Category: Work-Life Integration

A decade of mommy guilt

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

My first born turned a decade old the other day. Surely hitting double digits was a huge milestone for her. For me it was a time of reflection on how fast the time has gone by and how much of her childhood I missed in the last 10 years. I want to close my eyes and turn on the reel of memories I have stored away of the day she rolled over for the first time, her first steps, losing her first tooth….. The list goes on and on.

Truth is, I was gone for most of those other milestones in her young life. It wasn’t just the firsts either. There are countless pediatrician visits, parent teacher conferences, sporting/dance events, etc. that I just could not make. Though I know better than to feel guilty anymore about the extra stuff that I might have taken on as a mom like being a coach or a troop leader or a school volunteer, what I wouldn’t give to have been able to console her when she got her shots or to be the one she ran to when she had a nightmare (I am sure she figured “Why bother, Mommy’s side of the bed is empty most nights.”)

While for much of the time I was, as this now wise young lady believes, “taking care of people,” there were plenty of times when I was simply busy doing the other part of my work where people’s lives were not in my hands (e.g. research, education, volunteer efforts for professional societies). While the trickle down effect of each of these efforts will certainly someday improve the care people receive, the guilt of being away from my child–the most amazing thing I have ever accomplished (albeit with some help from my remarkable life partner)–has been heartbreaking at times. Healing the heartbreak has been daunting. I am talking about healing me let alone the lingering effects my absence may have on her. (Luckily she has a great dad and amazing grand parents to counteract my absences.)

TIps for Healing Mommy Guilt found at http://dailymom.com/nurture/beating-back-mommy-guilt/
Tips for Healing Mommy Guilt

I have done more and more, in particular after finally getting my first grown up job in her 7th year of life, to assuage that guilt–to be there as much as I can.  When she was in preschool, everyone assumed that my husband was a single parent. I was that out of the picture. Entering into the picture has meant asking my parents to sacrifice daily contact with their grandkids so that I can have a more favorable commute that theoretically frees up times for the kids (alas most activities, events, and meetings still tend to occur between 6am and 6pm and I remain the forever absent mom). It has meant asking my husband to do every more to sustain our household so that I can get in some mommy time (i.e. he will do the dishes, bang out a few loads of laundry so I can maybe, just maybe be awake enough to read a chapter or two to my child). It has meant allowing myself to fall behind on the things where a life is not on the line or where someone else is not holding me to an expectation (I can’t ignore my billing or my employer gets on me, I can’t not proofread a paper that I told someone I would review for them, I can’t put off a grant that has a prescribed federal deadline but I sure can put off my own internal deadlines). In the end, an extra night or weekend of work will sort everything out. I am hardwired to get the job done, so I will. But every long day, every night, and every weekend of getting it done will come at a cost, another empty reel in the memory bank of my daughter’s childhood and, unless I pay re-calibrate the push and pull between work and family, I will find myself at her 20th birthday still ridden with guilt.

I attended a faculty seminar on work-life balance a couple of years ago. Everyone entered that room with a ton of baggage related to their inability to balance work and life with work seemingly winning every time. The upshot of the seminar was essentially: lose the guilt (if you are at work don’t feel guilty about not being at home and if you are at home don’t feel guilty about not being at work). While I have tried especially hard since then (not that I needed to be told but it was a good reminder at a time when I was really, really buried in my work life) to sneak in quality time with my daughter (and her baby brother but I will get all sappy about him when his birthday rolls around) the problem is that it has felt just like that–sneaking around. When spending time with your child feels like sneaking around, the Mommy Guilt has gotten out of hand.

The decade of Mommy Guilt I have built up won’t dissipate easily and surely my profession can move the dial a bit (both surgery and academics) so both men and women don’t have to “sneak around” so much when they choose life over work. But in the end, rather than letting the Mommy Guilt mount in the years to come, I am resolving to feel Mommy Pride for each of the moments that do make it onto the memory reel in my daughter’s teens. Guilt won’t make the reel amazingly devoid of gaps so why bother. I am better off feeling pride in the moments of parenting I am super savvy enough fit in given the nearly (but not completely) all-consuming career I have chosen (and do deeply enjoy).

So yeah, I am pretty proud that I proactively requested a day off over a year in advance so that I could be at my daughter’s birthday party, and that I might have put off writing a manuscript late one night to brainstorm venues and a guest list with her.  I ended up delegating the evites, the cupcakes, booking the actual venue to my husband (I could blog pages and pages about how amazing this guy is about getting it done at home while I work and work some more) but I wasn’t entirely absent and that is an accomplishment worthy of pride rather than guilt.

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Parental validation with a haircut

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

The other day I decided on the spur of the moment to get a haircut during the day on a work day. I was really nervous leaving work to get this done. Ordinarily I just ignore personal needs like haircuts, doctors visits, pedicures, etc. that tend to occur during regular business hours for as long as possible since my typical work hours extend before and after regular business hours.

Luckily, some personal needs can be put off longer than others.

I have a great head of hair and, as such, am one to ignore care and maintenance of said hair for months and months at a time. I average 1.5 haircuts a year on a good hair year. It’s just not a priority which is good because I have so many other things I can’t seem to get done be they personal or professional. Looking and feeling good are definitely on the priority list but they compete (most often ending up on the losing side) with making our house a home, parenting, and work.

My daughter also has gorgeous hair.  She is only nine and thus also requires little maintenance of her lovely locks. Lately, however, it has been getting really hard for her to comb the tangles out no matter what products we try in an effort to dissuade these tenacious tangles. My husband is arguably great at doing basically all of the homemaking and the parenting but with our daughter he has drawn the line at putting in earrings and combing out tangles. (I wish I could say this is because he has experience with neither but there was that unfortunate period in the early 90s when my then boyfriend rocked a pony tail longer than mine.) Of note, we have both drawn the line at doing braids since we collectively suck at it despite how long our hair is or has been. So, lately a lot of my quality time with my daughter has been spent trying to get the tangles out of her hair.

It hasn’t been fun torturing her, especially since overall I have precious little time with my little girl. I have been working 60-120 hours a week since the day she was born. About three years into it, I made it even harder for her to get ‘mommy and me’ time by bringing her baby brother into the mix. All those days when I went to work before they were up and came home (if at all) after they were asleep broke my heart over and over again. To this day, I always make it a point to crack open the bedroom door and blow a kiss to my sleeping babies on my way out the door because it makes me a little less bad for leaving them for such long stretches of time. (Luckily these days I am heading out for fewer 40 hour single stretches of work compared to my training days; and occasionally, I even get to see them awake in the mornings.)

These past nine years I have been catching as catch can as a parent, first with her then with them both, first as a trainee and now as a faculty member. Some days I feel good about how I am doing and others I feel down right awful. Getting the work-life balance equation “right” is a constant challenge when you want to be the best parent you can while also doing “okay” (see, I didn’t say perfect) at everything else including self, home, and work. This past year, as I have focused more and more on my own wellness (because, after all, I want my kids to grow up knowing that taking care of one’s self inside and out is important no matter how challenging) I have also spent more time thinking about how to make the most of my fits and spurts of parenting. So I decided that my daughter and I should both get haircuts, not so much because I needed to (I had my last cut just 6 months ago) but because she badly needed relief from the tangles and I badly needed time with her. I was not on call. There were no imminent deadlines. Work could wait for a couple of hours.

It was her first time going to a real salon rather than a drive through haircut chain. That, in and of itself, was a thrill for her. Plus, she got to spend 2 whole hours alone with me when I was in a good mood. Driving there and back, discussing the futures of our hair, and marveling afterwards at how much difference a good haircut makes brought such joy. I was falling seriously behind on some grant writing and my work inbox had over a 1000 messages in it; but, somehow I managed not to think about that during those two hours as I enjoyed my daughter who, it seems, is becoming quite a smart, thoughtful, and pretty young lady.

I hope some of that has to do with the fact that I have been a good role model for her these past nine years despite my frequent absences from her daily life. (I know that bulk of it is due to her great dad and grand parents who have been raising her while I have been advancing my career but still I wonder if perhaps some credit might be due.) In the car I said to her, “You know, I am really sorry that sometimes even when I am home from work I am just too cranky or its just too late to spend time with you.” Her response, “That’s alright Mom, you’re busy all day taking care of people.”

DSC_7346

So proud of this little girl with the great haircut.

(Tears. Again. As I write this.)