This post is part of a six person blog hop on the topic of work/life balance. A chat on Twitter sparked this discussion. This is a big topic and I think our perspectives will vary in interesting ways. Okay, here we go!
In 2004 I became a mother and left my full-time job. It was harder than I’d expected. I thought it would be an easy transition for me because I’d always wanted to be a mother who stayed at home with my children. But when it actually happened it meant leaving a job I really liked and was good at, and leaving a career I’d been building for 7 years. It was a sudden shift in identity and it took me a long while to recalibrate. All the while, though, I felt relieved that I was able to be up nursing a fussy baby without pressure to leave the house the next morning, and relieved that I didn’t have to hand her off to someone who wasn’t her mommy only to sit in a cubicle worrying, and pumping every two hours. I was home with her and I knew her better than anyone.
Nursing Roxanne in March of 2005.
When it became clear that our first daughter had some special needs that were tricky to identify, I could describe the way she behaved and what was troubling us very clearly. I was there to take her to physical and occupational therapy. I had quit my job to take care of this child, take SEN awareness and training and I took it incredibly seriously, and still do. I was, and still am, so grateful to be able to be at home.
Crafting with Simon, Josephine on my lap, while Roxanne was at school.
At the same time, though, pretty early on I began to admit to myself that being a mother was not all I am and not all I wanted to be. I know there are mothers who feel satisfied and accomplished at the end of a day of taking care of their children. I found myself feeling that I hadn’t done anything at all. Mothering is a beautiful thing, and a hard job, but it’s also repetitive and sometimes boring. Even, or especially, during these years when my kids are very young (my daughters are 2, 7, and 9 right now) I need something more. When Mother’s Day or my birthday comes around and Charlie asks me what I want, my deepest desire is to have time away from my children. For however much I love them, I also love my separate life.
9 months pregnant with baby #3 on the day my first book arrived.
That’s how my blog and business began and that’s why I’ve grown it into what it is today. I think I’m able to do it in part because I spent so many years working in inner city schools. I’m accustomed to getting
real work done amidst chaos. Controlled chaos is often my reality. When you see tweets from me at 5:23 pm on a Thursday, rest assured I’m typing those while watching three pots boiling on the stove, with a baby on my hip while two other kids do homework and quarrel with one another. I’m typing that tweet with one hand, on my phone, and I’m doing it because I want to. I actually really love doing both things at once. And I think it’s okay for kids to see that mommy has other things she does. Growing up, my mom was a freelance reporter for the Washington Post while she was home with us and I was so proud of her job.
My opening at artstream gallery.
There are times when my things run into each other and the road gets bumpy. I remember coming in from the beach on an afternoon in 2009 with three hungry, sandy kids while on the phone with acquisitions editors from two publishing houses at once, negotiating my first book deal. Most days aren’t like that, of course. Most days I work while the kids are at school or asleep, and while they are here at home I am with them fully. Sometimes it does feel too hectic to have both of these roles, but I’m a planner. I work ahead and I work efficiently. Facing the challenge of having a business and running a household at the same time is what makes me whole.
Roxanne painting at the kitchen table.
This is where the term “work life balance” feels wrong to me. My work is wrapped into my life. I’m a stay-at-home mom as much as I’m a designer and that’s what makes up my days,
and my nights. That word “balance” makes me feel stifled, and guilty as though I should have two separate parts of myself: “work” and “life.” And there’s a connotation here that “work” is something we have to do, but don’t want to do, whereas “life” is what we crave. We’re supposed to eagerly anticipate the weekend when we are “off work” and can “enjoy life.” This is simply not the case for me. I love creating this business and I love raising my children. These pursuits together give my life meaning.
Hmm… I’m chewing on what you’ve said. I feel like I totally disagree, but it’s taken me a while to figure out why 🙂
I’ve noticed a parenting culture (on twitter and blogs) that seems to suggest that proper work/life balance means a separation of work and parenting. It requires a room with a door, strict work hours that the children/spouse need to respect and (in my view) immense frustration when the system doesn’t work.
That’s now how you work at all. I’ve been in your home, and the way you blend parenting/home and work is beautiful.
So… here’s where I disagree: I think you HAVE the perfect work/life balance. I think it’s the current parenting culture (suggesting that work/life balance requires blocks of time colored in on a daily chart) that has it all wrong.
This is only one trend on the topic that really bothers me. As I alluded to in my post, I see countless business owners doing what seems to me ‘bragging’ about how they’re burning themselves into the ground. I think frequent tweeting about how children are interfering with work is just another component of this same phenomenon. It’s as if people believe, “If I work really hard, and make others see how hard it is, then I’ll be really successful”, and I think that’s just unhelpful and dangerous.
You my friend, have it down. And in a healthy way that I’m proud to share.
So there. There’s what I think.
<3 you, Abby!
ditto… I think you have a perfect work/life balance… it is how you think others think it should be that is wrong… working from home you have the luxury of being able to blend everything together beautifully and how it works for you…
I agree with Stacey’s two points that the issue has more to do with the glorification of overworking yourself (in any role) and how dogmatically proscriptive people are about the “right” way to be a parent. I think it’s somewhat self-evident that we all require some work/life balance, whatever form it takes. I am a terrible multi-tasker, for example, and would never be able to Tweet with a baby on my hip and three pots on the stove without dropping the phone into boiling water and burning the baby. But I would also never suggest that the “proper” way to run your life and business is to set aside separate, undisturbed office hours.
One thing I found missing from your post and am curious about is work/life partner balance. How do you and your husband divide career and domestic responsibilities between you? I’m 7 months pregnant with my first, and also the main breadwinner in our family, so this topic has been coming up a lot in our household lately.
Thanks for the post!
That’s the best kind of disagreeing I’ve ever witnessed. I wish whenever anybody disagreed with me, that person would be essentially telling me I’m awesomer than I think I am. 🙂
I don’t know if the perspective is different because you are at home during the day, but for me work-life balance is about being present and productive at work while leaving enough energy and focus to do the same at home. I am not always as successful at that as I would like. Interesting topic!
I have to agree with Stacy in that it sounds like you have good work/life balance. I think the term exists because there are a lot of jobs that are completely inflexible and employers that act like they own your entire life – I got nearly fired for not answering emails 11pm on a Friday night at one job and another told me when I started puking at four pm that I wouldn’t get paid for the ENTIRE day if I didn’t stay until five. So it’s not so much having to seperate the two as it is being allowed to ever prioritize anything over being an employee.
I usually hear this trrm brought up to talk about people who are so busy with work that they don’t have any time to spend with their family, so they want/need to find a better balance. Sounds like you were originally having the opposite problem when your life switched to all-family and you craved something more. It’s about giving both an appropriate amount of time & energy so neither one is neglected and you feel better balanced.
You raise some terrific points here. Thank you! There is no right way, or perfect way, to raise children and work, especially as a woman. The only right way is the one that works for you, your spouse, and your kids. And what that looks like can change over time.
I am not the main breadwinner in our family. One of my primary responsibilities is to make it possible for my husband to work full-time. I got up in the night with all three babies every single time they cried. I don’t travel for work (I don’t go to Quilt Market or teach at national conference, for example) because I have to be here during the day to get the kids to and from school, to be with them after school, to make dinner, pack lunches and snacks, etc. If I left, we’d have to hire full-time help in my absence, even if it was just for a day or two.
It was funny the day I shot the trailer for my book. My husband took that day off of work and I left the house at 8:00 am and came home at 7:00 pm. I told the videographer with great excitement, “This is the longest I’ve been away from my house in 9 years!” He gave me a look like maybe I was crazy.
I never pulled an all-nighter in college. I went to Johns Hopkins and got straight A’s every semester so it wasn’t that I wasn’t working hard, it was that I got all my work done during regular waking hours. People seemed to love to show off how they had to stay up all night to finish an assignment, but I don’t think anyone really did have to do that. They chose to do their work that way, and I think there was a part of them that really enjoyed telling everyone about it. Parenting/working culture is the same way.
Stacey, as someone working full time (mostly) outside of the home, I think I let my home and work life bleed into each other rather successfully. I’m fortunate that I spend most of my work day alone in my office, with a door I can close, and as a salaried individual contributor, the exact timeline in which I do things usually doesn’t matter. There are occasional epic days, but they are rare. So if an email comes in from my kids school, as it all too often does (seriously too many preschool emails!), I can stop and read it then. I can add upcoming events to my calendar. I can hire the babysitter and RSVP to the birthday party and schedule the pediatrician (I can also GO to the pediatrician). I can spend 20 minutes online buying the leggings my daughter can’t live without. I can email my husband to plan our next vacation. I can tweet. I try not to blog, but sometimes I can’t move on until I get a post sketched out. If the kids get sick or there’s a snow day, I can usually work from home without too much difficulty, and thankfully the same goes for my husband. I’m a solid multi-tasker though, so I’m better at keeping all of these things going than my husband is, for example. But the flip side is that I can accommodate work at home when I’m supposed to be “off” – but that benefits my workplace too. Obviously, I’m lucky, as this doesn’t work for plumbers or doctors or waitresses, but I think the idea that home and work must be kept separate just doesn’t work as well anymore.
Abby, you’ve always seemed like a paragon of efficiency, and I think it’s why you’re so successful. You are inherently balanced, because you see what needs to be done and find the best way to do it. I’ve especially seen that in reference to your bookkeeping – I gather that it’s one of your least favorite tasks, but you’ve established a pattern for getting it done, and you stick to it. You’re disciplined in a way that many artistic people probably struggle with instead.
Now a bit of devil’s advocate (and feel free to challenge me too, this could spice up my evening): I do wish you had more time to yourself, and the ability to travel. As you’ve said above, you think one of your primary responsibilities is to make sure Charlie can work full-time. Would you say that’s not one of mine then, since I also work? Do you think we’re both not doing right by our employers if we both work? Do you think Charlie could have some role in changing things for other men in his organization if he had to do more to help you at home so that you could do things like travel for your career?
Since I’ve been your friend and followed your blog from basically the beginning, I’m completely amazed at all you have done with this space and in your career, and it’s been astounding at how you’ve done it completely on your own terms. I’m so proud of you, and am one of your biggest fans. Thanks for allowing me to participate too.
LOV, I hope you’ll come check out my blog. My husband and I have both worked throughout our kids lives (my oldest is 9.5), and share the domestic work and the income fairly evenly. Let me know if I can help you sort things out.
I really identify with this. I made straight A’s in college too, but like you, I never pulled all nighters. It just didn’t kill me the way it seemed to kill other people, but it wasn’t like it was easy; I just made different choices about how to spend my time. At my day job, I am a stickler for meeting all of my insane deadlines, but I leave at 5pm on the dot nearly every single day to get my kids, and working at home on nights and weekends is a choice that I make as needed so that I can take advantage of the flexible environment at my office — leave for appointments, long lunches, etcetera.
There are always folks who cannot meet a deadline to save their life, and the excuses are always the same (too much work, too little support) but it’s not exclusive; we all deal with these issues. Instead, I really feeal that if they could make a different choice and spend that hour-long complaint session on knocking out 15 emails, or restructuring their planning spreadsheet, they’d be one step ahead. But then, I guess you’re right – they wouldn’t get to tell people about it. 😉
I LOVE this post so much. I think it’s so important for women to make their life balance/mix/combination feel right to them, and let go of the guilt that society tells us we should feel for not doing enough in both family and career aspects of our lives. It’s important to be self-aware enough to know whether that nudge at the back of your mind that says “I’m not doing enough” is from your own needs and desires, or from what society tells us is the right way to do things.
I admire the way the different aspects of your life blend smoothly, Abby.
Thats so true, Rachel. Where do those feelings of guilt come from? Are they truly from within, or are they a societal expectation that doesnt actually match with our own.
This post was great. I love the honesty and passion behind your words Abby. Having just come through year 1 with my own little girl and having done ‘nothing’ but raise her I am literally going through the struggle to rediscover my identity as myself a creative person, and a mother. It’s such hard work and I miss my creative outlets and time… Precious time… I am working on finding some snippets for myself… While she naps ;). A lovely thought provoking post. So glad there are bloggers and women like yourself out there. xxx
Thank you so much for your kind words, Thea, and congratulations on making it through the first year of motherhood. It’s a huge transition and one that can be harder than we expect. Eventually you do get back on your feet and figure out a way to be yourself and be a mom, but it takes a long while and it is definitely a puzzle!