the double-blessing: Life as a working mom

11 02 2011

While there are many challenges to being a working mom, there are a lot of great things that come with the territory.  Research such as Sally Heglesen’s book The Female Advantage cites that moms learn to have an integrated approach to work life and home life in being forced to be more resourceful with their time and energy. Heglesen writes: “Increasingly, motherhood is being recognized as an excellent school for managers, demanding many of the same skills:  organization, pacing, the balancing of conflicting claims, teaching, guiding, leading, monitoring, handling disturbances, imparting information.”

Though I haven’t’ yet read Heglesen’s book, a fellow working-mom colleague Anne Hong cited it in a paper she wrote on Issues of Leadership Development for Women in their 30′s which was recently posted on InterVarsity’s staff site. With Anne’s permission she’s made her paper available to any of my blog readers who want to read more on the topic beyond these posts. .IssuesofLeadershipDevelopmentforWomeninTheirThirties-1.12424

This week I’ve been away at meetings for my work with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  Spending time interviewing new staff candidates, making decision about how to reach more students in our region, and presenting my plans and ideas about how to grow evangelistic efforts and innovation feels like a worthwhile & life-giving investment though I’m away from home.  It also is a vast departure from how I spent my time last week watching Dinosaur Train, playing with play-doh, and helping my little guy recover from the flu.  Though there were various points last week I felt stressed about the work I wasn’t getting done because of Reuben being sick and Dave being away for work I remembered the words of Marcus Buckingham.

In Marcus Buckingham’s book Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently one of his best points was to focus on the type of time you spend with your loved ones or kids rather than feeling guilty about the quantity. In other words, when you’re with your kids or (your husband) be present to them fully and make it a high quality time together.  Make memories and be present to your child whether you’re putting together a puzzle, playing at the playground or having an adventure building a snowman. I feel the worst about being a working mom is when I’m strapped for time or childcare and am unsuccessfully straddling checking emails on my iPhone while I make lunch for Reuben, reading staff applications between setting up train tracks for him to drive Thomas, James and Henry around, or taking phone calls while I ask him to play quietly (does this ever work like you think it does?) in the next room. Typically I am able to segregate my time well- when I’m not on the road attending meetings, speaking at chapters across our region, I leave the house with my laptop to inhabit the coffeehouse and get my work done.

Being a working mom the double blessing that I’ve realized over time is that if I’m able to have healthy boundaries I can spend quality time with Reuben and enjoy productive time with my job. While I’m outside the home working it feels like a refreshing break to put my mind, energy and creativity towards concrete, measurable goals that influence thousands of people. I love being with colleagues who challenge me, engage in thoughtful conversations and are working together for a purpose we all believe in.  When I’m away, I feel like I’m able to be in work mode and by the time the meeting ends I’m ready to go home and spend some quality time with my family. Being a working mom provides an opportunity to develop my skills and abilities, make a difference in the world and be refreshed intellectually, spiritually and professionally.

During my sabbatical I had the helpful realization that I’m a pressure-prompted, projects driven person. When I have a lot of time on my hands, I feel like I’m a bit aimless, get depressed and overwhelmed by the amount of options of how I could spend my day.  Dave actually forced me to go speak at an InterVarsity chapter during my sabbatical because he saw how much I was languishing not using my gifts of speaking and evangelism.  For whatever reason, God seems to have created me to enjoy juggling multiple roles, relationships and projects.  I think if I wasn’t working outside the home, I’d still want to fill my time with volunteer roles.  If I’d do this anyways I might as well get paid for it. Whether it is a 1/2 day or a multi-day trip for work I feel refreshed and ready to enter life back at home with Reuben, ready to play trains, read as many Curious George books as he requests and snuggle together while watching Despicable Me.

Reuben's latest favorite movie.

Fellow working moms, what are things that you enjoy about the double roles of managing life at home and at work? Last week I wrote about the challenges, but there are a lot of other things that are great about working and having a family.


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Categories : inner world, mom blogs, parenting, Uncategorized

what gets in the way of your happiness?

22 02 2010

When I was in college, my roommate Marla stressed about finding a major exclaimed in frustration; “I wish we were back in the old days of women just having to choose if they wanted to be a nurse or a teacher! There are just too many options!”  At the time, I chided her for not embracing the myriad of options women have available now more than any other point in history.  Yet, as I read the chapter in Find Your Strongest Life entitled “Of Choice and Men” Marla’s comment came to mind.  In his research to learn what helps women to feel strong and successful, Buckingham learned the following- I’m quoting from a few of the highlights on page 45 if you have a copy of the book:

1. Over the last forty years women have gained more opportunities and more responsibilities. Very few if any, have been relinquished. Consequently, your greatest challenge in life is to make wise choices.
2. More choice doesn’t correlate to more happiness. More choice can in fact, add to your levels of stress and make your life harder.

hilarious "super-mom" action figure available at: http://www.happyworker.com/catalog/item/supermom-action-figure

3. In developed countries, women and men work the same number of hours. (Women’s increasing levels of stress seem to be caused less by the actual number of hours worked, than by the sheer variety of what needs to happen within those hours)

To these observations I say, “preach it Marcus!” When I was at Wheaton taking a class this past December, I had lunch with some classmates and the department chair of the Intercultural studies, a woman named Evvy Campbell. I asked her what it was like as a woman leading in a high capacity role like department head. I immediately felt embarrassed I had called attention to her gender (do you ever feel like it’s taboo to point out gender? Especially for women?) She talked about how God had called her to the role & that Wheaton had been a great place to develop as a leader. Then with a wink and a nod she said, “I do my work here as department head & then go home to vacuum the floors & do the dishes too! That’s what it’s like being a female department head.”

oh Angelina, you make it look so easy and glamorous!

This is exactly the kind of thing Marcus is writing about- though we may have more responsibilities and opportunities, all of the same ones (like vacuuming the floors, and helping to assemble the school project, and exercising, and cooking healthy meals) remain. His premise is that women feel stressed because during the course of one day we feel pressure to be “Martha Stewart, Michelle Obama, Katie Couric and Meg Whitman and Angelina Jolie and Danica Patrick, all rolled into one unattainable package.” It isn’t that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything, it’s that there are too many things going on to focus well on any one of them.

He’s got some great suggestions later in the book about how to deal with this, but it made me stop and reflect how I try to do this as well. It does feel great when you can fully give yourself to the attention of making dinner, reading your child a bedtime story, composing that difficult email, or cracking out a few hours of studying….without thinking about them all simultaneously. I am totally guilty of this!

Dave and I have tried to make some rules to help us stay focused on being present to what we’re currently doing- we don’t check our computers/email/facebook before breakfast. I know that might seem silly, but when you’re focused on everything at once, it’s tempting to crack some eggs, check an email while the toast is toasting and reply to the email while you’re waiting for coffee to brew.  In the mean time, you’re missing out with time to connect with others, settle into the day and be present to nourishing your body and relationships.  Even making this one rule for our family has helped me to realize- whatever is in my inbox can wait! My family is more important than my iPhone! Eggs are delicious! And I have felt less stressed because we’re not letting technology invade that time as a family. It helps me remember that the people I’m with at that moment are more important for the 30 minutes of breakfast than the people who are waiting for my replies to emails.

What are some thing that you feel like is getting in the way of your happiness? Any ways that you’ve simplified your life to stop unhealthy multi-tasking? How has it affected you? What do you agree/disagree with about Marcus’ findings?


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Categories : grad school, mom blogs, parenting, work, working moms

what does your strongest life look like?

16 02 2010

A few weeks ago I invited women to join me in the challenge of reading “Find Your Strongest Life” by Marcus Buckingham.  Did anyone take me up on the challenge?  Perhaps you’ve been too busy living your life to stop, read & find out about how to strengthen it :) .

If you are intrigued by this book, but only have like, 5 minutes to spare, take the quiz to see if this book is something that you may want to read when you have a little more time. I am always eager to take quizzes in my perpetual quest of self-discovery and am always slightly disappointed that I don’t learn more about myself.  However, I do think every thing we do to discover how God has wired us is a good thing.  If you took the quiz, what did you come out as? I was pegged as a teacher/equalizer. I think I have some of the qualities found in influencer and advisor as well.  Do you ever feel like skewing the results so you come out as what you want to be/be perceived as rather than what you actually might be?

What do you think some of your strengths are? One of the things I’ve appreciated about Marcus Buckingham’s books is that they provide a language to talk about strengths in a way that is accurate- not bragadocius or prideful, but reflective of the unique strengths each of us bring to the table. I love the whole concept of strength based leadership- I know I’ve been given the passion/skills/strength to become an awesome public speaker/preacher but I will never have a filing system or linen closet that is envied by anyone. The great thing is these books support the idea that I should spend my time developing what I’m good at rather than stressing about the fact that my hand-towels, table cloths and christmas decor is all jumbled together. I would rather spend my time writing a sermon anyways :)


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Categories : books, work

new challenges! will you join me?

27 01 2010

I just updated the “cool people doing cool things” page for the next few months of challenge to live an integrated life of focusing on spiritual, mental and physical growth.  I’m pretty excited about these, so check them out! As always, you don’t really need to do much prep work, just let me know if you want to participate & comment on the blog about how you’ve been impacted.

This months challenge is to join “The Strongest Life Discussion” I just finished reading this book “Find Your Strongest Life: what the happiest and most successful women do differently.” I  found it to be very helpful in thinking through the best of what I have to offer this world especially as I have more time to reflect on where my strengths and weaknesses are.  After I finished it, I thought “it would be super-cool to talk about this with other cool people!” So, if you’re up for it, order it from amazon or pick it up from your local bookstore.  I’m looking for 10 ladies to join me in reading this book & discussing it on the blog once a week through your comments. We’ll begin the discussion questions on Sunday February 7th, so it should give you time to read part 1 of the book (49 pages)

I will say that this book will be especially helpful for people who feel stuck in their current job, aren’t sure if they’re cut out for what they’re currently doing, have lost the passion for a job they once loved or are simply trying to live well in every area of life but are stuck somewhere. Even if you’re simply interested in learning more about yourself to become more self-aware, this will be a helpful book.

I’ll post a discussion question every Sunday in February and share my own insights from the book. There is even a Strong-Life Test you can take online, but I would suggest not taking it until you read a bit in the book. That way you can maximize what you learn about yourself and apply it to your current situation.

So, who will join me in finding and living your strongest life?

I don't think I'm cut out to be a riveter, but more power to Rosie!


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Categories : books


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