The Question We Don't Ask Ourselves Enough: Why Do Women Have to Explain Their Sacrifice?
Helen Gomon built a consulting business, survived the war in Ukraine and became a single mother. She found that one of the hardest parts was being asked, over and over, to explain herself in ways a man in her position might never be asked to.
Helen Gomon · Tarak|20 min
About this conversation
Helen Gomon joined this BwH Conversation after sharing several stories on the platform. Tarak opens by asking her, simply, who she is. What follows quickly moves beyond her résumé. Helen traces a business path that started in insurance in Ukraine, moved through a multi level marketing venture and eventually became her own consulting practice. But the conversation keeps returning to one question: What does sacrifice actually mean when you are a woman building something, and why do women so often find themselves having to explain it? Helen does not offer a tidy answer. She describes sacrifice as something closer to a habit of mind than a single decision. Ten years into entrepreneurship, she is candid that she still has not solved it. The conversation becomes particularly concrete when Helen describes being judged at her child's kindergarten in Greece because she was a single mother without a partner present. It is an ordinary moment, but that is precisely why it matters. It exposes expectations that can be so normalized that people barely notice them. This is not a success story with the difficult parts removed. It is a conversation between two founders about ambition, isolation, loss, family, social expectations and what happens when building something becomes intertwined with the rest of your life.
Key ideas
Sacrifice is not a one time cost
It can become a habit that stays with you. Ten years into her business experience, Helen describes herself as continuing to make many of the same sacrifices she made at the beginning. She frames this less as a strategic tradeoff and more as an ingrained pattern. The drive to keep working, achieving and moving forward does not automatically disappear once a business becomes established.
We do not ask everyone about balance and sacrifice in the same way
The conversation turns when Tarak observes: “This is a question that we wouldn’t ask a man.” It follows Helen’s description of operating in business circles where men often represented 80 to 90 percent of the room. The discussion moves from sacrifice itself to something deeper. Why are women so often expected to explain how ambition fits alongside family and personal life?
The clearest evidence of a double standard can be completely ordinary
The strongest example does not come from a boardroom or funding meeting. Helen describes arriving at her child's kindergarten in Greece as a single mother and being questioned about why there was no father or man with her. The conversation contrasts this with places where fathers taking substantial parental leave is treated as completely normal. That contrast raises a larger question about how differently society can interpret men's and women's relationships with work and family.
Public storytelling can make difficult experiences feel less isolating
Helen explains that one reason she shares her story publicly is so another woman can encounter it and recognize: I'm not alone. She connects this to her experience of the war in Ukraine, personal loss and having to rebuild. Sharing is not presented simply as personal branding. It becomes a way of making difficult experiences visible enough that other people can recognize themselves in them.
Founder isolation is real, even when you are not technically alone
Later in the conversation, Helen and Tarak move beyond gender and discuss something they both recognize: founder isolation. They talk about the feeling that everything rests on you and the physical consequences that pressure can sometimes create, including panic attacks and difficulty breathing. Even having a cofounder does not necessarily remove that experience.
Build With Her came from seeing the gap rather than assuming it existed
Tarak explains that BwH was not created from an abstract assumption that women needed another platform. He describes attending events, listening to women's experiences and repeatedly encountering similar patterns. These included women facing professional consequences after motherhood, technology environments dominated by men and the funding gap facing women founders. Those observations became part of the reason for creating Build With Her.
In this conversation
Helen Gomon
Entrepreneur · Founder
Helen is an entrepreneur originally from Ukraine who now lives in Greece. She describes approximately ten years of business experience, beginning in insurance before moving into entrepreneurship and eventually founding her own consulting practice. Her work includes clients in industries such as fintech, crypto, brokerage and online gaming. Helen is also a mother. She speaks openly about rebuilding her life following the war in Ukraine, personal loss, entrepreneurship and the social expectations women can encounter while building companies. She has contributed multiple stories to Build With Her.
Tarak
Founder, Build With Her
Tarak is the founder of Build With Her, a global publication and platform created to give women a safe, lasting place to share their work, stories, and expertise.