My Writing. My World.
White privilege is a phrase that has been added to my vernacular seemingly overnight.
But I am the first to admit that I have been on the fringe of what has been going on in our country. Not to mention the overt and ongoing racism that so many of my fellow Americans—my fellow human beings—face on a daily basis.
I live in a small town that is sorely lacking in diversity. We chose to live here simply because it reminded me of the small towns in New England where I grew up.
I will not look away anymore.
After the violent white supremacists’ rally in Charlottesville this past weekend, that’s what I told myself. I will not look away anymore.
So when I came across this video online today, I forced myself watch it. I want to educate myself. I don’t want to use my ignorance as an excuse for not speaking out anymore.
I’m not going to lie…I wanted to turn it off almost as soon as I started watching. I started asking myself questions to justify looking away.
I have been a passionate evangelist of flexible work for as long as I can remember. Certainly, long before I had children of my own.
But I am only now realizing how this absolute requirement in my life is leading me, and many others, to become unexpected entrepreneurs.
I remember vividly the day that I had a visceral reaction to inflexible companies, their policies, and the impact they have on our families.
Career decisions are some of the toughest decisions we will have to make in our lives, aren’t they?
I recently had a friend ask me how to make a tough decision she was faced with in her career. She commented on how I’ve changed jobs and careers, but she’s never heard me wonder or have regret – and she wanted to know my secret.
When I was younger, one of the best managers I’ve ever worked for introduced me to the weighted pros and cons list. (Spoiler alert…this is not my secret formula.)
I am tired of feeling like what I want doesn’t matter.
Tired of not feeling heard.
Tired of coming in last place to anything and everything else that is going on in my family.
Just because I am The Mom.
I know I am not alone in feeling this way. (Please, someone, tell me I’m not alone in feeling this way, for the love of God.)
Imagine we were sitting down together over a cup of coffee right now.
You were complaining about your job and feeling frustrated that you know it’s not right for you, and that you’re just not happy there anymore. (If you ever were.)
And I asked you, “What is your soul work?”
What would you say?
Would you immediately jump to the standard answer of, “Oh, I don’t know…” without even thinking about it? Without even blinking?
I got sucker punched by social media this morning.
I guess, more specifically, I was sucker punched by something—someone—from my past. But without social media, it might not have hit me so hard and taken my breath away like it did.
And I’m kind of wishing right now that this particular piece of my past had just stayed in my frickin’ past.
Usually, it’s those memory reminders that pop up in Facebook and make me a little nostalgic. Like when that memory of my son popped up of when he was only two years old and running circles around the kitchen with a bucket on his head. That video memory made me laugh and cry at the same time.
I am wholly unprepared to be a parent.
And yes, I'm pretty sure I might be thinking about adopting that as my mothering motto.
It’s not an uncommon feeling for a lot of parents, I know.
It’s something that you might expect to hear from someone about to have their first baby, maybe. But not someone who's already a parent, right?!
Let alone the somewhat seasoned parent of a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy.
Yesterday, I quit my dream job.
At least, what I thought was going to be my dream job.
It couldn’t have been more perfect for me—on paper, anyway. It was the title of my dreams, doing work that I love, for an organization that I admire and had been a huge fan of for years.
I knew a lot of people who were applying for the position, and they all would have been amazing in the role. But in the end, I was offered the position, and I was giddy.
It felt like the planets aligned in my career sector (is that a thing?) because it happened so quickly and effortlessly. Like it was meant to be. Destiny.
Have you ever thought about jumping off the corporate ladder and taking a leap of faith?
Do you dream about it all day, every day? Or never, because you love your job and all it provides? Or something in between, like only on Mondays or the bad days?
If you do dream about it, what will it take for you to finally make that leap?
Well, I finally found out what it took for me:
So I’m 99.9% sure that I’m going to end up alone in this world and it’s going to be my own frickin’ fault.
Do you ever get that feeling?
That you are just too hard to love? Too hard to live with? Too hard to be around?
I just spent a few hours with a couple of women I really love. And who I know, for sure, really love me. I know this without a doubt.
And at the same time, in the space of a few hours, it was mentioned – more than a few times – that I have issues. (Ummm…hello?! Have we MET?! We are all well aware, sisters…)
Golden handcuffs.
That’s what my husband and I used to call it when he worked for one of the largest software companies in the world. He had an employer who paid him a generous-enough salary that afforded us the luxury of me staying home with our babies for as long as I wanted.
They also provided amazing benefits—we never paid a single copay for 10 years. Not for doctors’ office visits, specialists, or hospital coverage for the birth of both of our babies. I don’t even think we paid copays for prescriptions. That seems completely unbelievable now, so I feel like I’m making that up. But I know it’s true because I remember the pediatrician’s office and pharmacists commenting on it every time we went.
We knew we were blessed. And we also felt trapped.
Limbo sucks.
I’ve been reading a lot of quotes lately about embracing that place. You know the one. That place between no longer and not yet. Where you’re no longer the person you used to be, but not yet the person you are becoming.
Well, if you haven’t experienced it for yourself, let me tell you something: it sucks.
I'm feeling compelled to take back Valentine's Day.
Take it back from the greeting card manufacturers, the florists, and even from Facebook, where all I see today are updated profile pictures of couples with hearts bursting all over them.
It's not that I am skeptical or pessimistic or cranky about love. Quite the contrary, actually.
I am suddenly overwhelmed and feeling woefully ill-equipped to be your mother, sweet girl.
I feel now much like I felt when you were a newborn and we were leaving the hospital: When I looked around at all the nurses who were actually letting me walk out of the hospital with you, and wondered who was going to teach me how to do this.
