As working women and moms, the reality is we often neglect our mental health. Faced with all the responsibilities and duties imposed (and self-imposed as well) on us, we tend to put this part of self-care on the back burner a lot. This is especially relevant when we consider the dark stigma around mental health and therapy, especially in minority communities. I grew up in Senegal, West Africa, where the entire concept of mental health was (and in many ways still is) ignored altogether.
Back then, we didn’t talk about mental disease, only pitying the “crazy” men and women abandoned on the streets for lack of better care. Despite the existence of mental health hospitals, there was a strong stigma on mental health, or the lack thereof. As a result, for me, the necessity of caring for one’s mental health was non-existent. You just had to cope with whatever came your way in life, and that was that…
It wasn’t until later in life, after experiencing the heart-wrenching blow of suicide, loss and grief, that I started wondering about mental health. As an immigrant in a different culture that was more open to considering the importance of mental health and therapy, I had the opportunity to learn more about it. First, from books, then through conversations, and ultimately through experiencing the benefits of therapy myself at a turning point in my life and work.
Like many, I felt the stigma and the associated sense of shame around it initially, especially as a strong Black woman who was taught to “handle my business privately”. Yet, what I learnt about myself, my beliefs, values and story, and the deep process of healing and freedom that ensued, absolutely amazed me, and prompted me to share my experience with fellow women and moms:
Going to therapy is an act of bravery and NOT weakness
One of the main reasons why so many women, and people in general, avoid therapy (or any form of mental health care) is because of the stigma of weakness associated with it. For many, to go to therapy means admitting to being weak, to not being able to cope with life, or being unable to “handle your business”.
As a result, the rate of suicides and depression have been climbing at an alarming rate, as individuals are left to struggle alone. On the very contrary, taking care of one’s mind is an act of courage, an act of bravery that says: “I want to be whole, so I can in turn help others be whole”.
Your mind is your most important asset, and you should care for it
The most important asset we have is our mind. It’s the battleground where our thoughts define the way we see, and act towards, the world. It can literally make or break us. So why wouldn’t we, especially as women and moms who are in charge of so much of the world’s education through our influence on families and children, care for it as well as we do our bodies?
Imagine dealing with everything you deal with as a working woman and mom, and not stopping to wonder if you’re ok mentally? It’s with our minds that we raise our children, follow purpose, help others, build striving lives and careers, and they deserve the best care.
Your growth and healing affect others
We all carry baggage from our pasts and present. From childhood on, we are shaped by beliefs and values transmitted to us by well-meaning parents, family members and communities who themselves carried negative baggage from their own experiences. As such, we’re not always responsible for the cards we’re handed in life. Yet, what we are responsible for is our own healing and growth as individuals. Without it, we run the risk of stagnating and not evolving ourselves, not to mention bleeding on and hurting others who may not be able to defend themselves, including our children.
As moms especially, our mental health deeply affects our children, and we are the ones instilling many of the values and beliefs they keep for most of their lives. It also affects our marriages, couples (hence the importance of couple therapy as well) and relationships. That is a heavy responsibility that we must be aware of and heed carefully.
All in all, caring for your mental health as a working mom is far from being an indulgence. It’s actually a necessity that doesn’t just impact you, but whose benefits extend to everyone and everything around you. However, it requires courage, commitment and the willingness to preserve one’s mental well-being.
Have you been considering your mental health and ways to better care for it?
When you hear this phrase, you may picture someone at their desk, holding their cup of coffee, seemingly pumped at the prospect of a productive day ahead. Right? Well, not exactly for everyone, and certainly not for working moms…
By the time many, if not most working moms reach their place of employment, they would have been up for at least two hours, busying themselves to get the kids ready, lunches prepared, and other logistical details all set. This is before frantically jumping in the shower, swiping on a bit of lipstick while doing the kids’ hair, and rushing out the door to fight traffic and beat the clock for kids’ drop-off. Then, only then, do they finally get to make it to what I lovingly call our “second shift”, where we now are expected to conduct business as usual, as if we didn’t just wage a full-on war on time, roadways and the sheer meaning of life itself. The best part is that these same working moms get to do it all over again, in reverse this time, at the end of the day, braving questioning bosses, delays, and exhaustion to pick up tired kids, only to head to more work at home. And it starts all over the next day again…Are you tired reading this yet? I know I am…
As a working mom, like so many others, this is my life. When I consider the ordeal that some of my fellow sisters find themselves in, just to keep their family and work afloat, I consider myself lucky. One of my readers posted earlier today that she has to bring her kid in to work every day, before dropping her off in time increments, so as to be able to put in some hours at the office. One of my friends had to go part-time entirely, while another was forced to make the heart-wrenching decision to give up on the job of a lifetime. And there are so many other similar stories of working moms out there, whose unpaid labor is so costly, yet is not being acknowledged, appreciated or recorded for that matter.
In her book “Invisible Women: Data bias in a world designed for men”, author Caroline Criado Perez illustrates the real cost of unpaid labor for women, brought on by a society historically built for men and as such without women’s input, with staggering statistics that brought tears to my eyes and indignation to my heart. Not only is this unpaid labor, from childcare to elder care and household chores, literally killing women, it’s also destroying our economy. Studies have shown that if the cost of unpaid labor for women were properly accounted for, it would positively affect the GDP of many a country in amazingly positive ways. Most importantly, it would allow for better physical and social infrastructures for women, which in turn would create more opportunities for the latter to be more productive thus improving the performance of businesses and the economy as a whole. Can you talk about a ripple effect?
As working moms, this catastrophic, and worsening, unpaid labor, translates into high costs we should all be aware of, if we want to begin to turn the tide around:
Unpaid Labor for women means lost wages and a rising wage gap
Having to take care of children or elderly parents, which is often women and moms’ burden, translates into women having to decrease their working hours or leave their jobs altogether. This also means lost wages for these working women and moms, which in turn widens the wage gap in general. According to a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) December 2014 survey, the gender pay gap is noted to be higher in countries where women spend more time on unpaid labor.
Unpaid labor for working moms means declining physical health
Women in general work more than 40 hours a week, which takes a toll on their physical health. Although women tend to live longer, they tend to be sicker than men towards the end of their lives, which puts into question the number of hours working women and moms put into both paid and unpaid labor. A 2011 study published in Psychological Medicine reports that working more than 50 hours translates in heightened risks of anxiety and depression for women. Moreover, a 2016 U.S. study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that women’s hospitalization and mortality rates increase with longer work hours.
Lastly, unpaid labor for women means lost time
How many hours would working women and moms gain if they could only recoup some of the precious time they spend on household chores, childcare and elderly care? This lost time can amount to days, weeks, months, and even years in the long run for women, creating a massive loss of time. Additionally, working women end up in occupations below their skill level in order to get the flexibility they need to carry out their unpaid care work, which also lengthens the time women spend progressing in their careers.
All in all, unpaid labor stands as a major obstacle for working women and moms. Ultimately, we have to be aware of it so as to make others aware of it, in order to turn this unfair share into a more equitable one.
2020 doesn’t just mark the start of a new year, but that of a decade. That’s 10 whole years of life, work and everything in between. Whether you’re eagerly looking to step into this new decade, or are nostalgically reminiscing over the highs and lows of the past few years, you can’t deny that whatever has happened during this time has taught many a valuable lesson, some more pleasant than others. For the bulk of the past decade, most of my life has been defined under the label of “working mom”. Granted, all mothers are working moms, from the stay-at-home mom who juggles household chores, homework and being her family’s moral anchor, to the executive who has to make tough choices between after-school pick-ups and late afternoon networking get-togethers at work. For many, if not most of us, our lives are defined along the ever-moving lines of self, motherhood, and work, whatever work may be made out of for each one of us. Along these lines, many hard lessons are learnt, some of which leave us with an indelible mark to be carried over the length of our lives.
As I reflect on this past decade, alternating between smiles, all-out laughter, and ugly cries, I’ve gathered a few of the main lessons I’ve had the opportunity, or rather I should say the privilege, to learn. Most of them were born out of adversity and struggle, as the best teachings are, and are also those that have made me grow the most, in the midst of frustration, tears, and also fun laughter. Some are simple, others took me a long time to learn, others I’m still working on. Yet, all of them have shaped my path, as I nostalgically and happily share them with you:
It was never about WHAT YOU DO, but the WHO YOU’RE BECOMING
One of the biggest lessons I’ve had the opportunity to learn has everything to do with what really matters when it comes to work and life as a working woman and working mom. The first half of my career was devoted to the WHAT in what I did professionally. After all, the barometer set for most of us is regulated in terms of degrees, certifications, accolades, promotions and other educational and professional achievements. Rarely do our own personal growth processes come into the equation of what is considered as “success” by the masses.
Yet, personal and professional growth go hand in hand and complement each other. One can never be truly successful if one of the two dimensions, either personal or professional, is left hanging by the threads of neglect and unfulfillment. This is especially true for working moms, for whom the definition of fulfillment is truly a holistic one, that not only encompasses professional achievements, but also a strong sense of integration of all the other areas of their lives. I learnt that true success is achieved from the inside out, from the personal growth journey that inevitably leads to professional fulfillment, and ultimately, success, as defined individually.
Your purpose is in what you love
Like many, it took me a while to understand that purpose is the guiding force behind true meaning and significance in our lives and work. Figuring out what purpose even meant, how to find it and what to ultimately do with it, was a whole can of worms I banged my head against for longer than I wished. Ultimately, it was in what I loved doing, in the gifts and talents I was born with, in the quirks and particularities that make me who I am, that I found it. After all, it didn’t matter as much what title I carried, or what organization I found myself in, as it did whether or not I got to practice and share my own gifts, talents and abilities, both natural and acquired.
As working moms, we often feel stifled in the expression of who we truly are, as we tend to wear so many hats that turn into the masks that ultimately hide our authenticity. We are women, wives, moms, employees, business owners, navigating the various spheres we’re called into and code-switching ourselves into the oblivion and neglect of what really sets us apart as individuals. That is exactly where it becomes crucial to awaken and re-awaken the purposes that have always been inside each and every one of us by simply focusing back on those things we love doing.
Being a mom will change you for the better
Being a mom is a GIFT, and one that keeps on giving at that. Most of the precious lessons I’ve acquired through life have been through motherhood, when changing diapers, questioning my baking abilities, answering my kids’ questions, and building a life that would serve my children well. It’s after becoming a mom that the urge to follow my own purpose grew louder and louder, so my children would see through their parents that it’s ok to fight for your dreams, to be different, and to be beautifully flawed and imperfect.
While one of the most prevalent misconceptions about motherhood is that many moms find themselves having to abandon their careers (which is true for many), I’ve also found that it also provides mothers with the gift of and desire for growth. I write, teach, cry, learn, stumble, get back up, and generally grow, so my daughter and son can see that while none of it is perfect, it’s ok for them to fight to become their best selves.
You get to define your own brand of success
Success is an elusive concept elusively defined through elusive iterations of what popular culture considers to be the pinnacle of achievement. Yet, what does really success consist in for a working mom who juggles opposite worlds , from home to work, day in and day out? It can be quite complex, if you ask me, especially for working moms whose professional ambition may be frowned upon or misjudged.
While the normative view of success, predicated upon the male bias around it, may look like the picture of a wealthy man at the top of his career, for working moms and women in general, it is quite different. Earlier this year (2019), Inc. magazine featured the first visibly pregnant CEO, Wing’s co-founder Audrey Gelman, on its cover, as a clear confirmation that the norms of success are quite different for men and women. Success for working moms may include the C-suite, but will also have at the front and center of it a healthy family and society, which is why it is so important for us to define what it means to our own existences. For me, success is growth, both personal and professional, and ensuring the well-being of my family and society. What is it for you?
Stop trying to be like a man
If you’ve read any of my earlier articles, you may have caught on to the fact that earlier in my career, I was trying to apply one of the worst pieces of advice when applied to working women: “When in Rome, act like the Romans”. For working women like myself, it meant pulling all emotions aside, not showing up as attractive, and displaying masculine traits of achievement. As it’s been proven, not only does this approach not reduce the bias against women at work, it also deprives both working women and professional environments of the very gifts and talents, such as acute intuition and soft skills, that female personalities tend to bring to the workplace.
I’ve since learnt to not try to act like a man, or like anyone other than the best version of myself at the time being, which may or may not include a dark shade of red lipstick and a feminine dress.
Being present is the best gift you can give yourself
One of the most shocking (and exhausting realizations ) I made when I became a mom, was the sheer number of hats we wear all throughout the day, from moms to leaders to servants, friends and so many more. The biggest downside to this (and to the inefficient art of multi-tasking) is that we end not being present much of the time. This means trying to answer emails instead of enjoying the kids at the park, thinking about dinner while at the board meeting, or leaving the baby in the car seat at home and driving away.
For me, being present has become the best gift of self-care and love I can offer myself and others. It means shutting off the phone sometimes, or leaving on time despite the flow of work piling up at the office. Most importantly, it means choosing quality over quantity for my life
Your relationships will make or break you
Developing and nurturing healthy relationships as working women and working moms is a well-known challenge. In between all the obligations we attend to, the changes we go through, and the demands of our careers and personal lives, catering to relationships, both personal and professional, becomes a daunting task. Yet, it’s the same relationships we may neglect, or wrongfully choose, that can make or break us.
As a working mom, I learnt that whatever my definition of success may be, it can seldom be accomplished alone. Which means surrounding myself with like-minded people, and women in particular, whom I accept, love and support, and who reciprocate similar acceptance, love and support. It also means releasing relationships that I or the other party may have outgrown in order to make room for continuous and fruitful growth for all. Easier said than done in most cases, and certainly always a work in progress, but one that remains one of the most important processes of life…
The point was never to remain the same!
“You have changed!” As I’ve grown and evolved, I’ve often, like many of you, heard this phrase. Like many, I’ve questioned it, felt guilty about it, pondered over it and am still making peace with it. Yet, in the beautiful mess that growth, both personal and professional, creates, one thing is certain; “The point of this thing called life was never to remain the same!” It is to grow, evolve and continue to become the best version of yourself.
As you go through your own evolution process, as you leave and start jobs and relationships, as you change your mind, release some and adopt other patterns, keep reminding yourself that the point was always to grow.
You never start from scratch, you always start from experience
In the past decade I’ve had two careers, changes jobs, become a mom, failed and succeeded at the same time, and am still here to tell the story. What I’ve learnt through change, transition and failure, is that especially as working women and moms, we never start from scratch. One of the biggest advantages of wearing so many hats is that we’re constantly learning and acquiring new skills, from soft skills to management and leadership abilities.
As we tread on new paths or get exposed to new environments, we are able to re-purpose these skills and turn them into our ultimate competitive advantage. Working moms have been proven to have excellent management and leadership abilities, and most companies with women at their helm tend to be more successful. It wasn’t until I realized this that I’ve more confidently faced unknow territories and known fears on my own path.
It’s never too late!
Last but not least, another great misconception of our times is that we’re all under some form of deadline to achieve or accomplish our goals in life. This is especially prevalent for working women and working moms, who are subjected to the pressures of having to have a career by a certain age, have families by another milestone, be part of this squad or that group by a certain time. This all contributes to a general sense of failure and discouragement, especially among working moms who are already so pressured both personally and professionally.
What I’ve learnt from starting a new career, speaking and writing, and going back to school in my late thirties and now early forties, is that it’s certainly never too late to begin anything. That we all have different paths and that honoring our divine timing and purpose is one of the best gifts we can offer ourselves and the world.
The past decade has been pretty amazing if you ask me! Here’s to another decade of lessons, joys, achievements, laughter, some (happy) tears and much more!
Like many of you, books are both my escape and a great source of learning. On my personal journey of self-love, they’ve been, and still are, some of my favorite go-to’s. As a matter of fact, the sheer fact of burying my head in a book for those rare moments of quiet, especially as a working mom, constitute the best acts of self-love for me.
I’ve been fortunate to be exposed, over the course of my personal and professional experience, to books that have changed the way I see myself and the world. When it comes to self-love, here are 10 books that have radically transformed both my understanding and application of self-love:
So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba: Written by Senegalese award-winning novelist Mariama Ba, this book exposes the reality of women from the perspective of an educated Muslim woman as part of her road to self-love.
We should all be feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: In this eloquent essay, famous author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores what it means to be a woman by offering a very unique definition of feminism.
Rising Strong by Brene Brown: Social scientist Brene Brown lifts the curtain on vulnerability and courage, and uncovers the meaning of rising strong as the ultimate path to fulfillment.
I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou: Beloved classic writer Maya Angelou takes us on a journey through children’s loneliness and the unfairness of bigotry, into freedom and self-love.
Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes: Mega-talented writer Shonda Rhimes writes about the transformative challenge of committing to say yes to unexpected opportunities for an entire year.
Beloved by Toni Morrison: This haunting masterpiece by iconic writer Toni Morrison is a call to return to love, despite the trauma of slavery and human abuse.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: Anyone wanting to improve their lives and thinking must have this book on their reading list!
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz: In this simple, teaching-filled book, teacher and healer Don Miguel Ruiz offers readers simple secrets to positive life changes.
The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte: This holistic life-planning tool is a revolution in chasing what really brings you happiness and joy in life. A must-read!
You are a badass by Jen Sincero: Hilarious and filled with light wisdom, this book is all about creating a life you love abandoning negative self-beliefs in the process.
Do you find yourself mentally computing your next grocery bill while catching a couple of words out of your conversation with the kids? Are you having a hard time being present because there are so many things competing for your mental space all at once? Are you able to both yell at the kids from the other end of the playgroundwhile holding a strained conversation with your girlfriend ?As a working mom, you may be all too familiar with thinking about a gazillion things at once, while feeling like your head may be on the brink of extra-terrestrial explosion.
Last summer, my sister told me something that has been sticking with me ever since. As I was huffing and puffing over two loads of laundry and a sink full of dishes, she calmly said: “You know, it’s not so much the physical work, but the mental load we carry that’s exhausting us as working moms…”I’ve had the opportunity to think about since then, so much so that I have taken as a habit to ask myself how much of a mental load I’m really carrying day in and day out. I used to think that it all boiled down to a productive schedule, with a detailed to-do list to boot and some productivity quotes here and there. What I realized is that it’s the mental load made up of the heavy compounding of our personal and professional lives that ends up getting to us working moms most of the time…
Having to carry so many thoughts and plans in our minds, from the kids’ matching socks to cross-country practice, not to mention the research project due at work, can be borderline debilitating. Yet, once you realize that it’s the mental aspect of it all that is really costing you more than anything else, it becomes easier to target the problem. So does realizing that doing more doesn’t exactly solve the problem. Rather it perpetuates it…
For me, it’s become a matter of taking the counter-intuitive approach of slowing down instead of speeding up, and eliminating rather than adding. I’m taking Coco Chanel’s mantra to take at least one thing off before leaving the house to a whole other mental level. It also means:
Having a strict mental hygiene
A while back, I started meditating to see if I could put my mind on pause for a few minutes. Fast-forward a couple of years, it’s become an inherent part of my mental hygiene as a working mom. These are the far and few in between minutes that I get early in the morning or late at night, when I’m not interrupted and can literally breathe for a bit. More than a calming exercise, it’s an entire re-wiring of our brains to support increased mental and physical capacity.
As essential as meditation, therapy, both formal and informal, has also become a cornerstone of my mental hygiene. If you take care of your body, why wouldn’t you care for your mind as well? While there are still a lot of unfounded cultural taboos around therapy, it certainly is a necessity for busy, sometimes over-stretched working moms.
Avoiding multi-tasking
It’s been said that women are good at multi-tasking. What has not been talked about so much are the negative side-effects of this damaging practice. As a recovering multi-tasker, I know all too well the lack of focus, the difficulty of not being fully present, along with the accompanying exhaustion, that are the hallmarks of multi-tasking.
It’s been a process to re-program myself not to multi-task, and I still struggle with it. However, even a little bit of progress in the opposite direction helps. Focusing on one task at a time offers you the gift of focus, clarity, and presence, while being able to enjoy what you’re actually doing. In terms of productivity, you actually get more done, a bit at a time, than altogether.
Clearing out ALL the clutter
Nature abhors a vacuum, and many times as working moms, we strive to fill every bit of our mental space with responsibilities, activities and relationships. We may also fill our physical space with LOTS of things, creating a sense of clutter that leaves us at times powerless and frustrated.
Part of releasing some of our mental load is also letting go of clutter. Whether it’s getting your Marie Kondo on, cutting off toxic relationships, mindsets and behaviors, or just re-framing your schedule and hiring some help, releasing the clutter will leave you freer, happier and all around better.
How can you choose to lessen your mental load as a working mom?
For working women and working moms, flexibility can be both a gift and a curse. Being able to actually have a choice in how you schedule your work can allow you to fit in other competing priorities. You may be able to take the kids to the doctor in the middle of the day, while completing your work on the go for instance. You may be able to work later in the day while you run important errands in the earlier part of the day. Yet, what we often don’t see is that there are traps to having a flexible schedule.
While switching careers from the corporate world to academia afforded me more flexibility in the beginning, it also exposed me to the need to better manage my schedule. It was tempting to do more in the same time space, instead of intentionally scheduling my time in an effective way. There are certainly multiple upsides to having a flexible schedule. However, there are also traps that as working women and moms, we should be aware of:
Thinking you have more time than you actually do
It’s tempting to add the grocery run, the kids’ appointments and a last-minute errand to your schedule when you can manage it at your discretion. Yet, what it often leads to is overestimating your availability and inflating your schedule unnecessarily.
If you’re like myself and you tend to have a love-hate relationship with procrastination, this can spell doom over your time management. Flexibility or not, you still have the same 24 hours to accomplish your goals and objectives.
Adding too much to your to-do list
When I realized added flexibility was actually not increasing my effectiveness, I started taking another look at my schedule. That’s when it occurred to me that I had been gradually adding an overwhelming amount of tasks to my to-do lists, thus stretching myself way too thin.
While added flexibility should help you fit in a few more important tasks to your schedule, it shouldn’t take you to the brink of exhaustion. If you notice yourself packing more into your day and being exhausted or resentful, maybe you should re-visit how you’re using your flexibility.
Not prioritizing self-care
For many working moms,self-care tends to come last. The upside of a flexible schedule is the ability to add in more “me time”. If your flexible schedule is not allowing you to have a healthy amount of self-care, then something is fundamentally wrong.
Increased flexibility should allow you to have a more integrated work-life relationship. An important part of it is to care for yourself.
All in all, flexibility is a big advantage for working women and working moms. However, learning to avoid the pitfalls of a flexible schedule is key to better time management.
This is a question that is so often asked of kids that it has almost become routine. As adults, we may barely listen to our own kids’ heartfelt answers, attributing some of their most random answers to their (cute) lack of maturity. Eventually, they’ll know better, get a good job and become productive members of society, at least we hope so….
I remember being one such kid, beaming every time someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“A writer, I want to be a writer”, I would timidly blurt out, chewing on the last syllables because it all sounded so big, so…unrealistic. When you were born and raised in West Africa in my days, writing didn’t exactly make it to the list of the most attractive careers. Now if your answer to this fateful question was “engineer”, “doctor”, or something along the lines of scientific genius, you’d be set to receive a vibrant nod of approval, more directed at your parents for their extraordinary feat at raising such an ambitious child. Although I was but a child, I could already notice the difference. It was this difference in treatment, among other factors, that I was reminded of when picking my college major and later my first career. It was as if I still needed the approving nods, decades later, until I didn’t…
When I had my own kids and the same question invariably made it to my lips, I was reminded of my own experience. While I’ve had the opportunity to turn this experience into the most exciting of journeys, many have not. This is why this time around, decades later, I stopped and actually listened to the small voices telling me of their dreams and aspirations, and saved my approving nods for the next Target sale. Right then and there, I realized that these moments when my children would look into my eyes for that glance of approval or that spark of joy, could define their entire lives, in a good or in a terribly negative way.
What I also realized through my own journey into purpose is that we do our best work answering the call placed in us since the beginning of times. Which also means that our children already know, even in their own imperfect terms and ways, what they are meant to be and do. It manifests in the most basic of their interests, tastes and preferences. It’s in the way they choose certain games over others, in the spark in their eyes as they assemble Legos or kick a soccer ball, in their pristine laughter as they create things from nothing. I was writing and telling stories before I knew what stories were. I was excelling at learning and teaching my dolls complex topics before I realized what I was doing. I always knew, even when I didn’t know I did.
As a working mom, one of my most important missions is to usher my children into their own purpose, and in the process, get out of the way. If you’re a parent and you’ve struggled at finding your own purpose, are still looking for it, or are blissfully living in it, it’s also yours. As I’ve found out through the innocent yet powerful lessons from my own children, is that it’s not quite as complex as we may think. As a matter of fact, it may just be a matter of doing these simple yet defining things, over and over again:
Listen and observe
I often tell my students in college that I learn more from them than they will ever learn from me. I feel the same about my children, although it’s taken me a while to realize it. Raised in a tradition where kids are seen and not heard, it’s been a process for me to deprogram my mind as a parent. Learning to listen and observe my kids instead of telling them what to do is still a process, yet one that I strongly believe in and apply to the best of my ability.
If you allow them, your children will show you who they are, and what they came forth to do on this Earth. It takes listening to their innocent words, and watching them as they evolve and choose their paths. The end result, however, is amazing as you learn to simply let them be who they are, which is the best gift you could ever give them.
Offer possibilities
Through my own personal and professional journey across industries and careers, from the office to academia, I’ve come to learn that everything is Possibility. This is also what I strive to convey to my children, students and anyone willing to receive it.
As a working mom, it’s important for me to offer the gift of Possibility to my children. For me, it means allowing them to experiment, try and fail. Whether it’s a new activity, musical instrument, sports, or simply visiting a new place or doing something different, possibilities are endless.
Create space
One thing I realized as a working mom is that I needed to create space for my kids to be themselves. This may be physical space for them to breathe and evolve as independent individuals, or mental and intellectual space to see, explain and understand things differently.
Raising my children in America as an African and now American woman is at times challenging. Many of the core beliefs I came up with are being challenged, sometimes quite irreversably. My own children have a totally different reality than the one I grew up in. However, although I don’t have all the answers, I’m willing to create the space for them to create their own.
