Minisode Series: Lessons in Balance and Resilience

Working mothers often face an overwhelming juggle of responsibilities, leading to a necessary reflection on the importance of solitude and self-advocacy. Through personal anecdotes, we explore how finding balance involves prioritizing quiet moments that foster clarity, setting boundaries, and teaching kids independence. 

• Importance of solitude for self-reflection 
• Influence of podcasts as a source of inspiration 
• Navigating travel demands while feeling guilt 
• Need for boundaries in professional life 
• Instilling independence in children while managing guilt 
• Lessons in self-advocacy and asking for help

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Balance and Priorities
• 7:22 Navigating Work-Life Balance Challenges

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everybody. This is StillRosesPodcast. This podcast has been created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I hope my audio is coming through. Okay, I am reporting from the car.

Speaker 1: 0:19

I had to start my day incredibly early today and I'm going to talk about that in a second. Um, I've I especially by myself because, to be quite honest, I am never by myself, ever. So it's almost nice to have like the silence and like aloneness with my thoughts. Um, it's always very interesting for me to be able to have that space because I get very overstimulated at home and it's always very interesting for me to be able to have that space because I get very overstimulated at home and it's a lot of noise and a lot, you know, a lot to my senses, some instances. So having a moment of just I'm just by myself with my thoughts is always very interesting.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I like to let my mind kind of wander. I like to my mind just will wander in different directions and I'll catch myself. And I like little pivotal moments in my mind just will wander in different directions and I'll catch myself like little pivotal moments in my mind wandering. So if it wanders to like, for example, this morning, um, I always, I always refer to you guys and tell you like, oh you know, recommend to you to listen to Kathy Heller's podcast about the never after. So I always will go to her podcast first when I hop on the car because I want to hear, you know, an episode, or whatever. Every time I reach out to her podcast to look at an episode or listen to an episode, I always land on exactly the episode that I needed to hear in the moment. So I accessed an episode today and, sure enough, right in that moment I was able to hear an episode that delivered a message to me that I needed to hear. So it's just, it's one of those things. So I always really strongly recommend to you guys, if you haven't discovered Kathy yet, discovering her changed my entire life and I will be a broken record about this every opportunity I have and that's why you hear me say it so much Seek out her materials, seek out her monthly meditation memberships, look at her book. I mean you can't go wrong here and again, like if you are feeling like there's something a little bit more for you, I'm telling you she'll help you unlock it. Like guaranteed you will be unlocked, and if she doesn't help you fully unlock, she will at least set you on a path of discovery, because she talks about so many resources that she used to help herself unlock and, like everything that she does, she recommends things all the time. I can't say enough about that, so I wanted to say that like that.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Now, the other thing that I was rattling around in my head for the first hour and a half that I've been on the road today was why am I on the road today? So you all know that I have loved my podcast and it's my big passion and I get very excited to be able to connect with all of you. But I also have, you know, a day job. I have to keep the lights on right Got to pay bills.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I have often said to people sometimes you have to, you know, double time it a little bit for a little while, until things loosen up and can be released. You can focus on the one thing that you're really meant to be doing. This is my double timing error. It is what it is. I don't find it overwhelming all the time, only in some instances. I don't want to lie to you guys.

Speaker 1: 3:29

There are some instances where I'm like what are you doing? Just link it to your career. This is what you train for, this is your expertise. Like, why are you trying to do something else? Why are you trying to do the extra? And I do the extra because when I don't do the extra, the extra is the podcast. I can't even refer to it as the extra, because when I'm not engaging with this podcast and when I'm not reporting and using my voice, it feels like a hole starts to open up inside of me. It feels like a hole opens up inside of me and it always really makes me uncomfortable and starts to bother me. When that happens, and it will start very small and it feels just like slightly uncomfortable and then it starts to get more and more and more uncomfortable until I finally am able to sit down and record and work on the podcast, finally am able to sit down and report and work on the podcast. So that's actually how I know that the podcast for me, steel Roses for me is so much more than oh, it's just a podcast. This means so much more to me than anything else that I'm working on, because I'm getting to use my voice, which is a huge honor, and I I can't say enough about it.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So the days that I feel overwhelmed. I and it does happen and I have moments of like well, I'll say it at home. I like to be really transparent at home, or I try to be, or I'll say like I'm very overwhelmed right now and it's usually because it's. You know, most needs to be clean, laundry needs to be done, or laundry. You know, there's like four hours of laundry to fold, groceries need to be done. You know, like I mean it's usually just like a pile up of like oh well, you know, I should be doing more with the kids, or I should be doing more with my husband, or I should do more for my, my daytime job, or I should do this. I noticed the word should like being peppered throughout there.

Speaker 1: 5:09

There's always a moment of when I start to get overstimulated and I start to freak out. There's always a moment of just take a breath. Here, it's okay, you don't have to do everything. And I have to self-talk my way out of that mindset of oh my God, you're failing, you're not doing anything right. You know like it, just you have to. I have to talk myself out of it. So it is, you know a lot to do everything that I'm doing, but again, at the same time, it feeds my soul, and I will say this, I know, in particular, the podcast feeds my soul. So anything extra outside of podcasting and my daytime job to me is not something that I'm going to lean into, because I know the priorities for me Now.

Speaker 1: 5:49

I do sometimes have a tendency to just like dive in and be like, oh, I want to do it all. That's just like a knee jerk reaction, because I have always tried to you know, quote unquote do it all Again, not my best, not my best, not my best recommendation and not my best time. Sometimes it happens it's a knee jerk reaction. I want to volunteer for stuff all the time and then I'm like, oh my God, why did you do that? So it's about not spreading yourself too thin.

Speaker 1: 6:15

I said something to that effect this week to my new team, because I see it in all of them. They're all so wonderful that they're always like, oh, I'll handle it, I'll deal with it, I'll take that on, I'll take that on. And everyone is always so kind and wanting to help each other out. And I said this week the reality is you cannot do it all. You do have to ask for help, you have to raise your hand and say I'm overloaded, I can only focus on this, that's it. So there are those moments of clarity needed and once you get a hold of that and you're able to really fine tune your feet and like what you're focusing on, you're going to be unstoppable, you're going to be able to do so much more and you're going to be feeling so much more fulfilled. That'll open up more and more for you.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Now back to something I said earlier why am I on the road at this time? It is currently five o'clock in the morning. I don't know if you can. You know what. It's probably best that I'm recording at this point, because if I get to my destination and I haven't spoken yet, I'm going to sound like I rolled out of bed. So it's good that I'm warming up my vocal cords right now. So why am I on the road at 5am?

Speaker 1: 7:22

Well, as you all know, I have my profession daytime job and then I have my profession podcast. So profession daytime job sometimes requires me to travel. Now I was able to dodge travel, and I mean that because I try to dodge travel all the time. I was able to dodge travel for a really long time because of COVID and you know my kids were little and it was something I was able to sort of avoid, but it is something that you know my job often entails. There's a few challenges in that for me. Now I know a lot of women that their jobs require travel and they have no issue with it and they have, you know, people that they tap into to watch their kids overnight so that they could leave and that their husbands can leave.

Speaker 1: 8:09

This is not my scenario and I feel that I've pressed myself into the scenario that I'm in. So I really don't have anyone to blame but myself here, because this is one of the areas where I don't want to say fail, but I do want to say fail because I don't want to encourage what I'm about to say. This is an area where I think I have failed myself because, as a mother, very much always want my family to feel like they're coming first For a very long time. In order for me to do that, I would be working obscene hours and you know putting myself in. You know I got my predicaments where I was like working obscene hours, doing crazy things, like crazy things, like you know, 12 hour days, 15 hour days and whatnot, because I'm trying to maintain almost, I guess, the illusion that I'm focused on 100% here and with you in. You know, whatever hours I have with my family, I have learned quite a bit as I've gotten older in how to set boundaries and not take on as much. Just like kind of what I was talking about.

Speaker 1: 9:23

But the reality of it is that my profession because I also love that it does take time away a little bit. So, in order for me to try to mitigate the impact of my profession on my kids and my husband, I end up having to put myself in situations where, well, I know, at some point I'm probably going to have to do an overnight or I'm going to have to get on a plane and leave somewhere and whatnot. So, as much as I can, I try to avoid it. This is one of those scenarios where I need to travel and I could have made it easier on myself and made it an overnight. Now, that would have 100% made things easier for me. I could have probably been less stressed out. I could have probably, you know, gotten more sleep. Not probably I would have gotten more sleep. You know, there would have been an easier path had I taken it. There could have been an easier path had I taken it. There could have been an easier path had I chosen it. But instead I put myself in a scenario where I am trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time professional at the same time, which is damn near impossible. Possible Now. That required me to get on the road and be driving at about three o'clock, 3.30 in the morning.

Speaker 1: 10:59

I made this choice because I wanted to be able to put my kids to bed last night and I wanted to be able to sleep next to my husband and I wanted to try to lessen the blow of mommy not being there in the morning or in the afternoon, or even in the evening tonight. I don't even know if I'll be back. It's time for bedtime, probably not. I was trying to lessen that blow for my children and even in doing that, when I told them I had to be away for the day, the tears and the stress. And I saw it on them, their little faces, that they're worried. And they're concerned because mommy's always there. Mommy does so much. They're like who's going to pack this next? Who's going to do this? Like we don't know. You know, mommy's always here. So I was trying to lessen that blow a little bit. Now I will also share this with you.

Speaker 1: 11:45

There's part of me that is excited that I'm not going to be there today, because I really need my kids and and my husband to stand on their own and I to have them break that thought of well, mommy will take care of everything, because I do, and I know for me personally, I sometimes think of that as a fail, like because I don't want them to be so heavily reliant on me that again, when I have to do something like this and I'm traveling, um, that everyone freaks out and it's like an issue, you know. So there's a large part of me that's like happy that I have this little small trip that I have to take, because it's allowing me to put a little bit of space in there and the next trip will probably end up being an overnight and that way maybe they'll see this wasn't so bad. You guys can handle things without me. It's not that big of a deal. That's really where I'm trying to push towards a little bit, because I need them to, while I'm home, still be in the habit of. You can still do things yourself, you know, like I know that mom can do everything for you, but you can help too. You can get your own snacks, you can get up and get your own water, like you guys can figure out food, like it doesn't always have to rest on mommy's shoulders. So ultimately that's kind of the lesson that I want them to take away from today is like they can survive without me and that way the next time I go somewhere it's not as traumatic for everybody. The working mom shuffle is how I quite often refer to my situation, so he take the way here.

Speaker 1: 13:21

I'm not sure what it is Because, again, I've been awake now since like the wee hours and I probably won't be able to sum this up properly because I've kind of rambled a little bit here. But I wanted to just put my top of mind thoughts out there and you know, just let you guys know I'm here. I'm here this week super busy, as usual, but it's all good. Don't forget, sunday guest episode airs 8am or 9am Eastern every single Sunday. This winter spring series is very interesting. We have a very unique, lovely set of guests. Everybody's been very kind and gracious with me with my new schedule, which has been very nice. So continue to listen. I really appreciate all of you. I hope that you enjoyed this episode, even though I was a little bit all over the place. Thank you for being with me on this journey. Take care, and I will catch you on the next one.