Working Mother

I spent my entire adult life in the work force. I started working back in the day when women wore boring blue suits with gold buttons to the office. That was before we were allowed to inject our personality into the daily grind. It was also a time when your male counterparts thought the daily grind was rubbing up against you in the corporate cafeteria or going all Next on you at the holiday party. Heck, I started working at a time that companies actually had holiday parties.

I’ve had my own marketing consulting business for about seven years now. I slowed things down to almost a standstill two years ago when Bird started kindergarten. It was then I realized how my time with my sons was fleeting. Our part time nanny, who was like family to us, found full time work, so the stars aligned for me to go with my heart and stay home for a while. I worked on projects here and there, but mostly I reported for mom duty every day. Oh, there are tomes to be written about the personal, professional, and financial costs of leaving the workplace. There isn’t enough therapy or girls’ weekends to figure it all out. Sacrifices were made for sure. It’s all so very complicated. \

I am woman, hear me roar.

And wail.

And cry.

And scream.

And groan.

And howl. In pain and laughter and all points in between.

My best days at home with my sons paled in comparison to the greatest professional fulfillment I ever experienced (and I came from a career I loved). On the flip side, my worst days at home were spewing more bile than I thought possible for a daily dose. Balance is a slippery concept, and I’ve come to realize that, like its never-a-hair-out-of-place cousin Perfection, it isn’t even real. Perfection is a figment of our imaginations, its definition as different as our thumbprints.

Now that both Bird and Deal are in school, I’ve decided to ramp up my marketing consulting business and rev up my pre-Mom engine again. I’m crossing my fingers I won’t be in a job interview situation again. I’m still a sticky hot mess from that debacle back in 1991. I’ve been wearing a spelunking helmet to peek into all my cerebral corridors to do some deep soul searching. In my quest for The Answer, I uncovered a journal I kept in 1998. I wrote a lot about Richard Leider’s book The Power of Purpose and the dizzying questions it left me pondering.

Allow me to share a bit with you. Here are my own words from my 29-year old self:

“Expectations of work: I expect to be energized by knowing that I am using my talents to bring joy or help to others. I expect to be fairly compensated for what I contribute. I expect work to be fun, challenging, and rewarding. (At the time I wrote this I had a boss who ripped a Ben & Jerry’s sticker from my door, chiding me for not representing appropriate management behavior. The bumper sticker said “If it’s not fun why do it?”)

Suffered and endured: Work should be a joy, not a burden. Work should be exciting with all the challenges and new opportunities that present themselves everyday. If work were to be merely endured, it would be a prison sentence, not a purposeful career.

Work = Calling: One’s work is ideally one’s calling. In this society we don’t pay people to work for their values and integrity. Teachers, social workers, nurses, largely women’s professions, are grossly underpaid and undervalued. I suppose work doesn’t have to be a calling if you can fulfill that need in other ways. However, work should at least be in line with our values.

Power of purpose at work: Most of the time I think my work makes me focus on more revenue for the company, not about the people we help. In fact, sometimes I wonder if we hurt people with our systems (Sell! Sell! Sell!). I also don’t feel like my talents are being tapped.”
So after weeks and weeks of introspection, the support of friends and colleagues, and a leap of faith, I wrote down my purpose statement. And I quit my job.

“Purpose statement: To lead and motivate others to act passionately on behalf of causes they believe in and help people actively participate in their communities.”

Here I am at 42 and still not sure  how to be who and what I want to be when I grow up. Malcolm Gladwell would classify me as a Connector. I’d like to know if Mr. Gladwell has any tips on how earn a living as a Connector. I’m damn good at making the introductions to bring business to everyone around me but I suck at making it rain for myself. So while Gladwell calls me a Connector, my dad wonders if I’m becoming an Activist. Some people know me as a marketing maven, while others know me for my words. I’d say those are all accurate.

But at the end of the day, it’s the two people who call me Mommy that matter most.