Tag: mompreneur

Mama Shaker: Claudia, Encouraging Us to Believe We Can

Posted in Career, Mompreneur, Podcasts, Return to work, Work from home, working mom, Workplace cultureTagged , , , , , 2 Comments

About 15 years ahead of the curve, Claudia Reuter chose to start her own company as a return-to-work path after staying home full-time with her two young boys.

“When I stepped away, I remember feeling like I didn’t think of it so much as a choice,” she says, describing her initial decision to pause a career she was passionate about, despite the fact that she “didn’t see how I was going to make that work with a new baby.”

Without the blended approach to commingling careers and motherhood that we’re seeing more of now, Claudia felt she was forced to choose between the two.

“Everything I was reading on one hand was saying stick with your career, and on the other hand was saying the most important thing you could do is be with your baby,” she recalls. “I’m like, these two things are not adding up.”

A few years later, when financial reasons drew Claudia back to work, she was concerned that the skills she honed at home wouldn’t be recognized in the business world.

“I remember realizing that no one was going to really value the experiences I had had as a stay-at-home parent, even though I knew that they were incredibly valuable,” she says. “And I knew that other moms, too, are in the same boat.”

“You’re doing a million different things, you’re managing a million different priorities, you’re worried about the long-term outcomes for your kids,” she says, noting the parallels with a start-up.

With two young kids just 23 months apart, Claudia bootstrapped a software business, raised capital (which led to some all-too-familiar clandestine conference call scenarios that any working mom can relate to), and successfully sold her company.

“All these years later, now I can connect the dots,” she says. “But at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to predict how this would have all turned out.”

Now she’s encouraging other women to do the same by “celebrating entrepreneurship as a way to lean in” in her brand new book Yes, You Can Do This! How Women Start Up, Scale Up, and Build The Life They Want (Techstars).

“What I realized is that I think we talk a lot about celebrating female founders, but we don’t talk enough about why to become one,” says Claudia. “If you become an entrepreneur, you have an opportunity to improve your own personal outcomes and have more control over your destiny.”

“If you can either build a company that’s big enough–or if you’re acquired and you can have some influence at the new company–you have a real opportunity to think through why only 17% of companies have paid maternity leave,” she says. “Why do we spend all our time talking about bringing dogs to the office, but we don’t really talk about kids in the office?”

“I just think there’s this huge opportunity to rethink things.”

How This Mompreneur Made it Work

Claudia started laying the groundwork for her business when her boys were babies, especially when sleep was at a premium with her youngest.

“I remember thinking, well, I’m already up,” she says, identifying herself as a morning person. “I have some of my best thinking really, really early in the morning.”

Even so, it wasn’t as if she had all the answers.

“I didn’t know anything about how to start a business at that point in my journey,” Claudia says. “So I started with a lot of research, and a lot of reading, and a lot of looking at what other people had done and trying to figure it out.”

She also points out that “it wasn’t totally linear,” and she often had her boys in tow, like the time she took them to the bank to open her first business account.

“I negotiated my first term sheet from my older son’s closet,” Claudia says. “I remember thinking, that was the one area I could go where I knew it would be quiet.”

“I was starting to fundraise and I got a term sheet, which was a huge deal for me just to even get a term sheet,” she says, describing how she put the kids in front of the TV with crackers and hoped the noise wouldn’t echo too loudly in her 1920s home.

You can hear her story on her podcast, The 43 Percent, which is currently in its second season.

“Now, I’m so much more open about the blend of personal and professional lives,” says Claudia. “But at that point, I remember being so nervous about letting anyone know that I had all these other things going on. Work at home wasn’t quite as common and that was 17 years ago, give or take.”

Claudia remembers at the time noticing “the contrast between how I was in my yoga pants” and “what I assumed to be the mindset of the people on the other end of the call, who had administrative assistants and people who are making sure they could be focused on what they’re doing.”

“I think that’s one of the challenges moms have, but it’s also one of the benefits,” she says. “We actually know how to juggle things and how to deal with a lot of different inputs coming at you, at once.”

In her current role as general manager of TechStars, Claudia has an eye on the next generation of startup success stories. In doing so, she sees similar traits that will help future leaders thrive.

“The Fortune 500 today is not going to be the Fortune 500 a few years from now,” she says. “Leaders know that their business can be disrupted. They’re going to rely on people who can balance both an operational mindset–to keep things rolling steady and growing–and people who are entrepreneurial–and can keep coming up with new ideas and thinking about how to incorporate those into the core business–in a way that is cost efficient and yet produces results.”

Claudia points out that the value placed on “disruption and innovation” opens the door for women who are constantly finding solutions to the challenges of motherhood and business.

“I think it’s important to own your experience, own your value and be able to talk about where you can contribute from a leadership perspective,” she says.

And perhaps most importantly, “not shy away from it.”

Mama Shaker: Ashley, Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Posted in Books, Infertility, It takes a village, Mompreneur, postpartum, Pregnancy, Self-care, working momTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine toggling between practices in Malibu and Beverly Hills, Ashley Beckman knows firsthand why many women feel spread thin across business and motherhood.

“The main thing is honestly that they’re usually the last to take care of themselves and they’re so rundown,” she says about the moms she meets with in person and virtually through DrAshley.com.

It’s one of the reasons Ashley relishes the opportunity to get ahead of the inevitable exhaustion that comes with motherhood, by providing support and resources before the pregnancy journey begins.

“I really love to help patients focus on getting really healthy prior to actually getting pregnant,” she says. “Not everybody is planning and knows when they’re going to, but at the same time, often there’s a window when people know they’ll be starting to try in a year or two, and that’s the perfect opportunity to start cleaning up your system.”

Ashley applies traditional Chinese concepts of body constitution, seasons, and warming and cooling foods, to help women through infertility, conception and postpartum.

As described in The First Forty Days: The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother, many cultures place a strong emphasis on postpartum care for moms. However, it’s not part of modern healthcare in the U.S. where Ashley points out, many women lack “the same sense of community where there’s somebody there to also take care of the mom, and those times are crucial.”

Even if those postpartum days have become a blurred memory, she believes there’s still plenty of ways for moms to find support and get back on the road to health.

“As a mom, everyone is sort of overworked and exhausted and it can get much better,” Ashley says. “There are a lot of tools out there–and that’s the whole point is to see someone who is experienced; you don’t need to wade through all the different options.”

As caregivers, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being so consumed by the well-being of others that the thought of addressing our own lingering needs feels daunting.

“What I love to do is figure out a very targeted solution for each person that I talk to,” she says. “I like to help you come up with a plan, and then we can bring you back to balance and try to get you feeling exactly how you used to feel prior to kids.”

Even beyond motherhood, Ashley cautions against following popular trends or extreme dietary restriction, “unless warranted by their health situation,” she says.

“Ideally you work with somebody who can guide you to find out what is the best thing for you to be doing, as opposed to something you read somewhere that’s really popular,” she says. “The whole point is to really get to the root cause, as opposed to just keep removing things from your diet or adding medications or supplements to balance it temporarily.”

While most of her clients have “multiple layers of things happening,” Ashley begins with small, manageable changes while simultaneously “peeling back those layers and addressing them one at a time to really create some lasting change.”

Nutrition provides a good starting point for her clients, because “they have the control over the food they buy and what they’re putting in their body every day,” she says.

Ashley believes “just getting people to learn to read labels,” can be a simple first step. “A lot of times, even those healthy swaps have a huge impact. Some people have things they just won’t give up, so I find healthier options for them.”

“My main thing is to just help women make the choices that will help them have really great health in the long term, and especially for your little kids–we want everyone to be happy.”

She counts fellow mama Gabrielle Bernstein, author of Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams, among “people that I really love that talk a lot about the power of our thoughts,” she says.

“Even though we’re exhausted and overworked and tired,” says Ashley, “so much really boils down to taking care of yourself, and loving yourself, and even just telling yourself that you know everything’s okay and that you have the power to create amazing health.”

Mama Maker: Olga, Weaving Together Fashion and Childhood

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Growing up in communist Belarus, Olga Jaeckel found respite soaking in vibrant colors at her local museum on Sundays, which were a stark contrast to her restrictive, monotone wardrobe.

“There was no fashion at all,” she says. “We all had to pick one brown dress that we would wear to school every single day.”

Olga’s experiences at the museum opened her eyes to a new world of self-expression, “so when I came to United States, I feel like I had such an appreciation for all of it,” she says.

Now with two sons and a daughter of her own, “all the choices and colors, fabrics and textures” have inspired her to create unique, high-quality clothing that’s able to transition seamlessly between school and special occasions.

Olga didn’t let lack of design experience stop her from launching Little Olin. After taking online classes and talking to friends to get her business off the ground, she subsequently sold out her first collection.

“One thing that I learned growing up is that I never really had much to lose,” she says. “So I’m never afraid to hit the rock bottom because I’ve been there so many times.”

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It Takes a Village

Olga’s journey as an entrepreneur and as a mother are intrinsically linked. Her children have also directly influenced her design choices.

“I don’t think we, as adults, appreciate how much our kids know and understand at this age,” she says. “They have their own styles. They understand more, and in a children’s business they’re going to be the biggest judges of success of the line.”

“My daughter who’s six, she loves it,” says Olga, describing how she comes back from Europe with fabric to show her, sparking a mother-daughter design session.

She even takes sketches to the playground at her children’s school in the Washington, D.C. area, so she can get feedback from the kids and the parents.

“There’s so much overlap,” she says. “This is like the best thing that happened to me as a mom because I feel like my friends, and their children, are part of the process of designing and development and they’re just as invested as I am in different level of course, but it’s super fun. It’s fun to do it together and I love the feedback.”

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Despite growing up in two different worlds, Olga sees a common thread.

“When I look back at my childhood and I look now at my daughter, I feel like she resembles me so much in what she likes and what she likes to wear,” she says.

“Being a mom is the most amazing thing,” she says. “It’s transformed me as a person and made me so much better.”

“As they grow, I grow with them.”

Mama Maker: Dawn, Bringing Our Struggles Out in the Open

Posted in Anxiety, It takes a village, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, postpartum, Self-care, working momTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In a room full of multitalented women, Dawn Fable was struck when her accomplished friend shared when “things are speeding wildly out of control,” she wished for a tattooed reminder on her wrist to “pause,” during their word-of-the-month club gathering.

“As we went around and we started sharing our words, all of us were really, really, really struggling–whether it was with our marriages, or finances, or issues with our kids, or climbing the corporate ladder, or starting new businesses,” she says.

“But in looking at each of these women, you would have no idea,” she says about her “career-driven, family-oriented” girlfriends who she describes as “beautiful, not only on the exterior, but such cool people on the interior.”

In that moment, Dawn realized she was not alone, after living with generalized anxiety disorder for as long as she could remember, and especially postpartum after the birth of her third child.

“There’s such a stigma around that where, as women, I think we naturally try to do it all,” she says.

“We’re ashamed of feeling anxious, and so often we’re drowning ourselves in bottles of Kim Crawford or sleeping pills,” she says, while “trying to present ourselves as these perfectly put together women.”

Once Dawn swapped her prescription for a CBD regimen, she says “I started shouting from the rooftops to a lot of my girlfriends who were struggling with similar things, and frankly, complete strangers that I would run into.”

As co-founder of the Press Pause Project, Dawn is on a mission to “share and be super transparent about my very personal struggles with anxiety and postpartum,” she says.

“That’s what’s been the most rewarding part of it, is just sharing my personal experiences,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many women have been like, ‘thank you so much, because I’ve felt so alone, and I felt ashamed.'”

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While the Press Pause Project line can be found in yoga and pilates studios, clothing stores and boutique hotels, Dawn says that most of their business comes directly through online orders.

“I can always tell when people are gathered together over the holidays, or in a big group for something, because all of a sudden, we see this influx of orders,” she says.

The word-of-mouth momentum could also be attributed to quality, given that Dawn and her co-founder Torrey Benson are rigorous about “third party testing and manufacturing practices.” She adds that there are “companies out there that just aren’t doing the right thing for the industry,” as voiced by the FDA recently.

Ultimately, their goal is to give women “permission to press pause.” One of the first steps along the way is to “stop the whispering or shame around anxiety,” she says.

As a result of sharing her own experience and encouraging others to do the same, Dawn is beginning to see a shift in how open women are about what we’re struggling with.

“It’s just become this very cool time where women are feeling more vulnerable and they’re allowing themselves to not be perfect all the time.”

Mama Shaker: Jessie, Giving Back On Your Terms

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Chicago-based event planner Jessie Williams could have succumbed to the school of hard knocks, but instead she pays it forward in all elements of her business and daily life with her daughter.

“I want people to realize that just because you grew up in a certain neighborhood or with a certain financial status doesn’t mean you can’t make something of yourself,” she says.

“I grew up with not a lot,” says Jessie, sharing that she traversed teen pregnancy and adoption at 17 years old. She credits her mother for pushing her to go to school and get a job. Eventually, she married a supportive partner and they started a family of their own.

“I’m super blessed right now,” she says. “I could have potentially not been; I could have been a complete statistic.”

Jessie’s resilience paved the way for her to create a business–on her terms–in response to a toxic boss.

“I woke up one morning and I was like, I can’t do this anymore,” she says. “I’m too old to have to work for somebody like that and like dread going into work, or go in crying, because he asked me if I needed to be home early so I can make my husband dinner.”

Jessie built a purpose-driven event planning business, WE Events Chicago, to help non-profits and individuals incorporate activities that give back while hosting fundraisers, parties and parents night out.

“Everything I do has a charitable component with my event planning,” she says. “This way I can do it my own way doing something I love, which is the creative side, as well as, we have a crafty side to it to like collaboration art and all that kind of stuff.”

In addition to paid client work, Jessie and her lean operation make time to support preferred charities through a pro bono program. This year, that list includes Hello Baby, The Nora Project and Shine Fertility.

“I’m exhausted,” she admits. “I wish that I could shut off after five o’clock. But it has also been fantastic because I have made some amazing connections and it’s also nice to know that I’m doing it on my own and I’m a role model now.”

Jessie tries to make it a fun work environment for her “twenty-something” employees as well as family-friendly enough for parents to bring their kids if childcare falls through.

“If it’s something that we can do and you can still hang out with your kids–we’re prepping a backdrop, whatever–I’m fine with that,” she says.

“I want it to be a better work experience more fun, open, making people feel good, too, because every part has some sort of giving back component.”

Giving Back: How This Mompreneur Makes it Work

Jessie feels the same way about building a business model that works for her, and a workplace that supports the unique needs of her employees, that she does about giving back.

“There’s no one size fits all,” she says. “Some people want to write a check. Some people want to go volunteer at their organization. Some people want to do it at home.”

When we spoke, Jessie rattled off several ways to give back that don’t require a lot of time or money, including picking up trash in your neighborhood, or using sidewalk chalk to write inspiring notes.

She encourages clients to rethink occasions where guests feel compelled to bring a gift as an opportunity to give back, like asking for board books that can be donated to a local shelter.

“It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money and just getting your kids involved early on, makes a huge difference,” she says.

Jessie’s daughter wanted to do something for babies at her birthday party, so she set out to donate 100 boxes of diapers.

“She wrote letters to everybody and she ended up getting 250 packages,” says Jessie. “She saw that impact and it was enormous.”

Even if you’re in a season of parenting puts time or money at a premium, Jessie believes that small gestures like holding the door open, or making an extra batch of cookies for a nursing home, can go a long way.

“A lot of it is just like being kind,” she says. “A smile can make a big difference, and that is a way of giving back.”

Mama Shaker: Nicole, Guiding the Way to a Sweet Family Life

Posted in Books, Career, Couple time, Family time, Goals, It takes a village, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Parenting coach, Self-care, Time management, working mom, Working outTagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nicole Seawell was a high-achieving attorney when her first baby plotted his own course by arriving three weeks early. Now with three teenage boys, she’s learned how to navigate the unique personalities within her family, channel her peak productivity, and ultimately guide others to do the same.

“My professional life kind of went topsy turvy,” she says about her jolting start to motherhood. “I didn’t value the supporting role enough. Once I did, I realized I’m actually excellent at supporting others to get done what they want to, and that has taken me from a good attorney to a great one.”

Nicole found her sweet spot when she “worked one leg in the business world and one leg in the legal world,” because she liked the fast pace of business.

“Where I found my special power was being able to be in both worlds,” she says.

“I was born under a productive star,” says Nicole, adding that she’s been told by Tibetan monks and Guatemalan ancient women that “I have a way of tuning into my ancestors’ wisdom and youth energy.”

“I’m able to see the path forward in any situation.”

Today, that means weaving together her work as an attorney with her husband’s law firm and her coaching business, Sailor’s Sweet Life, which is named after her golden retriever.

“I can’t have a more supportive partner in my legal work than the father of my children and my co-creator in life,” she says.

The ability to tap into prime opportunities for creativity and productivity has also helped Nicole’s coaching clients. In fact, she’s learned it’s not about dramatic, sweeping changes.

“Really what they’re looking for is helpful tweaks,” she says. “Inherently they are them, and they want to stay that way, but they want to be a more productive, more enjoyable version of themselves.”

It Takes a Village

At the root of Nicole’s mission to help families maximize joy and decrease stress are tools like Enneagram to learn about the unique personalities that can form our families and support systems.

“Ninety percent of the time you have good intention by people,” she says. Instead, “it’s miscommunication; people speak to one another like they’re speaking to themselves” that causes tension and stress within a family.

“There’s no better way than honoring each other by speaking to that person or acting with that person the way they want to be treated,” she says.

For Nicole, learning about her sons’ different personality types has been a game-changer.

She recalls feeling frustrated, thinking at the time, “I don’t understand, I’m doing the same thing” as a parent, until she realized, “they’re three different people.”

“It was like a light shone upon our family and so much stress disappeared,” she says.

As a fellow fast-talker, I found my conversation with Nicole energizing. But with her boys she’s learned to change her cadence and count in her head to give her son 20 seconds to respond.

“So much with teenagers is letting them talk when they want to,” she says.

Even so, Nicole believes that every stage of parenting comes with its own challenges. She believes the “enjoy every minute, it goes so fast” reminder commonly dished out to parents of young children is “cruel advice.”

“It is magical, but it’s absolutely exhausting,” she recalls.

And if you don’t love every stage of parenting, Nicole doesn’t believe that mom guilt is necessary either.

“Spare yourself all of that and be your own champion by arming yourself with tools that help you get through it,” she says.

“Along that whole spectrum, if you know you and if you’re doing this with someone else and you know them, this can be so much more of an enjoyable journey.”

As an achiever married to a perfectionist, Nicole and her husband took the time to learn about each other’s personalities and communication styles.

“We conscientiously–when they were real little–figured out how we work well together and how to honor that,” she says. “I can see when I trigger him and he can see when he triggers me, and then as your kids grow you can pull them into the fold.”

She also believes this insight can be applied to other caregivers and extended members of the family.

“Our mentors, our people who teach us, are all over the place in our lives, so being open to that is really important,” she says.

How this Mompreneur Makes it Work

Self-care as a goal can feel intimidating until you know yourself and “what feeds your soul,” says Nicole.

“I love being in nature and that’s one of my coaching principles to reset the heart and reset the mind, but also to open us up to creativity,” she says.

Nicole takes a “brisk walk” early each morning and in the evening with Sailor, no matter what the weather brings in her home of Colorado.

“Unbelievable solutions come and brainstorming that you didn’t think was possible,” she says about recommending afternoon walks to her clients.

She incorporates the “science of timing” in her practice and to plan out her day, based on the book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink.

“On the whole, the way that the world operates and the way that the majority of humans do is that you have an uptick of analytical activities first thing in the day,” she describes.

“There’s a slump that we all kind of recognize around lunchtime.”

According to statistics, more mistakes are made in mid-day surgery, and “judges are more cantankerous, less likely to be compassionate in the afternoon,” says Nicole.

“Afternoon is good for creative, restorative activity, quiet work, collaborative work,” she says.

As a parent who experiences the daily “witching hour” with my boys, I wasn’t surprised to learn that around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., we all get an energy uptick.

Fortunately for Nicole, she has plenty of it to go around, which she channels into “nourishing” her teenagers after school and at dinner time.

While the path through each stage of motherhood looks a little different, Nicole believes that there’s wisdom to be gained along the journey.

“This is an amazing set of skills and experiences that you’re having,” she says about parenting young children.

“It won’t be forever but put that framing on the whole ride–that you’re an amazing supporter–and you’ll have so many wonderful opportunities.”

Mama Maker: Alitzah, Planning a Future of Being Enough

Posted in Career, Family time, Goals, It takes a village, Mompreneur, Time management, working mom, Workplace cultureTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Former full-time social media influencer Alitzah Stinson began to wrestle with, what looked like, a glamorous gig promoting Fortune 500 brands. Her feelings compounded when a debilitating pregnancy put the future with her daughters into perspective.

“I was on home healthcare, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t bathe myself, I had tubes going into my chest to feed me,” she says, describing her experience with hyperemesis gravidarum.

Suddenly she couldn’t shake the sense that “when I posted a picture on Instagram, I knew there was someone else on the other side of that feeling like they weren’t good enough and I couldn’t be a part of that anymore.”

“I’m portraying this image of perfection that isn’t real…to make them think this skincare cream is going to solve their problems, or this $300 pair of jeans–that I can’t even afford but were sent to me–means something,” she says.

Alitzah also felt like she would set a better example as a mother by staying true to herself, rather than hiring stylists to come to her home under the watchful eye of her 18-month-old daughter.

“For four years there wasn’t a single day where my hair was naturally curly,” she says. “How am I supposed to tell her that her natural self, and her curly hair, is beautiful?”

“Someday she’s going to be looking at people just like me and they’re going to make her feel like she’s not enough,” she feared.

During her inevitable break from blogging, Alitzah realized she was more passionate about charting a course for her premium stationary business, Ivory Paper Co, which she had recently launched after searching for an organizer to meet the demands of her role as an influencer.

So she shifted her focus to helping people take charge of their future–rather than lust over someone else’s curated lifestyle–by providing them with tools “to make plans for everything they’re passionate about–their goals and their life.”

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How this Mompreneur Makes it Work

To say Alitzah is driven is an understatement. She wakes up every morning at 6:00, is out the door by 7:00, works straight until 3:00, spends two hours with her girls, goes back to work for another 3 hours, tucks them into bed and then does one last night shift.

Her mantra to “find planner peace” after carrying around a 15-pound bag to manage her family’s schedule led her to build a local manufacturing operation from scratch. It’s also allowed her to maintain quality control and a family-oriented culture, which includes her husband heading up marketing and her kids running around the office.

While the company is growing 10x month over month, Alitzah says she’s “the least qualified person in the entire world to be running this company.”

“But that makes me happy. I don’t have some fancy degree from Harvard Business School, and I’m an African American, 22-year-old,” she says.

“I always told my husband that I wanted to be what I wanted to see.”

She encourages others to do the same, adding “if I can build a business, anyone can build a business.”

It’s no accident that Alitzah has carried around a planner most of her life and yet, she takes goal-setting in stride.

“I break down my plans to the most miniscule level, because that makes it feel accomplishable.”

In other words, Alitzah has realized that by taking small actions towards our larger aspirations, we are enough.

Mama Maker: Meghan, Using Creativity to Heal and Help Women Shine

Posted in Career, Family time, It takes a village, Maternity leave, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, postpartum, Pregnancy, Premature babies, Self-care, Siblings, Time management, Work from home, working momTagged , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The ebb and flow of creative expression in Meghan’s life reached a crescendo when her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

“My mom and I have always been very, very close,” she says, describing how their relationship had grown even stronger when she moved back to her hometown of Sonoma, and they starting seeing each other every day.

“To have my mom vulnerable was extremely difficult,” Meghan says.

“I used jewelry to channel my emotions,” she says. “I was able to do something that I enjoyed doing and that made me feel better about all the other craziness that was going on in my life.”

Her emerging jewelry line, Meghan Bo Designs, was starting to gain momentum while she juggled work as a part-time corporate recruiter, and two young kids.

“It was at a time when all of a sudden my business was picking up and I had to figure out–okay, I know I need to deal with my emotions and not push them away,” she says.

“It was a really tough time and having something to preoccupy my time was helpful,” Meghan says. “At least if I was sitting there crying I could make jewelry.”

“I get so emotional just thinking about anybody going through a parent being sick,” she says.

Women Helping Women

Meghan instinctively thinks about helping others, even in the midst of her own challenges. Her coworker at Google lost one of her twins to Leukemia, two days after Meghan had her first son 5-weeks premature and “was working through the emotions of having a preemie” in the NICU.

She later had to spend a week in a children’s hospital with one of her boys. And yet, it all fuels her desire to do more.

“I’ve always had empathy for other people, but when you see a parent going through having a child that’s sick, there’s nothing that I can imagine worse.”

Meghan started working with Unravel Pediatric Cancer–and makes a special necklace or bracelet each year for Unravel’s warrior moms.

The inspiration for Meghan Bo Designs stemmed from a need to make herself–and therefore other women too–feel a little better during the daily grind.

“I had two little kids, I was working from home, and I was running around all day trying to get it all done,” she says.

“I felt kind of frumpy and icky about myself,” she says about her rotation of gym clothes and dry-shampooed hair, which any mom can relate to.

“I’m going to put some jewelry on because it makes me feel better about myself,” Meghan told herself and suddenly she had a business idea that would separate her from the other Etsy shops.

“I wanted to make jewelry that you can wear with jeans and a t-shirt, or you can dress up–it can go both ways–and it’s affordable,” she says.

Her “athleisure” inspired jewelry is for any woman who “wants to elevate their look everyday” whether they work in an office, work from home, or they’re doing carpool and errands.

“They can throw on like two bracelets and instantly feel more put together than they did before,” says Meghan.

Sometimes that means glamorous Instagram influencers and oftentimes its busy moms like myself who are lucky to get a shower in.

Making jewelry satisfied a “creative craving” that was ever-present in Meghan’s life.

“I had always been into beads–I forgot–when I was younger too,” she says. “I had this huge bead collection. I used to make all sorts of things and sell them.”

“I’ve always had that creative bug,” she says. “When chalk paint first came out I literally painted every piece of furniture in my house.”

Meghan remembers living in a college apartment behind the sorority house we both belonged to at the time in Chico, and painting her room violet, when most college students were occupied by other things.

“So I have that addiction to arts and crafts,” she says. “If I find something that I like, I’ll research it, figure out how to do it, and then literally paint my whole house.”

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It Takes a Village

Meghan’s business is “a family affair” with her mom helping ship packages, and her husband and kids pitching in when she has a show or large order.

She recently hired a couple of moms to help with production, in her home studio, during nap time or whenever it’s convenient for them.

“I really like the idea of supporting other women,” Meghan says, noting the flexibility required for mothers and that things are constantly in a state of flux.

“As my kids have gotten older, and now that they’re both in elementary school, I can take more on without that guilt that every mom feels no matter what stage you’re kids are at,” Megan says.

“Every year, especially with two, there’s a new challenge.”

She’s raising her sons to believe that when times get tough, they’ll “put their heads down” and get through it.

For Meghan, that means she’ll keep making jewelry no matter what life throws her way.

Mama Shaker: Lisen, Helping Moms Work, Pause and Thrive

Posted in Books, Breastfeeding, Career, Childcare, Family time, It takes a village, Maternity leave, Mompreneur, Parenting coach, postpartum, Pregnancy, Return to work, Self-care, Siblings, Time management, working mom, Workplace cultureTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Author and workplace culture advocate Lisen Stromberg has a message for her younger self, and for all of us who feel overwhelmed as working mothers of young children.

“I remember feeling panicked all the time that I wasn’t doing what was best for my children, and I wish I was a little kinder to myself.”

She describes her memories of “being in a constant state of triage.”

“Before 8 a.m. we’ve got to get clothes on, teeth brushed, lunches packed, baby breastfed,” the mother of three recalls — and all before the work day begins.

Lisen describes this ability to juggle as “accordion-like,” where moms are capable of expanding and contracting “in a beautiful way.”

“I wish I had known that my capacity would expand and I would be able to do all those things — not always well — and the kids would live through it.”

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Since we talked in January about her book, Work PAUSE Thrive: How to Pause for Parenthood Without Killing Your Career, I took a pause of sorts from writing, while I transitioned into a new job and dealt with an intense new chapter of parenting.

In the eight months since then, I’ve found myself repeating Lisen’s mantras–and sharing them with other moms navigating career and parenting pivots of their own.

“Frankly when I was a new mother, in some ways professionally that was a productive phase of my career because I was so darn focused and so capable of getting everything that needed to happen done,” she says. “And that’s a powerful place to be.”

It helps to hear–from someone who’s lived through it–that this stage of parenting can be a “Phoenix rising” moment, as Lisen describes it. She also believes all the hormones coursing through us in early motherhood are actually a benefit.

“You’re just like on fire in this gorgeous way,” she says. “At the time it feels like hell.”

And that cocktail of physiology and limited time can lead to clarity.

“I got very clear on what I needed to do and who I was fighting for,” she says. “In my case I was fighting for my kids and my future.”

For Lisen, that meant every aspect of her life had to fit: her work, her relationships, her health, “everything.”

“It changed me in a powerful way.”

Women Helping Women Succeed

Work PAUSE Thrive is a wonderfully thorough analogy of research on working motherhood, which features stories of women who’ve successfully paused their careers–in a number of ways.

For Lisen, it meant rethinking her role as a journalist after maternity leave ended (which she wrote about in The New York Times), taking turns with her husband to amp up their careers at different times, and starting her own non-profit organizations and consultancies.

She cautions that pauses are not about getting relief from the stressors parenting.

“Being overwhelmed is the reality of parenthood,” she says. “You are now responsible for another soul.”

Instead, it’s about taking a moment to reassess what you want for yourself and your family. That can mean making adjustments in a current job, returning to work after taking time to focus on family, starting a business, or finding another passion to pursue.

“The women who I saw truly thriving were the ones who just had clarity,” says Lisen.

She describes these success stories among mothers who were “very intentional about their choices, and very empowered about their capacity as humans and what they can deliver.”

Lisen points out that these same women were willing to live with their choices even if it didn’t work out the way they planned.

“I think the women who suffered–that I interviewed with–are the ones who weren’t clear on their values and weren’t clear on what they were willing to give up and risk, and felt guilt about it.”

Lisen originally set out to interview 25 women, which then grew to 150, and then 1500 interviews later she had a comprehensive body of data to back up her instincts about the non-linear paths of working mothers.

“I wanted to be really sure that my intuitions and my beliefs and my experiences were real,” she says.

It Takes a Village

I was surprised to learn in Lisen’s book about a period in U.S. history where childcare was provided by the government so that mothers could support the economy during wartime–guilt-free.

“There seemed to be absolute clarity that this was an important thing to do for your country and to do for your community,” she says. “And it was liberating in some ways, right.”

When their husbands returned from war, the support went away, and mothers “re-claimed their roles” at home.

(And we all know what’s happened–or I should say hasn’t happened–for childcare since then.)

“With 64 million millennials right in the prime childbearing years–not having paid leave and not having affordable childcare–we’re seeing so many women pause their careers who never even envisioned they would do that,” says Lisen.

She cites the paradox of wanting to advance women in the workforce, but not having the structures in place to support them.

“We don’t honor caregiving in our country in terms of our policies and our workplace,” she says, noting the added pressure of being available 24/7.

The secret to thriving is what Lisen refers to as “time mastery” and it was shared by all the women she interviewed who stayed in the workforce. They successfully affirmed their commitment to their jobs while speaking up when they needed to make time for personal responsibilities.

“Their employers didn’t punish them for that, and that’s a distinction we need to make,” she says.

“If there’s anything I could wish for the next generation of talent,” says Lisen, “it’s that they feel empowered to be able say ‘I know I will give you 110 percent but I have to give it on my schedule.’ ”

 

Mama Maker: Katherine, Recasting Motherhood On The Double Shift

Posted in Career, Childcare, Family time, It takes a village, Mompreneur, Podcasts, postpartum, Return to work, Time management, Work from home, working momTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Journalist Katherine Goldstein’s migration from New York’s media mothership inspired her to launch an unconventional podcast about working moms from her basement in North Carolina.

A punk rocker aspiring to be a Rabbi, a thirty-something mother of three on the campaign trail, and Nevada brothel workers parlaying earnings into nursing school are among the first episodes of “The Double Shift.”

“I think one of the problems with journalism and resources is if you only talk to the people you know, you’re going to have a pretty limited conversation,” she says. “This show is breaking out of that.”

In fact, Katherine and her bi-coastal team intentionally seek out women outside of big cities who don’t have PR people.

“Nydia Sanchez, who runs a 24-hour daycare, she’s committing her whole life to serving mostly single mothers who need childcare and don’t have a ton of money to pay for it,” says Katherine.

“She’s not trying to get a bunch of attention and credit for all the great work she’s doing–she’s trying to run a business–but she does it with a kind of compassion that you don’t see enough for a group that doesn’t get talked about a lot.”

Listening to these intimate, previously untold stories of working motherhood summons feelings similar to watching “60 Minutes” or listening to NPR.

“The reason I decided I wanted to do it as a podcast is that I really want to create community and movement around changing the way people think about things, and bringing new perspectives in a more in-depth way,” says Katherine.

“I think there’s only so far you can go with someone who just reads an article and likes it on Facebook and moves on.”

We also talked about how podcasts are more amenable to multi-tasking moms who can tune in while commuting or taking care of kids, and discover a connection to women in other walks of life.

“I feel like I want to create a much longer and larger and more substantial conversation about changing how society sees working mothers and how we see ourselves,” she says.

How this Mama Made it Work

Moving from New York to North Carolina provided Katherine with the financial means, family support and mental energy to build a podcast from scratch.

“I joke that since I no longer have to fight the transit authority in New York, I can spend all my energy fighting the patriarchy,” she says.

“I have so many more resources because everyday life is not stressful,” she says, noting the benefit of having grandparents nearby so she can go on date nights and connect with her partner — with whom she credits for helping make “The Double Shift” possible.

“I’ve always known that I’ve had an amazingly supportive partner; but, when you’re taking a big swing in your life, it’s not just having someone in your life that says ‘yeah, good job,’ but who’s like willing to readjust their life too.”

In addition to changing location and lifestyles, the two swapped parenting shifts, trading morning and evenings with their 3.5 year old, so Katherine can take advantage of productive hours in her homegrown studio.

She goes full steam on the podcast until 5 p.m. when she goes to pick up her son at school and uses the drive there and back, and dinner as a family, to unwind.

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Women Helping Women Succeed

Katherine originally started exploring working motherhood as a journalist after struggling through health complications during her son’s first year.

“It was a very stressful time and I lost my job when he was 6 months old,” she says. “I had been a very hard-charging, high-achieving professional, and it led me to really feel like a failure.”

“I was very convinced that everyone had this working mom thing figured out, except for me and I was just personally defective.”

Once she discovered that no one had it figured out, and that many mothers internalized personal blame like she had, Katherine became emboldened to investigate family dynamics, the workplace and public policy.

“As I started to look at it through a journalistic lens, I really felt like there’s a lot of content about parenting but there’s not much about our independent identities as working mothers,” says Katherine.

“We are our own people with our own needs and ambitions and abilities to do amazing things in the world, and that’s just not being addressed in a lot of conversations.”

“There are so many ways that working mothers are revolutionary in their own lives and that’s one of the big things I’ve taken away from this show,” says Katherine.

“Probably none of the women I interviewed would ever claim the label ‘revolutionary,’ but what I think is so inspiring about them is the way they’re addressing their own challenges and the challenges of the things they see around them in new ways.”

“I just love getting those new ideas out there.”