We have all seen the memes about moms waiting for AI to take over their jobs. The mental load of motherhood has become a cultural shorthand for the invisible labor women carry every day. Doctor’s appointments. School schedules. Birthday parties. Grocery lists. Work deadlines. And the constant question humming in the background: Am I doing enough?
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For Sarah Dooley, founder of AI-Empowered Mom, that question became deeply personal. What began as survival mode with three children under 18 months turned into a mission to help parents use AI as a partner in managing modern family life.

​When “Having It All Under Control” Falls Apart

When Sarah and I first met years ago, she was a business executive who later became a technology consultant, traveling for work. No children. Structured life. Systems in place. “When we first met, I thought I had it all under control,” she told me. “I didn’t have any kids. I think I was married maybe at that time, traveling as a technology consultant. But life seemed pretty well controlled.”

Then motherhood arrived. In 2018, after multiple miscarriages, she welcomed her first daughter. Eighteen months later, she found out she was pregnant with twins. “Imagine having a nine-month-old and then finding out that twins were on the way,” she said.

Suddenly she had three children under 18 months and a demanding consulting career. The control she once felt disappeared overnight. “With three kids under 18 months, plus a career in technology consulting, I no longer had anything under control. Life was crazy from day to day. And just one sick person. One change in schedule. One delayed flight could throw everything off balance.”

Sarah and I chuckled when she recalled, “I used to make my own dog food. I would cook everything from scratch, even cook for my dog. And I guess I thought that maybe, if that’s the kind of dog mom I was, that’s what kind of human mom I would be. But absolutely not. I’m an Amazon mom. I’m a make-it-happen-in-whatever-way-makes-the-most-sense-for-this-family mom. I am not cooking from scratch for any dogs or hardly any humans anymore.”

It was not the physical exhaustion that hit hardest. “It wasn’t the physical load of motherhood that was so hard,” she explained. “It was all of the things that I was carrying in my mind for work and for life and for my children.”
The mental checklist never ended. “All the little day-to-day things that I needed to remember: the doctor’s appointments, who needs their nails cut, who’s due for their vaccinations, when am I going to get my gray roots dyed, are we saving enough for college, am I making the right decisions about the kids’ futures?”
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That invisible labor became overwhelming. “It was the mental load of parenting that was so hard for me.”

From Automation at Home to AI at Scale

Sarah did what many high performing women do when overwhelmed. She built systems.

She automated lights, sound machines, bedtime routines, grocery deliveries. Anything she could take off her mental list. “I automated a ton of systems around the house. Anything I could get off of my list.”

But the true breakthrough came when generative AI became widely available. At the time, Sarah was working at Visa in a dedicated AI role, leading strategy and operations for teams rolling out tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. “I was spending a lot of time at work helping employees be more productive,” she said. “And I thought, if this can help people so much at work, it can help people who are doing the most important work, which is caring for others.”

That realization became AI-Empowered Mom. “It started with me, one overwhelmed mom with three kids under 18 months,” she said. “And now it has grown into a business that I love.”

Her mission is simple. “My passion is helping parents use AI and automation to improve their lives, make things a little bit easier, and specifically take all of that stuff that we’re carrying in our heads as moms and get a partner to help us manage it.”

Removing the Barriers

Sarah did not initially set out to build a product. She started by teaching AI classes in her living room, then corporate workshops. Surprisingly, she kept hearing the same resistance from parents. “AI felt like just one more thing to learn. Prompt engineering is a barrier. It doesn’t sound like something that is easy and intuitive. And we are overwhelmed with apps.”

So, she decided to simplify it. “I just decided I would knock them down and build a solution of my own.”

AI-Empowered Mom is a text-based tool. No app to download. No complicated prompts. “You can just text and text message and communicate in the natural way that you communicate. You don’t have to engineer a prompt. You don’t have to download an app.”

The tool focuses on core pain points like meal planning and calendar management. And it learns your family. “We’ve created a little quizlet when you sign up to share information about your family’s dietary restrictions and preferences,” she explained. “In my household, we’ve got somebody who hates peas, we’ve got someone who can’t stand mushrooms, and the AI solution remembers all of those things.”

Transparency is built in. “If you want to know what the tool knows about you, it’s right there in your dashboard. You can log in and see all of the context. And if you want to edit it or remove things, you can do that too.”

For calendars, it integrates with Google Calendar to help identify conflicts and reschedule when needed. It also sends daily and weekly previews so parents can see what is coming without opening multiple apps. “I just wish I could get a simple snapshot from my assistant that tells me what’s coming,” she said. “I don’t want to go and seek for that.”

In this episode of Trust Me Mom (Season 2, episode 34) available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, Sarah Dooley, founder of AI-Empowered Mom, shared how becoming a mother of three children under 18 months upended her sense of control and exposed the intense mental load she was carrying every day.

She explained how generative AI, which she worked with professionally in her role at Visa, became a practical support system at home. From meal planning and calendar management to custom bedtime stories, Sarah discussed how AI could help parents offload cognitive overwhelm without adding another complicated app to their lives.

We also talked about AI safety for kids, the importance of parental AI literacy, and why using technology intentionally could create more calm and connection in the family, not less.

When Everything Falls Apart

Even with systems, motherhood humbles us. “I think I have it all under control and then it all falls apart and I pick it back up and try it another way,” Sarah said.

She shared a story from her time at Visa when her children were sick and she was needed urgently at work. “I needed to be in both places,” she recalled. “I didn’t have any backup care at home, and I didn’t have any backup at work.”

She told a colleague she was ready to quit. “I remember confiding to my friend Jessica saying, I’m going to quit. I can’t do it.” Jessica’s response changed everything. “She just looked at me and said, don’t quit. Don’t quit. Just keep going.”
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That moment of support mattered. “I needed the kindness of another woman at work to tell me, ‘You can do this. This day will pass. Something drops. It’s going to be okay. Just keep going.’”

Talking to AI in the Closet

One of the most unexpected parts of our conversation was Sarah’s honesty about how she personally uses AI when she feels overwhelmed.

“When I get to those moments where I feel that I’m at my breaking point, I do often rely on AI to help talk me down,” she admitted. She uses ChatGPT voice mode. “I go into my closet or in my car, somewhere where I can be alone and just talk through everything that I’m feeling.”

She is clear that AI is not a therapist. But sometimes, access to a human in that moment is not possible. “When I feel like I just can’t take one more thing, I do turn on voice mode and talk to AI,” she said. “It doesn’t even really matter the guidance that AI gives. But just the action of taking everything that is swirling in my mind and talking it all out.”

For adults who understand the limitations of AI, it can be a pressure release valve. “I am AI literate. I know the limitations of the system,” she said. “That’s why it’s different for adults to offload to AI versus teens.”

AI and Kids: The Reality Is Already Here

Many parents still ask when children should start using AI. Sarah believes we may already be past that question. “A report was published by Aura at the end of 2025,” she explained. “They found that 73 percent of kids were already using AI.”

The implications are serious. She cited data showing that children are using AI not just for homework but for companionship. Violence appears in conversations around age 11. Romantic themes by 13. “These results floored me,” she said. “This is too young.”

Her advice is not to panic, but to engage. “The most important thing that we can do as parents is increase our own AI literacy so that we can keep the lines of communication open with our children.”

She uses AI side by side with her six-year-old twins and eight-year-old daughter. “I love it when we get a hallucination or some crazy response because that gives me the chance to talk to them about how this is a computer system. It makes mistakes. We can’t trust it.”

Bedtime Stories and the “Mean Mom Voice”

One of her earliest use cases was bedtime stories. With three small children, evenings were the hardest part of the day. “I am an early bird. By the end of the day, I am worn out and worn thin and sometimes I have very little left to give.”
She would prompt ChatGPT to create short, personalized stories tailored to her children’s interests and even behavioral challenges. “Give a story about what happens when children don’t brush their teeth. Make it be about Anna and Elsa in a frozen village and make it less than five minutes.”

On nights when her tank was empty, she used the read aloud feature. “It could be a game changer,” she said. “I’m right there snuggled up with them, getting a calm bedtime routine. I’m not using my mean voice.”

She knows some critics argue that this is letting robots raise children. “I do get those comments,” she said. “But every family has to decide for themselves.”

For her, the tool creates more connection, not less. “If I can use AI to make life a little bit easier, to find a little bit more time for connection, it really works for our family.”

A Book for Families

Sarah is currently writing a book on AI for families, to be published by Wiley in 2027. “The purpose of the book is really first to give just the high level points of AI 101, what families really need to know,” she said. “And then talk about the family that you want to be, and how you can use AI to create or empower the family that you want to be.”

Her message is not that AI replaces parents. It is that AI can be a tool. A support. A system. A partner in managing the invisible load so many mothers carry alone.

And sometimes, when everything feels like too much, it can even be a quiet voice in the closet saying, you are doing your best.

Motherhood is often presented as something that will come naturally. You will ease into it. You will feel intuitive and fulfilled. You will recognize yourself in this new role without much friction. But for many women, that story falls apart quickly once real life begins. I sat down with the therapist and content creator Vanessa Spinarsky to have an honest conversation about what happens when motherhood collides with identity, nervous system overload, and unrealistic cultural expectations. Her words resonated deeply because they name experiences many mothers quietly carry but rarely feel safe admitting.
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Vanessa is a registered social worker, a therapist, and a mother of two. She is also known for her honest, unfiltered reflections on Instagram, where she talks about motherhood without pretending it is always joyful or graceful. “Being on a guest on a podcast is one of my favorite things to do,” she shared early in our conversation, and that openness set the tone for a discussion grounded in truth rather than performance.

​A Childhood Shaped by Curiosity, Creativity, and Loss

Vanessa’s journey into therapy began long before professional training. As a child, she was drawn to both storytelling and understanding people. “I remember very distinctly, the two of them were journalism and psychology,” she said, recalling a school assignment that required her to research two careers. Looking back, those interests now feel prophetic, as her current work blends writing, observation, and deep emotional insight.

Growing up as an only child with a single mother gave her a rich inner world. She spent much of her time creating, imagining, and observing. But when she was eight years old, her life changed abruptly. “When I was eight years old, my dad unexpectedly passed away and he went to work one day and he didn’t come back,” Vanessa shared. At that age, she did not have the tools or language to process what had happened. “I didn’t have the language for what I was experiencing or what I was feeling, and my mom really didn’t talk about it,” she said. “Grief wasn’t something that we really talked about in our home.”
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That unprocessed loss became a quiet undercurrent in her life. Years later, when she chose social work, she realized that the decision went deeper than wanting to help others. “Underneath, subconsciously, I think I was like, I’m trying to understand my life, and I need to make sense of what happened to me,” she said. Therapy, both personal and professional, became a way to understand rather than fix. “I always thought it was about fixing myself,” Vanessa explained. “I realized that over time, it wasn’t that there was something wrong with me and that I needed to be corrected or solved. What I found was something really different. I wanted to understand.”

When Motherhood Disrupts Identity

Vanessa is the mother of a young daughter and son. “I have a little girl, she’s four and my boy is two years old,” she said. “It was a big transition.” She does not soften what that transition felt like. “Motherhood rocked me,” she said plainly. “My transition to motherhood was very disorientating for me.”

In one of the most striking moments of the conversation, Vanessa named how profound that shift was. “It actually, I would say was more disorientating than losing my dad when I was eight,” she said, not because that loss was insignificant, but because motherhood arrived when she already had a fully formed identity. “I thought that I had a fully formed identity, a career, I had a sense of who I was. And then that all just kind of came crashing down all at once.”

She expected motherhood to feel instinctive, but it did not. “Nothing about becoming a mom felt instinctive to me,” Vanessa said. “I felt anxious and I felt rigid and I felt tensed and constantly like I was doing something wrong.” Even qualities she knew she possessed, like compassion and nurturance, felt inaccessible in those early months.

The Social Media Surveillance of Moms

Although Vanessa was not a social media creator when she first became a mother, she still felt its influence deeply. “What surprised me about that during that time is the constant surveillance that came with motherhood through social media,” she said. Even without posting, she absorbed endless messages about what a good mother should do. “I felt like I was being watched constantly,” she explained. “I felt like I was constantly absorbing these rules about what moms were doing, what made a good mom, what a bad mom does.”
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Rather than increasing confidence, that exposure heightened anxiety. “Instead of becoming more confident as a parent, I became more anxious as a parent,” she said. She also pointed out how quickly motherhood becomes loaded with expectations. “What surprised me is how moralized motherhood is,” Vanessa said, describing how complex human experiences are flattened into right versus wrong, with little regard for context, nuance, or lived reality.

Redefining Progress in a Constantly Shifting Life

Many mothers describe parenting as an endless cycle of catching up, only to fall behind again moments later. Vanessa connected this exhaustion to identity and unrealistic expectations of progress. Before motherhood, she had built a sense of self around being strong, capable, and holding everything together. “I built this identity before motherhood of, ‘I don’t have space to fall apart. I need to hold everything together,’” she said. Postpartum made that identity unsustainable. “Postpartum hit and I couldn’t hold that together anymore,” Vanessa shared. “I was looking fine on the outside, but I was crumbling and falling apart on the inside.” Asking for help felt impossible. “I didn’t want to ask for help because I thought if I had asked for help, then that meant that I was failing,” she said.

Over time, she realized that motherhood demands a new definition of progress. “Progress in motherhood doesn’t look like being caught up,” Vanessa said. “It looks like adapting.” She reframed failure as responsiveness. “The fact that things are shifting doesn’t mean that you’re failing,” she explained. “It means that you’re responding to a very living, breathing, changing life.”

Her metrics for success changed. “Progress is different for me now,” she said. “Can I notice what I need sooner? Can I recover faster when things go sideways? Can I be a little bit less hard on myself when I’m messy?” Then she named a truth many mothers struggle to accept. “That doesn’t mean that you’re behind,” Vanessa said. “It means that motherhood isn’t something that you complete. It is something that you continuously stay in relationship with.”

Naming the Truth About Not Enjoying Every Moment

One of the most validating parts of the conversation came when Vanessa spoke about something many mothers feel but rarely say. “I know other moms are feeling this way,” she said. “I know I’m not the only one, but there are seasons of motherhood where you actually don’t enjoy spending time with your kids.”

She immediately clarified what that truth does not mean. “That doesn’t mean that you don’t love your kids, it doesn’t mean that you don’t care about them,” Vanessa said. “It just means that this is really draining.” She described the experience vividly. “It feels exhausting and disorienting and I can’t catch my footing,” she said. “It does feel like I’m just getting through the moment, just surviving the moment.”

She explained why those years can feel so relentless. “Kids emotions, they’re all emotion,” Vanessa said. “Nothing that these kids are doing makes sense to your adult brain.” Parents are constantly translating feelings, soothing meltdowns, and trying to stay regulated themselves. “You’re translating their feelings,” she said. “You’re trying to help regulate when they’re melting down over the wrong cup. And that takes so much energy, so much energy from you.”

She also acknowledged that these struggles are not always tied to age alone. “Sometimes there is neurodivergence,” Vanessa said. “Sometimes your child just has a harder time regulating themselves. They have really big feelings.” In those seasons, joy often shows up quietly. “A lot of moms aren’t enjoying motherhood in these big sweeping joyful type of ways,” she said. “They’re enjoying motherhood with these little moments, these micro little moments.”

Regulation, Repair, and Taking Space Without Shame

Vanessa has been criticized online for encouraging mothers to take breaks when they are overwhelmed. She was clear about what she has learned through both lived experience and clinical work. “Being physically there with your kid while you’re dysregulated does not help your kid,” she said. “That doesn’t help them at all.”

Children sense dysregulation. “If you don’t have that in your body in that moment, your kid is gonna feel that,” Vanessa explained. Forcing yourself to stay when you are past capacity can escalate rather than soothe. “The most loving thing that you can do for yourself and for your kid is not forcing yourself to stay in those moments,” she said.

Repair matters more than perfection. “Even when I do mess up, it’s coming back in later and repairing,” Vanessa said, naming the moment honestly and reconnecting after the fact.

Shame, Judgment, and the Pressure to Perform Motherhood

Shame is a central theme in Vanessa’s work. She explained that shame in motherhood is not only internal. “Shame can also be outward,” she said. “When someone feels shame in themselves and they don’t want to feel it, it turns into judgment.” Much of the criticism mothers face, especially online, comes from unmanaged shame projected outward. “A lot of the mom shame we see is actually unmanaged shame from somebody else being projected onto us,” she said.

Living under constant evaluation keeps mothers in a heightened state of stress. “There’s a feeling that you’re constantly being watched and evaluated at all times in motherhood,” Vanessa explained. “You’re not parenting from trust. You’re parenting from fear, from fear of getting it wrong.” She emphasized an important distinction. Outside of abuse and neglect, much of what gets policed is simply difference. “Just because we’re different doesn’t mean that’s dangerous,” she said.

Mental Load, Validation, and Being Seen

When we discussed mental load, Vanessa emphasized that acknowledgment alone can be deeply regulating. “I still feel like I am carrying mostly the mental load of our house and the anticipating and the remembering,” she said. Her request was not about blame. “I just want it to be acknowledged and I just want it to be named,” Vanessa said.

Validation reduces isolation. “These comments are my love language of just being noticed and my reality being validated,” she explained. She offered a simple but powerful shift for couples. “Can we shift from blame to acknowledgement?” Vanessa asked. “That’s going to land so much differently in your relationship.”

Nervous System Flexibility and Rethinking Rest

Vanessa closed the conversation by reframing why rest feels so elusive for mothers. “A lot of moms don’t struggle because they’re weak or that they’re doing something wrong,” she said. “They struggle because their nervous systems don’t get enough chances to power off.”

Instead of calm, she focuses on range. “It’s not about being calm all the time,” Vanessa explained. “It’s about having range.” Rest does not have to look a certain way. “You don’t have to experience real rest,” she said. “Coloring can be a form of rest for you.”

Most importantly, she reminded listeners that this work takes time. “It’s taken me four years,” Vanessa said. “I would say it’s taken me about five years to get a good handle on rest.”

A Final Reflection

Vanessa’s message is not that motherhood should feel joyful every moment. Her message is that mothers are human, and shame keeps them disconnected from themselves and each other. When truth is spoken without judgment, there is space for regulation, repair, and real connection. As she said clearly, “The goal of motherhood isn’t to enjoy every moment. The goal is to stay in relationship with your kid.”

If you are in a season that feels exhausting, disorienting, or like survival, you are not failing. You are responding to a living, breathing, changing life.