You’ve reached the end of Workparent—and maybe of your working-parent journey. And if you’ve taken nothing else away from this book, I hope you’ve taken away this:

Becoming a successful and satisfied working parent is fundamentally tough and it is fundamentally possible. With the right information and insights, surrounded by other working parents who understand and support you, filled with a sense of purpose, and trusting in your own good instincts, you can do this. You can earn a living and build your career while being a wonderful mother or father—and you can remain yourself in the process.

As your coach, I’ve pushed you to take this core message on board as you try out new behaviors and ways of thinking. In each chapter, I asked you to consider, reflect, play through, and imagine how various aspects of your professional life, parenting, and relationships (including your relationship with yourself) could work differently and better. My essential goal has been to expand your sense of possibility and confidence about combining career and children—to stretch the Workparent Template you started with out across a larger, more flexible frame. Now, in that same vein, let’s do one final task together.

I want you to take a good deep breath and imagine many years forward, to when your child—the one whose arrival may have prompted you to pick up this book in the first place—is an independent adult with a career. Let that movie play for a minute. Allow yourself to savor the thought of your child all grown up, working hard, contributing his or her particular talents out there in the world, still young but at the very top of the game.

Then, and as much of a leap as this will be, imagine even further forward, to the happy day when that same child calls to tell you that they’re expecting a child of their own. Play that moment through in your mind. Think how you’ll receive the news: with joy, of course, and mild disbelief. (Wait, what? I’m going to be a grandparent?!)

Imagine, though, that what you don’t feel is any concern. You’re not worried at all about how becoming a parent will affect your child’s career, or sense of self. You have zero fears about his or her ability to be a parent, live a healthy and full life, and do good work all at the same time. This kid grew up with the benefit of your example, after all—and since earliest childhood saw how authentic, self-assured workparenting is done. And if you made mistakes or had moments of self-doubt along the way, so what? Working parenthood is so normalized and accepted now, so celebrated. Your child will have many role models to learn from and peers to turn to for advice. And there won’t be any stress around announcing the news at work, or negotiating leave, or finding care, or paying for it, or creating a workable schedule, because in the years since you had to do all those things yourself, the world changed. These days there’s plenty of support—practical, personal, and professional—for any mother or father who needs it. Finding daycare is straightforward; in even the most intense workplaces no one bats an eye when a colleague has to spend a few hours on family obligations; and it’s unimaginable that anybody would question your child’s loyalty or commitment to work just because they have kids.

You and your fellow workparents saw to that. Because of your firm intentions, and the day-in, day-out example you set, and because of how you brought the topic of family needs right out into the open throughout society and in every workplace, things are different now. You created a whole new template in which anyone can become a successful and satisfied working parent—in which every person who wants to can join together what Sigmund Freud called the very “cornerstones of our humanness”: love and work.

Imagine that.

Can you imagine anything better?