavy. And I’ve begun to notice that it didn’t just come from my personality, it was inherited. Passed down from generations of women who had no choice but to mother everyone around them, even at the cost of themselves.
My mother embodies motherness in the most beautiful and overwhelming ways. She is all heart, sensitive, spiritual, self-sacrificing. I’ve watched her constantly place others before herself, even when she was struggling. My grandmothers, both maternal and paternal, were the same. They led their homes with strength and compassion, but also with unspoken exhaustion. They were the backbone of their families, but rarely did anyone ask who held them.
Growing up as the only girl in a house full of boys, I was seen as the one who would understand, listen, and manage emotional crises. That early conditioning shaped how I navigated leadership at home and work where I often became the one who holds everyone else together. Not because I chose to. And over time, I began to internalize that expectation. I began to believe that if I wasn’t holding things together for others, I wasn’t doing enough. That if someone was hurting and I couldn’t help them, I had somehow failed. That if I couldn’t keep everything and everyone safe, I had lost my way. And yet, in this same essence lies the heart of how I lead. I care deeply about people, systems, ideas, and impact.
I notice what others don’t. I remember birthdays, patterns, silences. I’m the one who gets the late-night calls, the emergency messages, the quiet breakdowns behind the confident faces.This is what everyday leading looks like, quiet, unseen, yet profoundly impactful. I’ve been the emotional anchor for friends, teammates, and even leaders.I’ve come to see this as emotional labor in leadership, an invisible weight many women carry without recognition. I hold, listen, reassure. But sometimes, I hold too much. There have been many moments when I’ve felt drained not by the doing, but by the holding. I have struggled with burnout that looked like care. I’ve noticed how my desire to support turns into micromanagement, how my wish to help becomes a burden I silently carry. I don’t always say no when I need to. I overinvest. I assume emotional labour that wasn’t mine to begin with. It’s a constant negotiation between caregiving and boundaries, a tension I’m learning to name and navigate. And more than anything, I constantly ask myself, “How did I make them feel?” That question so simple on the surface is the thread that ties my leadership to my motherness. Because at the heart of it, I want to leave people better than I found them. I want them to feel seen, not judged. Guided, not fixed. Encouraged, not corrected.
But in trying to do so, I sometimes disappear in the process. What’s become clearer to me is that this instinct is not purely emotional, it’s social. It’s structural. It’s the conditioning we carry as women, especially as first daughters, first changemakers, first boundary-breakers. It’s being raised to believe that care is our default. That emotional work is our domain. That leadership, for women, must come with self-sacrifice.I’m learning that feminist leadership isn’t about being everything for everyone, it’s about leading with awareness, choice, and care. I’ve begun to unlearn that. Slowly, cautiously. I have not reached there yet, but I will. Recently, I spoke to two guides as part of the Women Emerging expedition. One of them shared that motherness isn’t her essence.
But as she described her way of leading, with care, mentorship, and thoughtful challenge, I couldn’t help but notice echoes of motherness in her words. The other spoke of sacred equality, of following over leading. Her philosophy reminded me that not everyone chooses to carry the emotional load. Some refuse. Some question it. Some reimagine it. It made me reflect on my own path. Do I feel responsible because I truly want to be? Or because I’ve been taught to be? Is my motherness a conscious choice or a generational inheritance? And if it is both, then how do I keep its beauty and shed its burden?
The answer, I’m learning, is in how I lead myself. This, to me, is self-leadership, tending to myself with the same commitment I offer others. If I can’t care for myself with the same grace I extend to others, then I’m not truly embodying the leadership I believe in. I’m beginning to see that mothering others is incomplete unless I am also mothering myself.There is deep healing and leadership in that shift, one that invites me to belong to myself, too. So what does that look like? It means setting boundaries without apology. It means letting people sit with their own discomfort instead of cushioning it.
It means listening without always needing to respond. It means saying, “I’m here if you need,” instead of, “Let me carry this for you.” It means allowing myself to be held, not just to hold. Motherness doesn’t have to mean depletion. It can mean sacred structure, radical presence, and tough love with tenderness. I want to lead with that kind of care, one that includes me too. Motherness is not a role I play. It is how I move through the world. But I no longer want to confuse care with control, giving with guilt, presence with pressure. I now see nurturing as power, not weakness, and that power must first flow inward. I am learning to mother myself too. And perhaps that is the most powerful kind of leadership I will ever practice.
About the Author:
Poonam Chakraborty is a changemaker with 8+ years of experience empowering youth through organisations like Teach For India. A survivor and the first girl in her village to attend an English-medium school, she transforms pain into purpose, championing education, resilience, and community change. As Operations Head at Kick Off Solutions, she uplifts girl leaders through sport and storytelling.
