First, the truth nobody says out loud: it is only a very few women who are not serious about their jobs. Most of the women I have worked with are deeply serious, and most of them feel exactly this guilt. So you are not broken, and you are not alone.

Here is what I tell every woman who brings this to me.

Guilt will always be there. You will have to lose something to gain something. I will not pretend otherwise.

But be in the moment. Do not spend the hours at work thinking about what you are missing at home, and do not spend the hours at home thinking about work. Really cherish what you are doing at the moment you are doing it. The guilt lives in the gap between where you are and where your head is, so close the gap.

Leaves are inevitable. Kids fall sick, life happens. You need to decide what is needed when, and then take the leave without performing an apology for it.

And practically: create a system around you that works. Do not try to be a superwoman who does it all. If you work, you should have help. Offload chores as much as possible, so that you get quality time with the people you love and feel less guilty about the time you are spending away from them.

Women are nurturing and emotional creatures. That is not a weakness to be managed out of you. It just means the system around you has to be built on purpose, not on guilt.