Mosumola had just resumed work at a new job. It was the kind of opportunity she’d worked years for — the offer letter that validates all the sacrifice. What her new employer didn’t know was that she was pregnant when she accepted the role. What almost no one knew was that the father of her child had passed away just days before she gave birth.

She didn’t disclose her pregnancy before the offer. Perhaps she feared it would cost her the job. Perhaps she simply hadn’t found the words, or the safe moment, to say it. And then, before she could even process becoming a mother, she lost her partner and father of her child too.

Mosunmola hired a nanny. She went back to work. On the surface, nothing had changed. Underneath, everything had.

This is not a rare story. It is simply one that rarely gets told out loud — and it captures something many professionals carry silently: the collision between reproductive milestones and career survival.

The c areer clock vs. the biological clock

For many professionals, especially women, career-building years and fertility years overlap almost perfectly. The twenties and thirties — when you’re proving yourself, chasing promotions, building your name — are often the same years your body is signalling decisions about family planning.

This overlap creates a quiet, constant pressure: Do I disclose? Do I wait? Do I let my employer see me as “distracted” by family plans, or do I hide a part of my life that deserves space and dignity?

Mosunmola’s silence about her pregnancy wasn’t necessarily deception. It was likely self-protection — a rational response to workplaces that still, in 2026, penalize women for reproductive milestones through subtle bias in hiring, promotion, and how “commitment” gets judged.

Grief doesn’t wait for a convenient time

What makes Mosunmola’s story particularly powerful is the compounding weight she carried. She wasn’t just adjusting to new motherhood or a new job — she was doing both while grieving the sudden loss of her child’s father.

Many professionals believe that returning to work “as if nothing happened” is strength. Often, it’s the only option that feels available. Employers rarely build space for the reality that an employee might be smiling in a meeting while quietly unravelling. Numbing through busyness — hiring help, filling the calendar, performing normalcy — is a coping strategy, not a solution. It works until it doesn’t.

This is where coaching psychology becomes essential — not to diagnose or label what someone is going through, but to help professionals build honest, sustainable ways of carrying what they’re carrying, instead of outrunning it.

What professionals actually need

1. Permission to be whole people at work.

Reproductive milestones — pregnancy, loss, fertility struggles, becoming a parent — are life events, not liabilities. Professionals need spaces, whether through coaching, mentorship, or workplace culture, where these realities can be spoken without fear of career consequence.

2. Tools for timing and disclosure decisions. Not every professional needs to disclose everything immediately. But everyone benefits from a framework for deciding when, how, and to whom — one that weighs psychological safety against practical risk, rather than defaulting to silence out of fear.
3. Grief literacy in professional settings. Grief doesn’t file for leave and return neatly on schedule. Professionals need permission — from themselves first, and ideally from their workplaces — to feel the loss without performing composure they don’t feel.

4. A support system beyond outsourcing. Hiring help, whether a nanny or an assistant, manages logistics. It does not manage the internal experience of loss, overwhelm, or unprocessed change. Professionals need both — practical support and emotional processing — to avoid the numbing that eventually catches up with them.

Four calls to action

1. If you’re a professional carrying a hidden milestone — pregnancy, loss, a fertility journey — find one person you can be honest with. It doesn’t have to be your employer. It could be a coach, therapist, mentor, or trusted friend. Silence protects you short-term; connection protects you long-term.
2. If you’re a leader or HR professional, build disclosure into a culture of safety, not surveillance. Ask yourself: would someone on your team feel safe telling you what Mosunmola couldn’t tell her employer? If not, that’s a culture gap worth closing.

3. If you’ve recently returned to work after a major life event, schedule a check-in with yourself, not just your calendar. Ask: am I coping, or am I numbing? The difference determines whether you’re building resilience or delaying a reckoning.
4. If this story resonated with you, reach out for a coaching conversation. You don’t have to carry reproductive milestones, grief, and career pressure alone, and you don’t have to have it all figured out before you ask for support. Help is an email away this September — World Sexual and Reproductive Health Month — and give yourself the same permission you’d give someone else: to be human first, professional second.

“Mosunmola”  isn’t her real name. But if you’ve ever smiled through burnout and called it ‘fine,’ it might as well be yours.”

* Her name and details have been changed to protect her privacy — but the exhaustion, the self-doubt, the silence? That part is real, and shared by more people than you’d think.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com 

Joshua Awesome

Dr. Joshua Awesome is a Coaching Psychologist/Executive and Business Performance Coach who has supported over 100,000 professionals across Africa and the globe. He can be reached via: joshua@africainmind.org