Gratitude and Community - Season wrap up!
And just like that...it is the closing episode of the first season of Work Family Me - a series of conversations with me, Maude. In this series of conversations I interviewed intelligent hard hard-working women from India to Sweden to Brazil who have both money-earning jobs out in the world and children at home. We chatted about managing work hours, family finances, domestic chores, childcare, planning and health in a socio-economic structure that places enormous expectations on mothers.
I discuss:
- the two why’s behind these interviews
- the BTS around who said no to these conversations
- the 6 themes that emerged as common in contexts where women felt resilient and able
- some questions to reflect on in your life
Prefer to listen? Click here for the podcast - BTS, Gratitude and Community
Hi lovelies, this is Maude, Women's Burnout and Leadership Coach. You're listening to the Work Family Me podcast, a series of conversations with women from different cultures and industries around the world about the behind the scenes of earning money, parenting, being in relationship and adulting, all at the same time. Here, we will discuss the challenges, ideas and support structures that show up in co-earning, dual parenting situations and talk through some helpful strategies and mindsets.
Why? So that you, as a busy working woman, can learn from others, implement what could make your life a little bit easier and share these with your family, friends and colleagues. We are at the forefront of working, parenting and relating in a totally different way to previous generations. And there can be so much value in validating this and learning with each other.
I'm so happy that you're here. Let's dive into the conversation for today. A couple of months ago, I set out to interview money earning, co-parenting women around the world about their experiences of going out there and working and building business or career and having children at home and everything that a life in the structure involves and entails for us and staying somewhat regulated and calm through it all.
As a burnout prevention and leadership coach, I consider myself privileged to talk to women every day who are managing, juggling, doing, thinking in these lines. They have busy lives. They have many responsibilities, professionally and personally.
And I can see the challenges and the celebrations that that brings, but many of you can't. And I wanted to give us all an opportunity to look at what happens behind the scenes where that is the case, because often we have a media perception of what happens when women work or what happens when women mother. There are a lot of societal pressures and media narratives about how that should look that are based on outdated stories, outdated ways of working.
And so what I see is a lot of my peers and friends and colleagues and women in the world making themselves wrong for not doing it, quote unquote, as well as other people having this belief, this perception that other women are doing it perfectly or the right way. And the way that they're feeling or the way that they're thinking or the way that they're behaving is, is wrong or broken or incorrect in some way. And so this goes to so many points right around economics and politics and structure and stereotypes and mindset and behaviour and thinking.
And I wanted to dive into this question a little bit. So what happens? How are women doing this in their realities and their cultures and their companies and their work life? How are women spending time working and parenting? What enables that to be successful? And what are the challenges that come up so that we could all see behind this kind of perfect Pinterest veil into real lives. And for those of us who might not be able to access coaching or leadership groups or have the time and space for that, or have the financial resources for that, that these conversations might be an anchor point and an exhale, a sigh of relief or an inspiration or a spark of curiosity, or maybe somebody says something that inspires you or that feels like you could translate into your own life.
So the conversations that I've had over the past months from women from different job titles, different industries, different places in the world, different cultural backgrounds, have been intended as a resource for you, dear listener, whoever you are, and wherever you may be at the moment. And they've also been data gathering with my detective hat on. What are themes that come up? What are commonalities when things work well, when women have visible money earning jobs, and children and families? What supports that? So with my detective hat on, these conversations were also a useful research project and investigation into the contexts in which it feels possible to show up boldly at work. And it feels possible to parent with patience and in the way that we want to, and it feels possible to have relationships and marriages that feel collaborative and communicative and fun, and all those things.
What are the ingredients that make that possible? Or maybe more likely? And so in this closing of the season, I want to think back a little bit about themes that came up over the conversations from women around the world, and remind us of them. So that they are anchor points for you to reflect on, in where you're going and what you're doing and what you're holding and some questions to come back to that might support you as you go forward. I am so grateful for all of the women, all of the humans that said yes to having a recorded conversation with me, for being honest and open about how they've been doing money, responsibilities, work travel, sharing domestic duties, boundaries, sharing vulnerable moments or past experiences that have helped them, or that have challenged them.
So thank you to all of you for sharing your voices and your stories here. It's been so fun speaking with you. It's been lovely sharing it.
And it's been incredible to get the feedback from other women who've listened to those conversations and have sent me messages of, of gratitude and thanks for that. We've talked to a Scottish woman in South Africa, we've talked to an Irish woman in Dubai, we've talked to a British Hong Kong born woman in France, we've talked to women in India, the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, Canadian, a mother in Sweden, a business owner in the US, a manager in Germany.
We've talked, I have talked to you. My initial aim was to talk to women from different cultural backgrounds, different ways of living and ways of thinking, because there can be such entrenched patterns of behaviour that get even stronger when we become parents of normative ways of behaving. And I find it really interesting to surface how that shows up in, in different generations and in different cultures.
I think maybe the youngest woman that I spoke to was in her 30's, and the oldest in her 60s. So there's been a range there. Also, in job titles and industries, we've spoken to entrepreneurs, managers, scientists, consultants, CEOs, business founders.
So my criteria for the who I wanted to interview for this season of conversations was that I wanted people who were earning the same money or more than their partners. I wanted to speak to people who had children and were parenting together with their partners. And I wanted to speak to people who were working in kind of high pressure environments.
So that was my curiosity and criteria for when I was reaching out on LinkedIn and thinking about women I'd love to invite to these conversations, because a lot of the people that I work with find themselves in those situations. So it was interesting to take that subsection and dive in deep of what happens in the home front, what support is available, how to work life, boundaries, work, and all of those pieces that we've looked at through these conversations. I found to perfection that there were a few women that I reached out to, to invite to be guests and part of the conversations.
And two of those said no, that they weren't happy in the place that they were at, they were finding their relationships challenging, they were in complicated places in their marriage, and that they felt that they didn't want to share where they were at, because it wasn't in a good place. Which is unfortunate, because it's almost those stories that also give us insight and hope in different ways, but totally understandable when we're feeling stressed and vulnerable, and maybe a little bit ashamed of how we're not coping that we that we maybe don't want to have explicit conversations that allow exposure into that. And so two women that I that I asked to be in that said no on the grounds of, of their relationship.
And one woman said that she was interested, but just too busy to be able to take up that conversation offer. And I want to put that here, because that's also part of this experience, right, that sometimes it's not easy. And sometimes we are ashamed, or sometimes it does feel a little bit broken behind the scenes, or a little bit too challenging, or we feel like we might just burst into tears, if we start talking about our lives and how it works, and what's there and what's not there.
So I think sometimes when we read research papers, or we see statistics, or we see studies, or we see articles, we forget that there's a slice that's being looked at. And that slice is in the context of a whole. And in that whole, there are other things happening.
And so I wanted to also say that there are women who were too busy, or too angry, or too resentful, or too sad, to be able to talk about how they do work and life and parenting and partnering to have these conversations. So if you're in that position right now, know that you're not alone. And I feel like that's really important to surface also here.
So taking a moment to recognise where the data comes from, and that there's a bigger picture here. And that sometimes when we are super stressed and holding a million things, we do not have time to speak on a podcast about how stressed we are and holding a million things. Totally validating that.
So in these conversations, when I look back and think about them, there were a couple of themes that I saw emerging when it seemed to work well. And by it, I mean, living a life with a high pressure, money earning job and parenting and partnering and feeling some modicum of health and aliveness in that. So when I think about what women brought into the conversations as similarities in that, I think about priorities.
So being clear about what matters. A few people brought that into the conversation. It seemed to be a theme.
Boundaries. So boundary setting around exercise or family time or time off or focus time, work travel time, concentration time, whatever it might be. But there was often mention of how lives had been set up in terms of protecting some pieces, whether that be an early morning exercise class for Alison in Australia, or that be the weekend for Danny in Brazil, or that be the vacation time for Shivani in India, there was a protection of different pockets of time and a delineation of that.
Almost every single woman, in fact, thinking about it now, I think every single woman talks about support. And having either a partner who's gone to part time work, or has shift work to allow them to also work full time, or a conversation about who's going to be working full time. Or there's been support from extended family.
We heard Fiona talk about her mother-in-law living with them to help with the children. We talked about grandparents being involved, aunts. And if partner and family weren't mentioned, we talked about hired support.
So having an au pair, having a cleaner, having somebody who helps with driving. So where that was possible from an economic and labor force point of view, so the UAE, South Africa, Brazil, India, often there were aspects of paying for support for a family. And where none of these pieces of support were mentioned, there was talk of community.
So Sibylla in Germany, Johanna in Sweden, talked about being able to lean on friends to be able to lean on neighbours or community that they had built to have support. And I think this is such a helpful point, because we have this pressure, maybe collective pressure or fantasy about doing it alone, this myth of independence. Or self sufficiency, or maybe it's not a myth, but a hyper focus on it.
And what we saw in every single conversation here is the gratitude for the appreciation and the leaning on support in order to have the capacity to work and parent in a way that the women who were here wanted to or looked at doing that. And so really useful to think about, because often support brings up some challenge for us around asking for support or accepting support or delegating support. And sometimes we think about that in a work context, but not a life context, a home context.
So what does my family need? Or what could be outsourced in terms of support? Or what could be helped with in social spheres or personal spheres that might free up my capacity for thinking about work or doing work or traveling for work? So in places where or situations where it seemed to be an exciting and relaxed being in the work and family juggle, there was support available.
Another theme that I asked about, and that seemed to be linked. So I asked about finances, I asked about money, how do we do money? How does that look in our relationship, in your relationship? Who does what? How does saving look? How does spending look? Because it's often something that is an unsaid conversation in habitual societal chitchat, particularly among women.
And so I found it useful to inquire into that and open some conversations. And predominantly in situations where, again, it seemed like things were, quote unquote, working. There seemed to be trust and openness around finances, which indicates a level of comfort and conversation with our partners, engagement with money.
So thinking about money, being intentional around how we're doing that. So something to think about in our own lives and partnerships. Another theme I noticed was flexibility and change.
So what worked well when children were babies or toddlers? Or what worked well when I did this role? Or what worked well when you were studying or I was studying or I was on maternity leave and you were earning money? Maybe doesn't suit us now. And this ability to have conversations and flex and change how the partnership looks, how time looks, how we are putting in priorities and boundaries and support. And that ability to change psychological flexibility and actual, you know, doing behavior, asking for things, doing things.
The capacity for change and the ability to have conversations around the change is something that often came up. Finances, trust and communication, flexibility. Then maybe there are some reflection points here as you think about your own life and the way things are working.
Are you clear on what matters? Are you able to identify and set and protect boundaries? What support or resources could you as a family tap into? And how do you feel about asking for, paying for, accepting support? What conversations might you want to have with your partner around how you're doing money or time or parenting or general life and things that need to get done? Maybe there's some journaling or some thinking or some talking to a friend or your coach or therapist or partner around those pieces and maybe there isn't. That's up to you. You're the boss of your thinking.
There are so many things that I can and often do get angry about in the world around how women are treated at work and in society and in general. Oh, I can feel a little bit of emotion come up as I say that. And I've tried to use that energy and curiosity in these conversations.
And I'm so grateful again to all of you that have listened and all of you that have said yes to speaking with me. I'm going to close the series of conversations around work and family and self at this point and honor and acknowledge all that's happened in these conversations. So many of the women that I spoke to and interviewed, as soon as we paused the recording button and said, thank you for asking.
Thank you for letting me share about how my experience has been. Oh, I don't know if I'm going to rerecord. This is making me strangely tearful because I think it's really a lot of invisible work that goes into being a woman who works and has a family at the moment.
So that was interesting for me that having these conversations was also helpful for the people who were speaking out loud and being recorded. And thank you again. In the next season of conversations with Maude, I will be interviewing or actually, to be honest, I already have interviewed a variety of subject matter experts in the realm of perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause.
So looking at these years of transition in our late thirties to mid fifties and looking at various aspects of what happens in our bodies, in our workplace, in our ways of thinking and feeling, nutrition, tolerance for alcohol, sexuality, relationships. And building out that picture and providing you with some resources, some information, some reframes that I think are going to be really helpful for you. I found the conversations both informative and fun and I'm really grateful to all of those guests who gave me their time and their expertise and such a lot of crossover when we think about burnout or exhaustion or mental health or energy and capacity.
You know, we often tend to think of all of these pieces of working and living and parenting and partnering as separate to what's going on foundationally in our bodies. And so bringing all of that together and looking at intersections and crossovers is something that I feel really strongly about. So I'm looking forward to sharing those with you in a couple of weeks.
It has been lovely having this moment of closure and honoring of the season one episodes and looking forward to season two. So I am going to be celebrating with a piece of almond cake from my favorite local coffee shop. And I thank you for being along here as a listener and a part of these conversations.
Thank you so much. I love having these conversations so, so much. Thank you for being here, for listening to the Work Family Me podcast.
If you want to connect with me in real life, I would love that. You can find me on LinkedIn and I will put the link for my profile below so you can just click on that and connect with me. See you out there
I've loved having and sharing the conversations with you. Thank you for speaking to me, thank you for reading.
I'll be interviewing subject matter experts around aspects of (peri)menopause in the next season (launches in March). It's going to be amazing!