As those of you who follow me on IG know, I've thrown the idea(l) of a work-life balance out the proverbial window. Those scales will never balance and there will be days and weeks they tip one way before dropping back the other. There are times I am baking and carpooling like some modern day Donna Reed with a Best Mom coffee mug and other times where I feel like the Queen of the Courtroom, only to find out my kid didn't have lunch at school or forgot her ballet shoes. As an example, it is a known fact around my office that when I am in a big trial someone in my house is going to have a major illness - literally these have ranged from pneumonia to emergency appendectomy. Talk about mom guilt - not only am I not there to love on them, I can't even really give them any mental energy until I am out of the courtroom.
All of that is to say that life, an parenting, and lawyering are all like that - you win some, you lose some. Chasing some pipe dream of balance and harmony only sets us up for failure. Some days we are up, some days we are down; some days we thrive, some days we survive. I hope to use my platform to bring some levity to the hard times and some depth to the mundane. I want to be able to openly and honestly laugh and occasionally cry about the realities of being a working mom and all that title brings with it.
Last week I would say my momming was off but my lawyering was on fire. I attended the Society of Women Trial Lawyers annual conference in Scottsdale, Arizona and if ever a group had me drinking their Kool-Aid this was it! I returned to the office FIRED up about all I had learned and ready to put some new skills and tactics to use. I also returned immeasurably happy to see my girlies but I'll just be honest and say I was not dreading work on this Monday.
As a girl mom, these issues that we discussed at the conference, those involving women in the workplace, hit differently. I think not only of myself, but of my two beautiful, intelligent, capable daughters. I often think of the pendulum swing from the 1950s valium popping housewives to the 1980s corporate women clawing their way to the top and wonder where we are now. I usually land on this: women can have it all, but they don't necessarily have to do it all.
See, part of being able to withstand the teeter totter of the unbalanced life without breaking or falling off is being able to section off parts of my life that I can sub out to others. This was especially hard for me to accept without a lot of internal guilt - I had two working parents who did everything for me and my brother, including homework extracurriculars, and a home-cooked meal every night. We did not have nannies, cleaning people, yard people, wardrobe consultants, house managers, or grocery delivery growing up. Those folks were called mom and dad. As an adult, I have all of those in different people. It has taken me a long time to be okay saying that, but the truth is that having those people help me makes me a better mom, a happier wife, and a better lawyer and business owner.
So my message to working moms and one of the themes I will continue to touch on here is simply love hard, work hard, and don't judge yourself too hard. We only have this one life to live and none of us get out alive, but we can leave a legacy both at home and work - a legacy of dedication, integrity, love and grace, sprinkled with a lot of humor. I think it's the recipe for the best unbalanced life one can live.
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