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Motherhood Quote by Lee Ann Womack

"It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears"

About this Quote

Womack nails a modern kind of whiplash that fame rarely advertises: not the grind of touring, but the instantaneous identity swap it demands. The detail that makes it sting is the timing: "one second". She is not talking about balancing motherhood and career in the abstract; she is talking about the literal seam where one role ends and another begins, with no decompression, no private corridor between them. That compressed timeframe turns what sounds like a lifestyle problem into a psychological one.

The bus and the home are telling, too. Both are domestic spaces, just dressed in different wallpaper. The tour bus is a rolling version of home life - routines, mess, exhaustion - but it still has the machinery of performance waiting on the other side of the door. Womack rejects the glamour narrative by putting "mom" and "on the stage" in the same breath, as if they are two jobs on the same shift. The subtext is that neither role is fully compatible with the other, yet both demand total presence. A child wants you unfiltered; an audience wants you amplified.

"Having to be that person too" is the quietest dagger. "That person" is not a lie, exactly, but it is curated: the confident, emotionally legible version of herself that a show requires. Her point isn't that performance is fake; it's that it is costly. Switching gears isn't just changing clothes. It's moving from intimate responsibility to public command, from being needed to being watched, and doing it on cue. In country music, where authenticity is the brand, that pivot becomes the real work.

Quote Details

TopicWork-Life Balance
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Womack, Lee Ann. (2026, January 15). It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-hard-either-way-at-home-or-on-the-bus-i-think-142713/

Chicago Style
Womack, Lee Ann. "It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-hard-either-way-at-home-or-on-the-bus-i-think-142713/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-hard-either-way-at-home-or-on-the-bus-i-think-142713/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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Lee Ann Womack on the Strain of Switching Roles
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About the Author

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Lee Ann Womack (born August 19, 1966) is a Musician from USA.

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