As I lay in ER, listening to the electronic beeps that signified my heart and the numbers that illustrated my breathing, I had but one thought: I'M IN CHARGE HERE. And therein lies the problem.
Being a working mom of two children is challenging. Starting a new business is challenging. Have a child with learning differences that take time and conscious effort each and every day is challenging. Having health issues that point out your age and your heredity is challenging. Being a caring partner in the midst of the madness is challenging. But for me each one of these challenges was just that - a thing to be overcome, to be surmounted, to be willfully crushed into submission. And then reality and my body took over, and on a Tuesday afternoon I found myself in the ER, trying to use my mind to will my heart and lungs into submission as various doctors determined that no, it was not a heart attack. As proud as I was of being able to will my blood pressure down and my respirations into a low enough state to set off alarms, I realized that perhaps the thing that needed to be crushed into submission was my mind.
As mothers and women, we feel like we should be able to do it all. We are flawed or weak or somehow Less Than if we let the "usual" stresses of life get us down in anyway. We should be able - in one day - to get snacks for the soccer team, take kids in for vaccinations, fill in required school forms, shop for all the meals in the week, get dinner on the table and still earn the income, calm the clients and every once in a while do something brilliant to remind ourselves, our colleagues and our clients that we are The Bomb. Failure is not an option. Or is it?
The day after The ER Incident, I was back it - up at 5:15am to work out, at my desk at 7:30 and butt-in-seat until 6pm, when it was time to slap a quick dinner on the table and run out the door to a committee meeting. Both kids got teary as I left, asking me why I had to leave and why I was working so much that I no longer sang to them at bedtime. I tamped down my guilt and headed out the door, only to be hit with more guilt in my meeting as I realized that there was more to do for that group as well....everyone was missing their bedtime song, or in this case their strategy, their X need that only I seemed to be able to fulfill. And there it was, in front me...failure. But perhaps failure was not a fallback option or a gaping pit into which I could tumble. Perhaps I could actually rename "failure" and leap into it - shouting GERONIMOOOOO as I jump into the great unknown option that I would call...my new life.
My new life focuses on those things that I cherish the most: my children, my husband, my basic need to use my brain, and my need for salty snacks. It means singing at bedtime, not checking email after 8pm or before 8am, and ensuring that weekends are about downtime and cuddling in bed and easy dinners that may not make it into Gourmet magazine but will give us all the energy we need to have fun together. It's no longer about squeezing in a few hours to work while Gregg teaches the kids to ride bikes or throw a football as I teach them about absentee parenting. It's not about putting together proposals and sending out invoices or creating strategies for time-crunched clients. Yes, it needs to happen and it will...but during the week when the option to sing to my kids isn't available, when my husband isn't patiently waiting for me to climb into bed only to ignore him after immediately saying "watch me, watch me sleep..." as I drop off in 10 seconds or less.
I'll need to relinquish my need to be the one to "save the day" by getting a project done more quickly and better than someone else. I'll need to walk away from leadership roles that I felt I needed, that I felt defined me. I'll need to work like someone who actually has a life to live away from their office.
We'll make less money. We'll cut back on those little luxuries we had been clinging too. But we'll be richer in time. In those moments when Gregg and I can look at each other over our children's heads and know they just did or said something we can be proud of...or even dismayed by and perhaps need to consider therapy for. But we're there together to experience it, and I'll have enough energy at the end of all of it to at least spoon my husband before I say "Watch me. Watch me sleep".
