work-life negotiation

Mantra #4: The Only Way Out is Through

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Every time I look at social media (why do I keep doing that?) or read the news, there’s a new crisis.

It’s exhausting. And yet, it feels familiar.

We’ve have been here before (job loss, Covid, illness, injuries, etc.).

There is some comfort in that.

You have faced hard things before and you can do it again.

I originally wrote this post on March 20, 2020, as the pandemic was just beginning.

It applies to our current time as well. Replace Covid with 2025 and it works.

So, to help us through, here is Mantra #4: ๐™๐™๐™š ๐™ค๐™ฃ๐™ก๐™ฎ ๐™ฌ๐™–๐™ฎ ๐™ค๐™ช๐™ฉ ๐™ž๐™จ ๐™ฉ๐™๐™ง๐™ค๐™ช๐™œ๐™.

The coronavirus changed our world in an instant. People are hurting. They’re scared for their safety and their livelihoods. They’re afraid for elderly parents and small children. These are not small things and they should not be diminished. Do not diminish others’ fears. Or your own.

Fear is pain. Unfortunately, we live in a pain-avoidant culture. Many people are afraid of pain- their own, their children’s, the world’s. They ignore it, numb it, try to out-drink or our out-run it.

Fear is good, actually.

Fear reminds us that we’re alive. That there’s something left to lose and something still to live for.

Fear is normal. Avoiding it is not.

It really stinks that this virus isn’t the hardest the thing that I’ve ever done. I’m not happy about that. I’m pissed, actually. Yet, I’m oddly calm, too. There is, for us, a sense of: “yes, we’ve been here before. We got through that, we will get through this.”

We were completely quarantined for months and practiced social distancing for over a year. And yet, even then, there were others forced to do even more work than us. Bone marrow transplant patients are often hospitalized for years. Some of my friends fought for years and still lost their children.

Shepherding my son through cancer treatment was hard. Getting “over it” was harder. This is not my default setting. I’m an east-coaster raised on grades, achievements, and busy. If you weren’t productive, you weren’t worth much.

I don’t “get over” stuff. I am a hanger-on-er. I love to revisit old wounds and dissect how I’ve been wronged. I tried that for years. It only brought more pain and more fear.

After years of denial, I realized that: The only way out is through.

I had to work through my fear, anger, grief, disappointment, rage, frustration. It was brutal. I hated it. I resented most of it.

And I am grateful for it.

The choice is the point. Especially now when it feels as if we have no choice. It’s normal to feel helpless and hopeless. Just don’t stay there.

Name your fears. Write them in a journal. Shout them into the wind. The more we name things, the less power they have to control us.

Go cry in your closet or bathroom. Throw stuff or punch a pillow. Then, wash your face, brush your teeth, and go for a walk.

The more we name our hope, the more inspired we are to act, too

You got this and I’m rooting for you.

LOVING your work

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This post was co-written by Kristen Abell, Tim St. John and Becca Fick after a lengthy Twitter conversation topic. You might find it cross-posted on their blogs, too.

Lately, we have been noticing several folks tweeting things about โ€œreasons I love my job.โ€ It made us think โ€“ are we setting up the expectation that you need to love your job to be good at it? Why canโ€™t we say we enjoy it or like it or find meaning from it and that be enough? It all comes down to false expectations of what we should get from work and what we owe to it as a result. It seems like a very unhealthy relationship. Tim threw the initial question out on Twitter, and a conversation has now bloomed into a blog post.

When/Why did we start treating work as something that could be loved? And is this only something thatโ€™s happening online? We wonder whether this professed โ€œloveโ€ has more to do with how someone looks online, their personal brand, than their true feelings about work. Maybe some people feel like they have to profess their love for their job in order to be taken seriously as a student affairs professional โ€“ as if they have to prove their dedication to the job and to the field.

Itโ€™s not a person, it canโ€™t love us back. Why do we put so much into something, and what do we get back from it? This can set people up for failure and/or heartbreak. No job will LOVE you back. You can get fulfillment from it, and you can make an impact, but those do not equal love. It seems that some of us, as higher education professionals, have unrealistic expectations about how our employers and institutions will receive our efforts, our โ€œloveโ€ for them. We seem to hear, โ€œLove your job! Be passionate. If you do this, then all your needs will be fulfilled and you will be rewarded.โ€ In reality, a job is a job. Yes, some can be more fulfilling than others, but it wonโ€™t love you back.

When you treat work as work, you tend to be a better self-advocate when it comes to promotions, time out of the office, saying no, etc. You also tend to take less of that home with you, knowing it will be there when you go back tomorrow. Are newer professionals even taught this? And who do we look to for our models?

When you are all student affairs all the time, you do a disservice to yourself, to your friends and family and to your students. Thatโ€™s right โ€“ we said your students. Do you think they care if you were thinking about them at 2 a.m. if you canโ€™t help them now because youโ€™re completely exhausted and burned out?

So what do you think about โ€œlovingโ€ your job โ€“ is it all itโ€™s cracked up to be?

The “Have it All” Trap

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Lately, there has been talk and backtalk about Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” which was printed in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. First, I will say this. I think Slaughter is spot-on. Spot on. I believe that she was courageous to say what she did and her “calling out” of the current work-life system was timely, appropriate, and necessary. Two of her statements especially resonated with me:

“I still strongly believe that women can ‘have it all’ (and that men can too). I believe that we can ‘have it all at the same time.’ But, not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged- and quickly changed.”

and this:

“in short, the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be”

BOOM!

She spoke my very soul. That is exactly how I felt when I was a Director (most of 2011) and is exactly why I left my Director role.

YES! BRAVO! THANK YOU! Thank you for putting this out there! I think her piece was gutsy and brave. And, I appreciated hearing from another working woman who re-evaluated her life and her priorities and made a choice- a personal and professional sacrifice that works- or at least works better for now- for her and her family.

What is sad, to me, is that she felt she had to do this. For various reasons, which she outlines in her piece, Slaughter felt that she (emphasis mine) could not, in her high-level government position, be the kind of professional and mother that she wanted and need to be, and that her children wanted and needed her to be. I thought that was the intent of her piece. Obviously, I am not her. I have no idea what her intentions were. But, I read it as a commentary on her own work-life experiences and her wrestling with the negotiation (my word, not hers) of motherhood and professional life. I was excited and energized. I thought, “Wow! Yes! Maybe now we will have a real conversation about current practices, policies, and practices that have become policies, related to work-life negotiation.” Let’s talk about the “uncomfortable facts” (Slaughter’s words) that need to be changed. Let’s talk about why she felt she had to do this.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm has already waned. The responses I am reading are ripping on Slaughter as elitist, privileged, over-achieving, not doing enough. All of which Slaughter also addresses in her piece.

One of the first responses I saw on-line was this article. In four or five paragraphs the author manages to:

1. complain about the graphic that was used- a naked toddler sitting in a briefcase. Okay. A little trite. Overused. Sure. But, really? I can’t imagine that Slaughter herself picked that graphic. And, it worked. Because you wrote about it and now thousands of other bloggers are writing about it, too.

2. bemoan the phrase “have it all.” Also trite? Also overused? Yes. Isn’t that part of Slaughter’s point? She admits that she fell into the “have it all trap” AND that she unwittingly made the generations behind her feel guilty for not achieving it all.

Finally, the author then says that the core problem with Slaughter’s article is that she frames work-life as only a woman’s issue. Okay, I am with you on this one. Currently, the work-life conversation is framed as a working-women-with-children issue. That is indeed part of the problem. (Although there are exceptions- see Brad Harrington and the new Dad study done by the Boston College Center for Work and Family).

Women are living it. Women are doing a lot of the writing and commentating about it. I think this was also Slaughter’s point.

And, sadly, women are also the ones doing most of the tearing down of other women and their choices. Which is my point here.

All of this makes me feel…overwhelmed. Annoyed. Frustrated. One woman cannot possibly be the voice for every other woman’s experience. Would we want her to be, even if she could? Slaughter wrote about her experience. I write about my experience. You write about yours. That is what makes the world go round. And, that is also what starts the dialogue and will push agendas forward.

Work-life is an issue for anyone who has a job and a life, which is pretty much, well, everyone. There absolutely needs to be more dialogue. Let’s focus on that & continue to advance the conversation.