The Gap That Built Me

On motherhood, marketing and why depth doesn't show up on a resumé.

Kaitlyn David, author of Exhale for Business Owners, spent over 15 years in media before stepping away for motherhood — and will be the first to tell you that re-entry is no joke. She thankfully says the quiet parts out loud, and that’s exactly why I love her perspective in this space.

Her sweet spot now is founder-led businesses — the kind of work that matches who she is herself. Strong core values, a solid culture, and a growth mindset. We found each other for a reason.

April 💋

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I was always the one who got it done. In every job I held in my 20s and 30s, that was the reputation I carried.

Move fast, read the room, deliver. I didn’t need much direction and I didn’t need much praise, though I got plenty of both. My annual reviews were filled with glowing feedback that, honestly, bored me.

I wanted critique.

I wanted to be pushed.

I knew I was capable of more and I wanted someone to show me where.

Recently, I reconnected with a former VP at one of my favorite jobs. Frankly, I was amazed that she even remembered me when she commented on my LinkedIn post. But then, she reached out and asked for a call to catch-up. When we got on the call, she said, “We all will always remember you as the person that would get it done. If we needed support, we would say give it to Kaitlyn, she’ll get it done.”

I was proud of that. Then, I sat with it, because that identity—the one I had spent 15 years building—was also a cage I had constructed for myself. When I chose to step back from my career to be present for my daughters, the praise stopped. And with it, so did my sense of self.

I vividly remember being in the kitchen of my Philadelphia row home trying to make lunch for my toddlers, empty the dishwasher, and pushing publish on my next social media post all at once. I was searching for the next business idea in order to feel worthy of having this time with my children, when I actually didn’t know what I was trying to prove or who I was anymore.

Who am I if I’m not driving something forward? Who am I if no one is calling on me to deliver?

Those weren’t rhetorical questions. I genuinely didn’t know the answers. And the not knowing sat heavy in a way I hadn’t expected.

I had chosen this.

I wanted to be present for my daughters.

And still, I struggled to just be.

It became clear that before I could build anything new, I needed to understand who I was outside of what I produced.

So that became the work. Not the kind with deliverables and timelines, but the slower, harder kind, the kind that doesn’t show up on a resumé.

What the Resumé Gap Didn’t Account For

When I started rebuilding my business, I came back with something I hadn’t had in my 20s: perspective. I did the inner work, I understood people more deeply, and I could read a room in ways that only come from having lived through seasons that humbled you. I was, genuinely, a better strategist and a better leader than I had ever been.

What I didn’t expect was that the market didn’t have a box for that.

The industry had moved. Marketing had splintered into hyper-specialized roles. Brands weren’t looking for generalists with depth, they were chasing whoever had the most recent niche and the most optimized portfolio. And the women building those portfolios? Many of them had graduated college while I was taking my motherhood pause.

I watched them from the sidelines on LinkedIn. Bold, building incredible careers and businesses of their own. And I felt something I wasn’t proud of: a quiet sting of comparison that crept in before I could stop it.

There was a moment on social media where I was following a 20-something woman who was courageously building her marketing business. She seemed so effortless and it appeared that the clients were just rolling in. Her experience was exactly what was landing her these niche jobs. I was triggered…maybe a bit jealous? Why does she have all of this and I can’t? Have I wasted my career?

I want to be honest about that feeling because I think a lot of women in my position have it and won’t say so. It wasn’t about wanting them to fail. It was about suddenly feeling like the game had changed while I was gone and no one had told me the new rules.

But here’s what I came back to: the game has always changed. Trends always shift. What reads as cutting-edge today is background noise in three years.

Where The Market Is (Still) Missing The Mark

I’ve spent the last year building a body of work around what I call becoming a lasting obsession — the idea that the brands that endure aren’t the ones that chase every trend, but the ones that are built from a deep and clear identity. They know who they are before they know what they are selling. That grounded confidence is what creates staying power.

And when I look at the years I spent away from corporate work: the coaching, the reflection, the identity work, the quiet accumulation of perspective, I realize that I was, without fully knowing it, doing the same thing.

Turns out, I wasn’t falling behind. I was going deep.

The resumé gap was never a gap. It’s the place where I was built.

The market may not have a checkbox for that yet. Some brands will keep chasing whatever is newest and most optimized and most in the moment. But the ones worth building with, the ones that are trying to create something that lasts, they’ll recognize that depth is exactly what they’re missing.

I’m not the person who gets it done in spite of my pause. I’m the person who gets it done because of it.

And that’s not something you can optimize in a few short years. You have to live it.

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