Crushed Between Working and Parenting?

Time to read: 2 minutes of pure validation and relief

The blissful days of parenting little ones

This one is for you, parent-rebels.

(If you're not a parent, keep reading as you know parents).

You are in an untenable position. The systems in the USA are not set up to support working parents under the best of circumstances. Trying to homeschool and entertain young children while simultaneously doing your job is impossible. If you are a single parent, the situation is even worse.

My clients and friends with young children face constant interruptions, no daycare, no school, no camp, and no peace.

Smart writers are sounding the alarm about the impossible position for parents in the Covid-19 economy. Read Deb Perelman's article, "We are Being Crushed," in the NYT here. Her article will validate everything you are experiencing.

What are you supposed to do? I put together this list as a parent-specific supplement to The Corporate Rebel's Unconventional Guide to Working from Home. Please keep in mind that I am not an expert on the COVID19 virus, the data in your particular location, or your family's personal situation. Make prudent choices for you and your family.

Here's what I've seen help working parents:

1. Accept the situation. Being locked at home with your children is less-than-ideal. The possibility that school could be closed in the fall is sub-optimal. You have to accept the situation as it is. Liberate, maybe even lower, your expectations so you can get creative. (If school is closed in the fall, I'll be challenged to accept it. You can remind me in the fall that I gave you this stupid advice.)


2. Examine your priorities and assumptions about what it means to be the ideal employee (available at all hours, immediately responsive) and the ideal parent. "Ideal parenting" and "ideal working" clash. You are likely holding impossible standards. Make sure your actions align with your priorities. To understand more about the clash of priorities for working parents, read this.


3. Raise the alarm with your employer. For the Covid economy to work for working parents, companies will have to get creative. Starting early. Working late. Split shifts. Fridays off. Mondays off. Talk to your colleagues. Talk to your boss. Employers will have to make changes in expectations and structures if working parents are going to have any chance of success.


4. Let go of guilt that you are failing at work and failing as a parent. This situation is hard. Don't add self-doubt and self-criticism to the pile on. If your kids watches 6 hours of cartoons so you can get to meetings, oh well. (See #1)


5. Vote for candidates who will take seriously the kinds of leave and family-work policies that make parenting and working possible in the USA.


6. Structure your home life as best you can. Create a kid-free work zone. You need maximum focus and productivity when working with kids at home so be clear that your work space is off limits unless the house is on fire or someone is barfing. Be efficient and focused when you're working. This may mean no "nice-to-have" meetings, no extra chit-chat. It sucks, and it preserves precious time for your family.


7. Form community with other adults in your life as much as feels safe for you. Tag team parenting with your partner if you have one. Create child-care pods with neighbors who take turns taking kids to the park. Bring in grandparents. Hire a teenage nanny.


8. Turn work off and focus on your family. The temptation to work all the time when you're at home is great. Turn off your laptop and spend focused time with your kiddos. They will interrupt you less if they know they have your undivided attention at other times, and you need the break.


9. Did I mention vote?

I hope this helps.

Christina

P.S. Here it is again, The Corporate Rebel's Unconventional Guide to Working from Home. Please share it liberally.

One Way to Release Pressure

Time to read: 42.5 little seconds

Hello rebels!

You all were incredibly generous with your thoughts and input. I'm going to spend the next few weeks writing about the things you told me are important to you. Let's get started...

Years ago, I met a woman who had gotten a Master's degree in English literature because she loved to read. As she tried to make a career out of literature, she said she killed the one thing she loved the most in the world. This story has stuck with me for 20+ years.

Many of you wrote to me saying that you don't find meaning in your job, especially with so many important issues facing our world right now. I hope that what I'm about to say relieves the pressure.

At the risk of contradicting last week's inspiring story of career despair to career purpose, this week I want you to have permission to let go of the idea that you have to have passion for your work.

What?! What about all those people who say "find your passion?"

I'm not a big fan of the "find your passion" school of career development.

Somewhere, someone decided that work has to be meaningful. That you have to work in your passion. That you must jump out of bed every day excited to go to work. Some of you get to work in your passion. Yay! For many of you, that expectation kills your ability to enjoy your job.

Expecting passion and excitement every day is a lot of pressure to put on yourself and your job. Trying to marry passion, excitement and your life's fulfillment with the mechanism for paying for electricity and saving for college is a tall order. It's ok if your job is simply a job, especially now with soaring unemployment. It's ok if your job is good enough or you like it because you like your colleagues.

The great thing about a job is that it supports your life. And your life can be filled with passion and excitement - for your children, activities, hobbies, and contributions to your community. (Find more of your passion for your life through the Rebels at Home Challenge.)

I'm a huge fan of joy, excitement and fulfillment. You may find you create more of those things when you stop expecting your job to provide them. What would it be like to let your job be good enough?

I hope that takes the pressure off.

With love,

Christina

From Career Despair to Wild Success

Time to read: 1.25 minutes

Katie's portrait of my essential worker

Photographer, Katie Howie, watched the bottom drop out of her portrait business during the stay-at-home order. As she watched her life's work disappear overnight, she sank into depression and worry. She told me, "I was worried out of my mind for everyone and everything. I cried daily... Things felt bleak."

Katie is a former neighbor and our family's beloved photographer. In March, she texted me to ask if I knew any essential workers. She had started a project called, "By a Thread: Pandemic Portraits" to document essential workers at their homes. Turns out, I did know an essential worker. My 15-year-old son works as a cashier in a grocery store.

Katie said she didn't want to do what other portrait photographers were doing so she waited. She said, "For about a month, I waited for inspiration. And then, it was like lightning. My inspiration came so fast it was crazy."

Since she started By a Thread, Katie has done 60 profiles and unexpectedly and amazingly, her project is featured in Minnesota Monthly's July/August issue. (See the article here.) She's considering public shows and a book. The project (and Katie's career) has taken on a life of its own.

I asked for Katie's permission to share this story with you, because it's a story of how despair led to creativity. How waiting and listening led to inspiration, and how a career took off without a plan.

I heard from some of you that you're having a hard time connecting to the meaning of what you do. Katie is the perfect example of how finding your purpose works.

She sat with her despair. She allowed her personal pain and worry to move her and inspire her to act. She started something with no idea where it would lead. She leaned into her unique gifts and talents. She took the next step and the next and now By a Thread has a huge impact.

The world of work is challenging right now. And, the creative possibilities are endless.

What might become true for you with a little waiting, listening and leaning into your unique gifts and talents?

With love,

Christina

P.S. Would it be fun to find some inspiration of your own this summer? The Rebels at Home Challenge is 8 days of short (3 minutes) video challenges designed to inspire and uplift you so you can relieve stress and create new opportunities in this strange and challenging situation. Sign up here to receive Day 1.

What Do You Need Right Now?

Time to read: 40 seconds

My clients are all over the map these days. On coaching calls there have been tears, anger, hope, and joy. Folks are being furloughed, staying afloat at work, settling into a new vision of summer, worrying about job searching, and finding new opportunities. The experience is not the same across industries and locations.

My newsletter has come out every week for four years. I typically know exactly what I want to write each week, and lately, I find it hard to know what to say. Being at a loss for words is not my MO (ask my husband).

So, I'm doing what I recommend clients do when they feel muddled. Get curious.

Will you share what your world is like right now?

• What are you thinking about?
• What are your current struggles?
• Are you working too much? Not enough?
• What are the unique challenges you're facing in these times?
• What would be helpful?

I always love to hear from you, especially now. Your situation is unique and I'd love to hear what's going on out there.

Email me at christina@boydsmithcoaching.com Let the emails rip!

With love,

Christina

Thinking About Integrity

Time to read: 25 seconds.

In the past few months and especially the past few weeks, I've consumed more news than I have at any other time in my life. As you all are consuming a lot of media these days, too, I'm committed to keeping my newsletter even shorter and more relevant than ever so you can focus on all the other important voices out there.

As I listen to the news, one question I've thought a lot about is integrity - both personal and corporate. How are individuals, organizations, and our government responding to everything that's happening? What do their responses say about them? And what do they teach us about the foundations of integrity and how to maintain and sustain your own personal integrity? How does courage fit in? And vulnerability? And risk?

Companies have responded to George Floyd's murder and the subsequent call for justice and change. Some have knocked it out the park (Ben and Jerry's) and some have been, well, strange (give this lively, funny and poignant radio broadcast - It's Been a Minute - a listen).

Then ask yourself, what does integrity look like for you in all this?

That's what I've got on this June day.

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. If you want to feel encouraged that change is possible, listen to The New York Times Daily podcast about the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

Feel Guilty About Your Joy?

Time to read: 45 seconds.

We're at my father-in-law's funeral. My father-in-law was a gentle, impactful community and business leader who died of Alzheimers a few weeks ago. Yesterday was the moving, Covid-designed funeral.

We're sad.

And we're having a great time in Austin. BBQ never tasted so good and evening drives full of new smells and new sites are refreshing my family's soul. We didn't realize until we landed at the airport how much we needed rest and a change of scenery and perspective.

Complexity

That's the name of the game.

Ease does not come from erasing discomfort through simple explanations and avoiding pain. Ease comes from (cliche warning) leaning in, knowing that you are resilient and can handle whatever you hear or whatever happens. Ease comes from increasing your ability to embrace complexity - that joy and grief, fun and rage, can all exist together.

If you have the opportunity to visit the site of George Floyd's murder, I recommend you go. It's a moving experience - t-shirt booths, food tents serving free hotdogs and pasta salad (the bacon broccoli one was some of the best pasta salad I've ever eaten... I digress), people singing, make-shift food banks, all mixed together with a beautiful mural and altars of flowers, kid's drawings, and reverence and grief for the tragedy that took place there.

The experience is complex: optimistic, sad, hopeful, joyful, generous, and forward thinking. The experience paints a picture of the world fueled by love, community, and complexity as opposed to violence and domination.

This quote came across my radar screen today and is the perfect addition to thinking about joy and complexity. In the midst of doing intense work in non-violence and reconciliation, Emma Jordan-Simpson, Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, talks about how she takes care of herself.

"One of the things I do to take care of myself is that I protect joy. Not having good times is not an excuse not to be human, not to live and move and engage. Joy helps us do that. For me, joy is seeing the effort that people make to take care of one another. Joy is having incredibly fulfilling relationships with family, with friends, with neighbors. Joy is finding something to laugh about at the most ridiculous times. Joy is in our music. No one can take joy from us."

As you find your place in this pandemic and your role in racial justice, you have permission to have your joy. It's part of embracing increased complexity.

With love,

Christina

P.S. If you want to better understand the issues surrounding police reforms, this New York Times Daily podcast is worth the 25 minutes.

A Very Short List of Resources to Help You In These Times

Time to read: 10 seconds. Following the links: Life-changing.

We're going super short today. I don't know about you…I'm tired and listening and processing and feeling.

I read and listen to a lot of podcasts. My friends and family count on me to recommend only the most impactful. So, here is a very short list of my best recommendations for this moment in time.

If you are overwhelmed by where to start in the conversation about structural racism, pay attention to this man. Read his book. Read his articles. I've linked to his most recent article in The Atlantic. Then head out to Facebook and other places on social media. Many black people and people of color are generously offering their insight and wisdom.

If you want to process at the deepest levels, what it means to be human, listen to this podcast.

And even better, Brene Brown (the podcaster) will be interviewing Ibram X Kendi (the author) in an upcoming episode. Two great people who go great together. It's a win-win.

Finally, if you are wondering how to help, consider giving to any of these organizations. There are lots of good people doing good work out there.

I hope this helps.

Christina