Embracing the Bravery to Create a Magical Life with Amy Pierre-Russo
Let's be honest: "work-life balance" is a lie. And every time someone tells you to "find balance," what you actually hear is "you're failing at this."
You're not balanced. Your work is bleeding into family time. Your family needs are interrupting work. You're dropping balls left and right, and somewhere in the back of your mind, there's this nagging voice saying if you were just better at this, you could have it all.
Here's the truth: balance is a myth designed to make you feel inadequate. And Amy Pierre Russo, certified life and leadership coach, is here to tell you there's a better way.
After years of working in HR, watching women return from parental leave only to slowly watch the pay gap widen as they stopped raising their hands for opportunities, Amy knew something had to change. Not with the women, with the entire framework we've been operating under. She traded "balance" for something actually achievable: harmony. And the difference? It's everything.
Why "Balance" Is Actually Making You Feel Worse
Picture a scale. Perfectly balanced. Equal weight on both sides. Now picture your life: kids melting down, client deadlines looming, groceries that won't buy themselves, a partner who needs attention, and your own dreams collecting dust in the corner. Does that look like a scale that can ever be balanced? Of course not.
"Balance felt like pressure to people," Amy explains. "They were telling on themselves like 'I'm not balanced, things aren't balanced right now.' And it was like, wow, it doesn't have to be and it's not realistic."
Balance implies a 50/50 split. Equal time, equal energy, equal attention. But life doesn't work in neat percentages. Some seasons, work demands more. Some seasons, your kids need you front and center. Some seasons, you need to pour into your own well-being before you can pour into anything else.
Harmony, on the other hand, acknowledges the ebb and flow. It's the recognition that you're not failing when one area needs more attention than another. You're adapting. You're responding. You're living in the reality of your actual life, not some Instagram-perfect fantasy.
Amy works with her clients to identify what season they're in and plan accordingly. "You are ebbing and flowing. You're figuring out. There might be a season of life that's more family, that is more you and your own well-being, your health. It's going to shift and just planning for it. Being focused on what you can control, those little things make a huge difference."
The shift from balance to harmony isn't just semantic. It's permission. Permission to be human. Permission to prioritize what matters most right now without the crushing guilt that you're somehow doing it wrong.
The Missing Support Gap (And Why It Matters for Everyone)
Amy didn't start out as a coach. She came from the HR world, where she had a front-row seat to what happens when companies fail to support working parents – especially moms.
"I knew from my time in HR that there are so many nuances behind the curtain of people's lives," she says. "There's this facade, especially in professional settings. And so I really wanted to be able to understand those nuances and be there for true support."
Here's what she saw: Women would go on parental leave. They'd come back to work. And then, slowly but surely, they'd stop raising their hands. Not because they weren't capable. Not because they didn't want career growth. But because capacity-wise, when so many things are shifting outside of work, it's hard to be competitive.
"Over time, a lot of times I saw people's peers get promoted over them, which led the pay gap to grow," Amy explains. "And it just felt like there was this support gap at that time."
But here's what makes Amy's perspective so valuable: she doesn't just see this as a "women's issue." When organizations support working moms, everyone benefits.
"When anyone sees these supports in place, when younger women within an organization see you supporting moms, it does so much for so many people. When dads see that people are willing to provide these kinds of supports, it makes them more readily able to raise their hand for the support they need."
Supporting working moms isn't charity. It's a culture change. It's a signal that flexibility is possible, that humans have lives outside of work, that we don't have to choose between career ambition and showing up for our families.
And when that support exists? Everyone (moms, dads, younger employees watching and learning) feels more able to ask for what they need.
The Village You Thought You'd Have (And Why Proximity Isn't Enough)
Remember when you were pregnant or adopting or planning for kids, and everyone said "it takes a village"? And you pictured this beautiful, supportive community rallying around you?
And then reality hit. Your "village" became the other moms at soccer practice who you have nothing in common with except the fact that your kids are the same age. Or your coworkers who don't have kids and can't relate. Or your partner's family, who means well but doesn't actually get what you're building.
Amy hears this all the time. "A lot of people felt like they were missing their village. A lot of people were surprised. They thought they would have more village or community than they realized they do."
Here's the problem: we've been building community based on proximity instead of shared values and experiences. Just because your kid plays soccer with someone else's kid doesn't mean you have anything to talk about. Just because you work in the same office doesn't mean your colleague understands what it's like to run a business while managing a household.
"Some moms would come to me and be like, 'Just because my kids play soccer with so-and-so's kids, we have nothing professionally in common. We have nothing to talk about,'" Amy says. "And especially as moms' lives would evolve, sometimes it's going through new circumstances, sometimes it's going through divorce or different hard times, before you know it, you pop your head up and realize, wait a minute, my circles, my communities are all attached to my kids or my partner. I don't really have my own."
This realization led Amy to create her community for working moms. Not proximity-based. Not surface-level. But deep, meaningful connections with women who are also navigating the messy middle of career ambition and motherhood.
"I wanted it to be different backgrounds, different perspectives, different industries because there is no wrong way to evolve in your next step. But whether you tiptoe out or whether you dive all in, it helps to have these perspectives. You bounce ideas off of people, hear what worked well for so-and-so."
And here's the thing that really matters: "Honestly, to have people who believe in you. It's unfortunate, but so often if you think of starting your own business, maybe people in your immediate circle say, 'Oh, why would you want to do that?'"
Real community isn't just about showing up. It's about believing in each other. It's about having a space where your ambitions are taken seriously, where "I'm thinking about starting a business" isn't met with skepticism but with "tell me more."
Modern Work Is Broken (Here's What Needs to Change)
We need to talk about what's happening in the workplace right now. Because it's not good.
Amy's watching it from both sides – as a former HR professional and as a coach working with women navigating these waters. And what she's seeing is alarming.
"I feel it in the air, just this climate we're in of going through COVID and a lot of people recognizing the amount of flexibility that's possible. And now as some organizations still have their return-to-office mandates or figure out what that's going to look like, just a lot of people feeling a little lost."
But it's worse than people feeling lost. In 2025, hundreds of thousands of women have left or been pushed out of the workforce. The flexibility that COVID proved was possible? It's being systematically stripped away, and women are bearing the brunt.
And here's the kicker: when organizations realize there's a support gap, their solution is often worse than the problem.
"Oftentimes, if your organization knows there's a gap, the band-aid is an ERG, an employee resource group, where the women who are already spread thin and have way too much are then tasked with facilitating, managing, leading, finding the workshop, doing all of these things."
So let's get this straight: women are already overwhelmed. They're already stretched too thin. And the solution is to ask them to organize their own support? To add "run the women's ERG" to their already impossible to-do list?
Amy's community exists, in part, to remove that burden. "The idea is really to remove that from the plate so that organizations can sponsor and say, 'Hey, we do want to support our working moms. We don't think they should have to do it on their own. And so here's an option.'"
We need to reimagine modern work. Not with performative gestures or employee resource groups that add labor instead of support. But with real, meaningful structures that acknowledge people have whole lives. That flexibility has become more than a perk. It’s become a necessity. That supporting parents (all parents, not just moms) is good for everyone.
Integration Over Compartmentalization: A Better Way Forward
We've been taught to compartmentalize. Work stays at work. Home stays at home. Don't mix the two. Be professional. Leave your personal life at the door.
And for working moms especially, this creates an impossible tension. You're supposed to be fully present at work—no distractions, no kid stuff bleeding through. And then you're supposed to flip a switch and be fully present at home—no checking emails, no thinking about that deadline.
But Amy's approach is different. She works with her clients on integration, not compartmentalization. And the results? They're kind of magical.
One of Amy's clients is a real estate agent. She was constantly dragging her eight-year-old son along to drop off client gifts, running errands, and squeezing in meetings. And her son was miserable. "She was like, 'Okay, let's just be patient. One more thing. Okay.'"
But then Amy asked a simple question: "What is he like? Where can we pull him in?"
So they tried something new. Her son helped put together the gift baskets. He did the bows. He got creative. He had a hand in the work.
"His attitude completely changed," Amy says. "He was in the car ride, excited to go drop these off because he had played a hand in it. He understood what they were doing."
And here's where it gets really good. At one of the stops, the client had a son around the same age. "He opened the door. They were so excited. He was like, 'Come in. Come in. This is my first time having my own bedroom. You have to come see it.'"
Think about that shift. This little boy went from resenting his mom's work to understanding it on a deeper level. "It deepens the understanding," Amy says. "And I think there is some correlation to just having kids think about their relationship with work, even from a young age."
When kids see work as this thing that steals mom away, it breeds resentment. But when they understand that mom's work helps families afford their first real home? That mom's business makes a difference? That's a different story entirely.
Integration doesn't mean your kid sits in on client calls (though let's be real, sometimes they do). It means bringing them into your world in age-appropriate ways. It means letting them see that work isn't the enemy of family—it's part of the whole picture of who you are.
We're stuck in hustle culture, where everything is compartmentalized. But life isn't lived in silos. And when we try to force it that way, something always breaks, and it’s usually us.
How to Actually Create Harmony (Without Burning Out)
So if balance is dead and integration is the goal, how do you actually create harmony without completely burning out?
Amy's approach is deeply personal because – and this is key – she's doing it herself. She's a coach working with vulnerable clients in vulnerable spaces. She has a two-year-old. She's navigating this exact terrain.
"I think it's true a lot of us who do these kinds of altruistic businesses and genuinely want to help people, we are these helpful givers," she says. "And so more intentionally, we do need to think about what are we doing for ourselves and how are we managing our relationship so that we don't put ourselves last."
Her secret? Boundaries that are so baked into her business rhythms that they're effortless.
"I feel like they're so enmeshed that sometimes I don't even think about them in that way," she explains. "But it really is knowing my strengths. And I think the part that sometimes we miss out on when we're looking at our strengths is looking at them deeply enough to understand where we can lean in so far into our strengths that they become a detriment."
For Amy, compassion is a top strength. Which means she needs boundaries around her availability, her response times, her emotional capacity. Not because she doesn't care, but because she cares so much she could drown in it.
"Sometimes I'll have to work with clients and say, 'But wait, if your cutoff is 7 PM and when you onboard your clients, you're telling them, hey, if you get back to me past 7, just expect a response the next day.' As long as people know, it's not this big heavy thing."
The key is proactive communication. Not reactive scrambling.
"Sometimes the lack of communication can make us spill into this space of being reactive," Amy says. "And so actually managing your business, managing your work, keeping in a space of being proactive where you're introducing your clients to the person who's covering and you're letting them know the circumstances. Those are the pieces that I usually find are missing."
We tell ourselves stories. "I can't take a weekend off. I can't step away. I can't, I can't, I can't." And then we look for evidence to support those stories. "See? This is why I can't do that."
But the reality? "If we step into a strong communication pattern and really uphold our boundaries and communicate them effectively, then you actually can create some proactive systems and structures and ways of running your life that work for you."
It's not about doing more. It's about being more intentional with what you're already doing. It's about setting expectations clearly. It's about knowing where your strengths can become weaknesses and protecting yourself accordingly.
Harmony isn't something that just happens. You design it. You protect it. You build your entire business and life around it.
Answering the Chaotic Questions
If you could go back to 2005 and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
"It will be okay."That's it. Not "work harder" or "plan better" or "make the right choice." Just: it will be okay.
I think we're always thinking about what could go wrong, what misstep, are we making the right decision? And I think ultimately it will be okay. But just knowing that and hearing it from your future self is so deeply satisfying on an inner soul level.
Your path is going to twist and turn. You're going to make choices that feel huge in the moment and turn out to be footnotes. You're going to think you've ruined everything, and then realize you were exactly where you needed to be. It will be okay.
A new mom comes to you wanting advice on managing work and a new baby. What do you tell her?
Give yourself grace. Realistically, your first time doing anything, you're not going to be an expert. So really allowing that journey of new– and every child is different – learning your child and learning, giving yourself grace and room to step into that space as a mother.
Find support. Whatever that looks like to you, find support and use it. Not just find it. Use it. Take people up on their offers. Ask for help. Join the community. Show up to the virtual event even if your baby's sleeping in the next room.
Sometimes depending on the season of life, even the 30-minute drive can impede you. That's why the community is virtual. Because access matters. Because sometimes the barrier between isolation and support is literally just a commute.
What do you hope your son remembers about this time?
The bravery to create a magical life. To lean in. It's not easy and I don't think brave is my default, but in business and entrepreneurship, we need to push ourselves and stretch ourselves into brave mode.
I'm really intentional about making it this exciting: 'Oh my gosh, mommy gets to go out and do this event and I'm gonna speak to these people and it's gonna be the best thing ever.' And even at a really young age, he's two, he's able to like, 'Okay, cool. Bye, mom.' He's excited if I'm excited.
Your kids are watching. They're learning what's possible. They're internalizing what work means, what passion looks like, what it means to build something that matters. Make it count.
Here's What Actually Matters
Work-life balance is a trap. It's a measuring stick designed to make you feel like you're constantly falling short.
Work-life harmony? That's real. That's achievable. That's designing your life around what actually matters to you—not what some outdated corporate model says success should look like.
Amy Pierre Russo is doing the work of helping women reimagine what's possible. Not by telling them to do more, be more, hustle harder. But by creating space. By building community. By offering support that doesn't require you to also run the support group.
Hundreds of thousands of women have left the workforce. The pay gap is widening. Modern work is broken. But women like Amy are building something different—something better.
You don't need balance. You need harmony. You need community that actually gets it. You need support you can actually use. And you need permission to design a life that works for your actual reality, not some Instagram fantasy.
The magic isn't in doing it all. It's in doing what matters, letting go of the rest, and having people in your corner who believe you can.
Want to connect with Amy?
Ready to Create Your Own Harmony?
If Amy's approach to work-life harmony resonates with you, you're going to love The Chaotic Middle podcast. Every episode features real conversations with women navigating entrepreneurship, motherhood, and the beautiful mess of building a life that actually works.
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Because the chaos isn't going anywhere. But with the right support, the right community, and the right framework? You can turn that chaos into harmony.
