Designing a New Season: Returning to Freelance with Purpose and Balance

After nine years of running a thriving freelance design business, I hit a wall. Juggling client work while raising four boys eventually became too much. I had built something I was proud of, but trying to do it all at once left me overwhelmed. I realized I couldn’t sustain the pace, and something had to give. So, I stepped away. I chose to pause, knowing it was the right decision for my family and my sanity.

For a while, my creative energy was focused elsewhere: into parenting, into presence, into a kind of nonlinear problem-solving that doesn’t show up in wireframes. But that energy never left. It shifted, simmered, reformed.

And now, I’m back… I have a renewed sense of what matters in the work I do and the way I want to show up.

Now, after a full year off—and with all four of my boys heading to school in the fall—I’m stepping back into freelance. Of course, balance looks different now. I’m designing within the margins—between school drop-offs and late-night bursts of energy. But, for the first time in almost a decade, I’ll have dedicated hours to focus, create, and collaborate. You can find me coffee shop hopping from 9am to 2pm, Monday through Friday.

Through it all, I’ve learned that the constraints of motherhood can sharpen creativity. And when time is limited, intention becomes everything, so I intend to make those hours count.