Let Your Inner Child Out: What My Daughter Reminded Me About Womanhood and Authority

By Dr. Sarah Berg, OB-GYN & Founder of Selfority

The Question That Stopped Me

This Halloween morning, my family is dressing up as axolotls.
Yes—all of us. Even the dogs.

As the kids got ready for school, I found myself wondering whether I should wear my costume, too.
Would it be too much? Too silly? Should I just be the “regular mom” this morning—put together, professional, appropriate?

So I asked my 10-year-old daughter, the one I was most worried about embarrassing, what she thought.

Without hesitation, she said,

When Did We Start Believing We Had to Hide Our Joy?

Her answer made me stop in my tracks.
Because that one sentence captured something I think so many of us feel but rarely say aloud.

At some point in womanhood, we learn that being taken seriously often means being less of ourselves.
We trade playfulness for professionalism.
We hide our spark because we’ve been told that authority requires restraint.

But what if that’s backwards?

The Truth About “Serious Women”

I’ve been an OB-GYN for over a decade, a founder, and a mother—and I can tell you that the women who make the biggest impact are never the ones who’ve perfected the performance of seriousness.

They’re the ones who bring their full selves to the table:
the capable and the curious, the polished and the playful, the strong and the silly.

It reminded me of Big, that 1988 movie where Tom Hanks plays a child trapped in an adult body.
The world sees him as naïve, but it’s his imagination and wonder that transform his workplace and his relationships.

Maybe we don’t grow out of those qualities at all.
Maybe we just bury them under the pressure to be “adult enough.”

So Yes, I Wore the Costume

I zipped up my axolotl suit that morning and walked into the school as my true self—mother, doctor, business owner… and bright lavender amphibian.

And honestly?
I felt freer than I had in months.

Because authority doesn’t mean armor.
It means being rooted enough in who you are that you don’t need to shrink to fit the room.