Today is my GOLDEN blogging birthday! 4 years of blogging on December 4th. How are we celebrating? With a magical vacation…away from blogging and I will have a lot to share this week when we return. Instead I am sharing a post from year each of blogging. Today is the final revisit from this year.
In 2011, I experienced the most rewarding and challenging year of career combined with motherhood. I need my family to get me through it along with an amazing network of colleagues and clients. It’s a tight rope balancing act for me. But I have learned to embrace being a working mom. Here’s a blog post I wrote from my hotel room one night in early June…for all moms just trying to survive.
Golden Blogging Bday: 6 Reasons Why It’s Okay To Be A Working Mom
The pressure is there to be a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM as the lingo goes). Blogs, articles, chat rooms, friends, relatives all offer up the advantages to being a SAHM. But I don’t think there is enough shared and said on why it is okay to be a working mom. Maybe it is because all the moms that are working and balancing the life balance of it all are too busy to write about it. Maybe it is mommy guilt that working moms don’t think they are worthy to share that they actually enjoy their job or career. It doesn’t make them less of a mother. It probably makes them more of a mother.
The most profound and simple advice that my crazy hours working attorney mom friend shared with me years ago was “A happy mom makes a happy family.”
There are 6 reasons that I love being a working mom as I travel on business this week.
6. The food is fantastic. I get to travel, attend meetings, go out for late dinners and eat fabulous food which being a lover of food, is a delight.
5. I see and learn business. Above is Joe Lange of Lange Twins Winery. This week along with colleagues while en route to a meeting we toured Lange Twins, learning about a family business, risk and putting it all on the line for family business growth and success. As my husband works as a 2nd generation in a family owned business and my family is a 5th generation farming family, I love seeing and expanding my thinking of how other families grow and expand their businesses.
4. One of a kind experiences are a part of my working life, like yesterday as I toured JS West’s farm and facilities where they produce and package 1.2 million eggs a day. It’s an amazing family farming story that I will share more about on the AdFarm blog and tomorrow here for a Farm Girl Friday post.
3. Learning, understanding and developing a strong connection to where and how our food is grown and the story behind it is a favorite reason I love my working mom career.
2. Social media. I love social media for professional development. I love social media for personal growth. Social media has changed how I view my working life as well as my personal life. My working mom life is mash between personal and professional. Sitting yesterday at an AdFarm Sacramento event with Jay Baer, social media blogger and strategist and my colleague, Libby made me think more about the power of social media and how it connects my passions for food, farming, motherhood, family and more.
1. People. Every reason I am a working mom is really about people. The people I love the most are my family. They are always my top priority. The people that expand and connect me through my professional work grows my personal relationships also. I have talked about Wife of a Dairyman, Nancy Grossi before. She was my blogging buddy before I ever traveled to California for work purposes. Yesterday she came to attend the Sacramento event and we got to chit chat a bit too. Together we both are a part of Real Farmwives of America. The people connection has trickled down to our kids who are now pen pals.
My 3 year old daughter, Miss E, has never met Nancy or the Grossi family but she talks about her friends “in California on the dairy farm” often. The Grossi children’s photos and handmade artwork are hung on our kitchen fridge on the prairie. It is a reminder to me that our family has broader experiences, outlooks and views from my work.
My working mom life makes me happy and in turn my family is happier.
Being a working mom is full of challenges, balances and trade offs. But in the midst of a week like this, I wouldn’t change a moment of it. My kids spend a few nights from me but are spending more one-on-one time with their Dad and grandparents during those nights. When I am home, I am more hands on and attentive as a mom. My awareness of being an engaged and loving mom every day is a deliberate act I think about more as a working mom than if I was a stay-at-home-mom daily. I consciously know this about myself and it makes me a better mom.
Embrace life’s circumstances, know who you are and know who aren’t and be happy with your role with who you are now. If it’s a working mom, stay-at-home mom or not a mom, there are reasons to love it and live it.
What do you find to be the toughest challenges as a mom? Or if you don’t have children what are challenges you face in your working life balance?
(I can always use advice and tips…)
happy golden blog birthday!!! (4 is my favorite number). 🙂
It IS okay to be a working mom. And, I have to say, that your job sounds fantastic. I know you have to sacrifice with the travel, but meeting people and experiencing all of those news things must really be great.