Toby: “You’re a mom. It’s not the cookies or the smiles, it’s the hard stuff, the scary stuff. It’s how you can do it. It’s strength”. – The Walking Dead –
It’s the busy hustle and bustle for the week, our routines. Baby A turned four this summer(not so baby anymore), she is a full-time JK now. I did return to work after all, and its been quite the challenge. I decided to go back because I want to be an example for my girls, I want them to know that it is possible to have a career and have your family too. It is about finding that balance in your life, being able to dedicate your time for your family and also detaching for a bit while in a work environment. Being at work for me is about finding and developing my skills. Contributing to our community and discovering what i am good at outside of being a parent. I have learned that at times my mom skills have really applied to my job and vice versa. We work for people, we don’t work for companies.
Being a mom has taught me how to juggle a multitude of tasks and roles. Its about time management, organisation and working smarter. That’s been a big lesson for me lately, working smarter and not harder. With the constant changing demands in parenting, the key has been finding easier ways to manage the load, stress, pressure and challenges. Working for a large corporation has been no different, its become so much more demanding with challenges like parity, gender gaps, change in operating hours, compliance, management, and just a lot harder in general to maintain a balance. It has been a long battle since my return to work, pushing to get ahead as a female and working mother of three. As much as i want to keep pushing changes for better opportunities for my daughters, it was a night over dinner that a simple conversation with my now 10 year old brought it all back into perspective. It was a simple phrase, a response to the most common question anyone would ask a 4th grader. ” Want to you want to do when you grown up?” her response: ” I would like to be a scientist. but you know mom, I don’t think i can be a very good scientist if I have kids.” The first thing to come to mind, I have failed. It was a very deep conversation between a mom and 9 year old that evening. What came out of that conversation is that its equally important to know what you want for yourself and have the strong support system around you to make it possible to achieve your goals. My company is not ready to make the necessary shift to support my goals. but there are other companies out there with supportive and trained management. Companies that reward and encourage new ideas and foster a successful environment. Maybe success is defined differently today. Maybe its bringing up a new generation of workers that value more then just a title and stature. I want to bring up strong independent women and i want them to understand that road blocks are just important challenges presenting more possibilities. Without failing, we can never improve. Without the storms we cannot appreciate the sunny days.
I will be sharing some of our challenges as a growing family, as a mother of 3 trying to find the balance, the right job (yes, I have decided to look for a better opportunity) and just some of the day to day conversation that comes up with my girls. Sometimes it takes talking to a 9 year old to really understand the world today. 🙂 Munchkin Happy.
Changes
03 Monday Oct 2016
munchkinhappy 