What It's Like to Be a Mom of Eight and a REALTOR®

The honest, imperfect, deeply meaningful story of building a business while raising a family.

By Susan Honaker | Susan at Lime | Lime Realty

People ask me sometimes how I do it.

Eight children. A full real estate practice. Advocacy work. Volunteer leadership. Community events. A food brand. An emergency preparedness resource. A whole website that has quietly grown into something I am genuinely proud of.

I usually smile and say something about coffee and grace and figuring it out as I go.

I want to give you a more honest answer than that, because I think the real answer matters, especially to anyone out there trying to build something meaningful in the middle of a full and complicated life.

First, the Honest Part

I am not doing it all perfectly. I want to say that clearly and without apology.

There are days when dinner is late and the laundry pile is enormous and I have three text messages I have not responded to and a blog post half-written and a child asking me a question while I am trying to finish one more thing before closing the laptop.

There are days when real estate feels hard, when a deal falls through, or a client is struggling, or the market is doing something complicated and I am trying to explain it clearly while simultaneously keeping track of a child's therapy schedule and what we are out of at the grocery store.

There are seasons when the advocacy work I carry in my heart, fighting for Jayden, supporting families through loss, showing up for people in hard places,  weighs heavily in a way that does not always have words.

I am telling you this not to paint a difficult picture, but because I believe one of the most important things I can offer the people around me, clients, neighbors, fellow mothers, anyone reading this, is honesty.

Real life is not a highlight reel. The work I do is better because I live a real one.

What Having Eight Children Taught Me About Real Estate

I did not plan to become a REALTOR® and then discover that raising a big family would make me better at it. That is exactly what happened.

When you have eight children, you learn how to hold a lot of things at once without dropping what matters most. You learn how to read a room quickly, to sense when someone is overwhelmed and needs patience, when someone is anxious and needs information, when someone is excited and just needs you to match their energy for a moment.

You learn that every person's situation is genuinely different and deserves to be treated that way. You cannot use the same approach with every child, and you cannot use the same approach with every client. People are individual. Their needs, their timelines, their fears, their goals, all different.

You learn to stay calm under pressure. With a child who has epilepsy and a house full of people and a real estate transaction in progress, you learn to compartmentalize, prioritize, breathe, and keep moving. Calmly. Calm is contagious, and the people around you need it.

You learn that relationships are everything. Not transactions, not outcomes, not numbers, relationships. The trust a family puts in you when they hand you the keys to their next chapter is not abstract to me. I understand what home means to a family. I understand it in my bones.

What Real Estate Gave Back to Our Family

I became a REALTOR® in part because of our own journey, fifteen years of renting, wondering if homeownership would ever be possible for us, and finally buying our first home in 2021.

That experience was transformative. It changed the entire way I see this work.

I know what it feels like to wonder if you qualify. To hope something will work out and be afraid to get too excited in case it does not. To close on a home and cry in the driveway because you cannot believe it finally happened.

Real estate gave our family stability. It gave my children a home that is truly ours. It gave us roots in a community we love.

Now my work is helping other families feel that same thing, that door opening, that chapter beginning, that exhale of finally.

That is not work. That is a calling.

The Balance (Or the Honest Lack of It)

Here is something I have stopped pretending: balance is not a destination. It is more like a practice, something you return to, over and over, on the days when things tilt too far in one direction.

Some seasons, the children need more of me and the business gets quieter. Some seasons, a big deal or a community event demands more time and the house is messier and dinner comes from somewhere easy.

What I have learned is that my children do not need a perfect mother. They need a present one. They need one who shows them what it looks like to care deeply about people, to build something with intention, to keep going even when things are hard.

My children see me advocating for their brother Jayden. They see me showing up at hospitals to support grieving families through my volunteer work. They see me sitting at the kitchen table late at night writing resources for homebuyers who need guidance. They see me putting kindness stones in parks and hosting events that bring the community together just because it feels like the right thing to do.

I hope what they are learning from all of that is that a life of service is a good life. That showing up for people matters. That home, real home, is built through relationship and presence and care.

A Message to Anyone Building Something Big in a Full Life

If you are reading this in the middle of your own full life: children, caregiving, building something, figuring it out, I want you to know something.

You do not have to have everything sorted before you begin. You do not have to wait until it is less busy, or the kids are older, or things calm down.

The right time is mostly right now. The imperfect version of your dream is still worth pursuing.

Find the work that feels like the truest version of yourself. The work that uses your real experiences, not just your credentials, to make someone else's life better. The work that you would do even on the hard days, because the meaning of it outweighs the difficulty.

That is what real estate has become for me. Not just a career. A genuine expression of who I am and what I believe about people, home, and community.

I am grateful every single day for it. Even the complicated ones.

With a Sprinkle of Lime, thoughtfully guiding you home.

Susan Honaker | Susan at Lime | Lime Realty 📞 405-436-3165 🌐 susanatlime.com

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home in the Oklahoma City area, or if you just want to talk through where to start, I would love to hear from you. There is no pressure here, just a real conversation.