Enjoying a cold afternoon at the beach, free of cell phones, email, or distractions. Finally truly living "in the moment".
Chances are, I’m a lot like you. I spent the first few years of motherhood desperately trying to balance my drive to succeed in my career with a devotion to my family and children that every “good mother” should have. In the process, I over-worked, over-stressed, over-socialized, over-parented, and as a result my career, health, friendships and family have blossomed as well as suffered for it. Balance. It’s something all of today’s corporate working mom struggle with. It’s something even stay-at-home moms struggle with. It’s something I struggled with since the very moment I first saw that little pink line on my home pregnancy test.
While my husband was excited at the thought of having our first child, all I could think about was, “…But I still have so much to do! So many things I wanted to accomplish first! How I am possibly going to manage all this!”
Then, I naively thought. I can do this. I can maintain my work pace and have children. You see those corporate women all the time, right? A CEO of a company with three kids at home. She does it right? She’s managing just fine, right?
So, through the birth of my first son and into the pregnancy of my second, I kept going strong on the career path. Rather than slowing down, I expanded my Internet Marketing business. I teamed with a business partner, hired more employees, and expanded to two offices.
Along with the birth of my second son, came 6 months of colic. For any mother who has had a colicky baby you know the toll nonstop, inconsolable crying can take on a family.
Still, I kept up the work pace. I created a new Internet Marketing course for SDSU, taught more than 100 students per semester, and finished writing my second marketing book “Marketing in the New Media”.
My husband’s business was expanding as well. His San Diego construction business, which started during the boom of the housing market, was doubling in size every year. We were in overdrive.
We owned two houses in San Diego, took more trips that we needed and bought more things that we should have.
Then the recession hit. The housing market took a tumble. My husband’s construction business came to a sudden halt.
For me, the Internet Marketing industry was still strong and there were contracts to be won, but I couldn’t possibly work any harder to cover the costs of my husband’s slowing business. In fact, even before his business slowed, I was slowing. My health couldn’t take the pace of the work / family life I put on myself. As a result, I wasn’t doing either very well. I wasn’t able manage my team effectively nor make enough sales to keep the Internet Marketing business humming along. After another trip to the hospital with a devastating migraine I realized something had to give. I sold my part of the business to my partner and never looked back.
Today, my husband and I have worked hard to simply our life. We’ve gotten rid of our offices, downsized our employee/staffing needs, and now work out of our homes. We each run our own business and fortunately are at a point in our careers where we can pick and choose the type of clients we want, that fit our lifestyle goals.
Simplifying our careers, re-thinking our definition of “The American Dream” and eliminating the need for unnecessary materialistic items and clutter from our lives, were the first and most important steps in rediscovering the amazing life we had right in front of us. For us, the recession, temporary downfall in San Diego housing market, and trip to Urgent Care served as a much needed brick wall, to literally stop us right in our tracks.
Maybe you’ve hit your brick wall already. Or maybe you just know its coming. You are trying desperately to keep your foothold in a competitive corporate world while trying to maintain the energy for your family and good humor and spirit for your friendships.
This blog is a collection of advice and insights from working mothers just like you. It also contains some eye opening new research from spiritual and health professionals about the physical state motherhood can take on your body – especially while you are trying to maintain such a competitive work schedule. Finally, I am hoping this blog will give you the information and resources you need to develop an actual action plan to change your lifestyle, perhaps change your original vision of the “American Dream” and trade the corporate world for your own consulting business.
You can learn more about my business background and my Internet Marketing books at http://www.berkweb.com
