to coach a soccer league, run a Girl Scout troop, or drive to a band practice.
Ladies, it’s time to make your own schedule and your own rules. Is the time right for you?
Maybe you’ve got a burning desire to finally bring an invention to life. Or maybe you want to put your sales acumen to work from home so you don’t have to suffer through one more week of your commute. Maybe you have a child with special needs and simply can’t get into being in an office any more. For all these reasons and a million more, Mom Boss life is beckoning. Get ready for the ride!
Warning: You’ll be head of IT, HR, and maintenance. The buck stops with you. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a stressful cash crunch. A few of our accounts are overdue by three months. Collection calls and emails are just part of the job. But here’s the thing: I’m writing and emailing from a ski lodge in New Hampshire. I was able to leave my Brooklyn office for five days to take my daughter to an East Coast alpine championship ski race. No one had to give me permission to take time off.
As I tucked my pint-sized skier into bed the night before the race, she gave me a huge hug and said, “You’re the best mommy ever, thank you so, so, so much for taking me here. My heart is full. I love you, mommy.” Cue the tears. Those moments when you melt, you just know the sacrifices are worth it all. I can be a CEO and I can be a “Ski Mom.” I’m most definitely a Mom Boss.
Mom guilt is real. It’s a force that can be used for good or for evil. Let me explain. “Are you traveling again?” Working moms across the nation have heard this lament when the kiddos see the roller bag out on the bed. What the mom hears is, “Don’t you love me?”
That’s not really what the kids are saying. What they are saying is: how is this trip going to affect me? The trick to avoiding mom guilt is to know in your own mind why you are working and what motivates you to work. From talking to friends and from my own experience, you can tame 80 percent of the guilt if you are working smart and have a clear goal to share.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that 20 percent of the time mom guilt just stinks, and can’t be rationalized away. Work to manage the 80 percent, and then have good friends and family to get you through the 20 percent (and I’ve got a few tips on how to recover after those brutal 90-hour work weeks, or back-to-back business trips that result in bitter spouses and weepy children).
This was the recent chorus that awaited me at the family dinner table. Mr. Momtrends and I were busy mapping out our travel schedules. My girls were used to his travel. As an investment professional, he often traveled to research companies or do marketing presentations. Life went on smoothly when my husband had a business trip. Since he was not the one coordinating kid schedules, not much changed whenhe was on the road. Life was a lot less fun, but the show went on.
Not so much for me.
Turns out, I’m the only one who remembers my older daughter likes honey mustard on her sandwiches and won’t eat ham, while the younger one likes mayonnaise and prefers ham to turkey. I also know that the piano teacher prefers to be paid in cash, not by check, and that we need to order a new chess clock for an upcoming tournament.
The delicious minutiae of
motherhood live in my head.
I left the corporate world for all these reasons. I wanted to be in charge of the details. I wanted my girls to know that they could count on me. I wanted to be the the mom who wouldn’t miss a recital or Greek play at school because of an ogre boss. Now I’m the boss, and I have to make these tough calls and prioritize.
As my business has grown, my husband has picked up a lot of the parenting slack – especially when it comes to business travel. But he has his own style (I can’t touch the smoothie bar he operates in the morning out of our kitchen), and he most certainly isn’t on top of all the child-related things I cover. And he can’t braid hair. Oh, and the outfits, well, let’s just say the girls don’t always look Instagram ready. But he loves them fiercely, has his own rituals, and always gets them to school on time. The mom guilt comes in because he doesn’t do it my way.
Each work trip I make requires not just the travel planning, but also the home planning. This is my major source of mom guilt. I make color-coded calendars, send endless emails, and rely on friends and family to pitch in. Still, the nagging feeling that I’m not doing enough remains.
On my most recent trip, I got on the phone with my eight-year-old. She was quite upset with me. Apparently, no one told her I was heading to Utah to work on our Digital Family Ski Guide. The work trip fell at a horrible time for her. It was right after a trip to New Hampshire with my older daughter. I took time off of work to take daughter #1 to a championship ski race on the East Coast. Chalk one up in the “good mom” category, I thought. Nope. Daughter #2 felt slighted, and then horrified, that as soon as I got back from New Hampshire I re-packed and headed off again.
I made headway with the little one over a few phone calls, and assured her that on the next trip, I would give her ample warning of where I was going, and when it was all happening. Crisis averted.
Until I got the text from my husband from the urgent care facility in Brooklyn: broken toe for the older daughter. Sometimes, you just can’t win.
What you can do, is manage the fallout.
I’m not alone. Jyl Pattee, founder of Mom It Forward Media, has mastered handling the fallout of business travel. Mom It Forward Media is a boutique digital agency that does many cool things — including producing an annual retreat in partnership with Universal Orlando Resort focused on “creating superhero families.” She lives in Utah. You guessed it, her work involves travel.
Part of the reason Jyl founded Mom It Forward was to make the key milestones in her kids’ lives. She used to beat herself up that she worked outside the home and traveled a lot when her kids were in the potty training years.
Now Jyl’s boys are teens, and the good news is Jyl reports that Mom Guilt eases as the kids get older. Plus, she’s wiser. “I have much more realistic expectations, and am much gentler on myself now,” Jyl says. “I let others help, and I share the load with my husband.”
Maybe we don’t need to be super moms. On most days, just showing up with all your heart counts for a ton.
Business travel is just one source of guilt. No matter how many hours you spend on your business, any toddler will tell you it’s too much, and that there should be less work and more tea parties or snuggles.
Good point. Let’s talk about balance and ways to find where to fit in the snuggles with the spreadsheets.
* Top tips for managing mom guilt *
FOMO No More
I know many women suffer from the mom version of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). We want to. Well, those that are probably wouldn’t be fun to have as friends, anyhow. Remember: Comparison is the thief of joy. I, for one, have not actually baked anything for a bake sale in ten years. I write a check and volunteer for almost every field trip. Spending hours in the kitchen without my kids, working on a cake, just doesn’t make sense for me.
Flip the Guilt
Give your kids examples of things you turned down to be with them. I’m not telling you to become a martyr; I do want you to be honest. I was recently invited to Sweden to