I have recently been appointed to a new, more senior role. This role both terrifies and inspires me, and it appears to terrify others as well. When I talk about what I do and what I plan to do, colleagues and mentors invariably respond with “That. Is. ENORMOUS”. What they often don’t know is that I also work one day a week in general practice, and am raising two young children on the side. I think if they knew, their collective heads might explode. So I have stopped mentioning it.

This heightened level of juggling sometimes makes me feel like overcompensating for my multiple roles. I can be the perfect, overworked academic. I can be the perfect mum as well. I can do it all, and do it effortlessly. It’s a strange, masochistic way of coping with everything that is on my plate – by piling more on, it will all appear balanced! Ha!

Fortunately, I have, to my credit, figured out a few ways to avoid being that superwoman. I thought I would share them with you in case you could apply them to your life too. This is not just for working mums. It’s for dads, it’s for every mum, it’s for every adult who sometimes wakes up and thinks “I can’t adult today. Please don’t make me adult”.

1. Don’t be a superhero.

Don’t attempt superhuman feats. At least, not without a really, really, really good reason.

I was offered another role, a part time role, attached to a certain level of prestige, where I could help make strategic decisions, and generally feel important. It was in an area that I feel passionate about, and somewhat connected to my current role, but not exactly. It would involve a bit of extra income, look very impressive on my CV, and I would get to work with people that I liked. It involved travelling to Melbourne two days a month, plus a lot of extra work outside of meetings (I must admit, a part of me really liked the idea of having one night a month in a hotel, on my own). It was the kind of role that would be perfect for me – in ten years time.

I thought about this for a long time. I could work extra hours on the weekend, on the plane, on weeknights, to make up for the hours, I thought. I could see that two days a month as my “me time” and sacrifice all my other time to work and family in between. I could hire a nanny to help out, with the extra income. And yet, something in me hesitated, because it seemed like the only things to benefit would be my ego, my bank balance ( a little – not a lot), my CV, and that woman who wanted to sleep in a king size bed on her own without little elbows in her face. Everything else would no doubt suffer – time, energy, family.

Eventually I fought that superwoman in my head who told me “Go on. You can do it! You can do anything!!!” and wrote an email saying that I’d love to rethink the position, in three years time.

Don’t be a superhero. 

2. Don’t be afraid to outsource.

When my daughter started school, we put her in two days a week of after school care. “She’s too precious to spend all her time there” we thought. “We must save her from this terrible fate”. After a while, the pressure on two working parents became clearer, and we put her in for an extra day. Towards the end of the year, it was getting so hard to juggle the 3pm pickups between us. This year, she’s in for four days and our stress levels have dropped dramatically. Now it’s only one day a week between us to juggle the early pickup. She is literally there for less than two hours, and she gets fed afternoon tea, does arts and craft with her friends, and reads books. She meets lots of friends from other classes. Invariably she doesn’t want to leave when I pick her up.

Don’t be afraid to outsource. Especially if it’s because of ill-conceived notions of something not being good enough for your precious ones. It usually is just fine.

3. Online canteen ordering. Enough said.

When my daughter started school, I had a Pinterest board of beautiful bento-style lunches. I was going to pack her edamame and cream cheese sandwiches one day, bliss balls and cute cheese stars the next. The reality was that she got a cheese sandwich cut in half, and some carrot sticks. Then I discovered Flexischools. If you don’t have something like Flexischools, I send my commiserations. With a few swipes, I can order my precious one a cooked lunch (pasta bolognaise, sushi, nachos…) plus they cut up the carrot sticks for me, and I can make this a recurring order. What?! My daughter loves the canteen so much, I now have recurring orders for every single day of the week. I no longer spend bleary mornings chopping up cucumber, only to find it hasn’t been eaten at the end of the day.

Get thee to an online canteen ordering system. And yes, please “make this a weekly order”.

4. Mums are like ice cream.

Last year my daughter begged me to come in for parent reading help. Twice a week, the lovely parents (usually mums…) came in to help the school kids with some one on one reading. For a while, I even considered changing my schedule so I could be there 10am – 10:45am on a Wednesday. Then I slapped myself out of my senses.

I just can’t be that mum. I work full time. I try to make it for assemblies, Easter hat parades, and the special occasions. But I can’t be that mum at reading help every week. I’ve had to realise that mums are like ice cream. Some are chocolate chip, some are strawberry, some are lemon gelato (or is it gelati)? Chocolate chip is not better than strawberry nor better than lemon gelato/i. We’re all just ice cream. Our kids might prefer one flavour over the other, but at the end of the day we’re still ice cream. All of us.

˜˜˜˜˜

Fridays is generally a good day for me. It’s a day where I don’t have to get out of bed at the crack of dawn. It’s a day when I generally schedule the exciting, inspiring meetings that happen in the CBD in the middle of the day. Last Friday I walked my daughter to school and we chatted along the way. It was a sweet moment of intimacy. I kissed her goodbye and caught the bus to the city. I had energising meetings with inspiring people. Afterwards I told my boss I was going to get a haircut. He told me to enjoy myself. I sat in a food court and ate a nasi goreng, a terrible nutritional choice but my treat for the week. For a moment, I felt balanced, and strangely invincible.

Perhaps by refusing to be superwoman, I can actually be the superwoman that I am meant to be. Less is more.

To all the superwomen out there, I salute you. May we always make the right choices so that our capes fit comfortably on our shoulders.

 

“I wanted to ask you how you manage to balance it so beautifully” she asked shyly. “Work, family…”

 

I felt like a fraud when the young PhD student said this to me. (Yes, I suffer from Impostor Syndrome at home too.) I don’t feel like I am balancing anything. Let alone beautifully.

 

It’s the end of a very long year and school is not out yet. I’m barely hanging on by a thread in these final weeks of the year. I am just so tired of the struggle.

 

I struggle every day with my career. There is a real desperation, the way a starving person looks at food he simply cannot afford. The loneliness of being a postdoc, the crushing rejections that seem to happen on a weekly basis, have worn me down. I feel like I am trying to claw my way out of a deep well, with those at the top quite non-plussed at my inability to get out to where they are.

 

I struggle at home too – the daily battle to get socks and shoes on (their feet, not mine), to get food into little tummies, to get small people in and out of the bath and into bed. The PhD student doesn’t see me snap at my children. She doesn’t see how I spend too much time on Facebook at night  because I am too tired to do anything else. She hasn’t seen me cry all the way through a chapter on “Mistakes” in my “Mindful discipline” audiobook (a brilliant book, by the way) – tears streaming down my cheeks all the way on my commute home, thinking of the countless ways I have failed my children.

 

So, balance? I’m not that good at it. Work and life consume me and I am wrung out at this time of the year, with almost nothing left to give.

 

And yet, I can see that she sees something different. Perhaps she sees a part of me I am blind to. Perhaps I see the same thing in my role models – the hugely successful academic women who have raised children and do this well. Perhaps they, too, feel like balance is a load of bollocks. (Excuse the language).

 

Perhaps what she sees is someone who wakes up every day and shows up, who fights for the things she loves, who is determined to make it work despite it all. She sees the part of me that is organised, resilient, resourceful, and able to laugh at myself. She sees, somehow, that I seek ways to keep myself going during the week – a beachside run, some meditation practice, blogging on my smartphone in the car before picking my son up from daycare. She sees the gratitude that drives me, literally in my darkest moments – the way I linger in bed breathing in my sleeping children during those cold mornings when I face a pre-dawn commute. And she must see the times I am in flow at work, and when I say a silent prayer for being paid to do something that I love. Perhaps this is the true balancing act. The fierce determination to create a meaningful life, even if it’s no walk in the park; the ability to see the Yin and Yang of our full catastrophe.

 

Perhaps balance is all about resilience, the “bouncing back”. It’s about digging deep, but also knowing how to fill the cup again after it has run empty.

 

I am looking forward to bouncing back after the Christmas holidays. I have not had a proper break for more than 12 months. I have had sneaky little breaks here and there but they have been much too short for any lasting rejuvenation. I have both career and mummy burnout. But the end of the year is almost within reach.

 

Most of all I am looking forward to a few weeks of not having to explain to my children that they have to put their shoes and socks on every morning and hurry up because Mummy is late.

Wishing all my loyal followers a safe, happy, relaxing end of year break. Merry Christmas if that is what you celebrate. And a very happy and healthy New Year. x

Hello there. It’s been a long time. I wanted to say that I’m all right. It’s been a tough few months of transition but I’m doing okay.

I’ve been practising mindfulness. I wish I could say I am doing some actual meditation, like sitting on a cushion and breathing. I am not. But I read Jon Kabat-Zinn’s amazing book “Mindfulness for Beginners” and it was an eye-opener. And I’ve tried my best to transplant his wisdom straight into my daily life. I wanted to share with you some of the insights I’ve gained recently. It’s not like my life is suddenly, immediately, amazingly and 110% better. I have my ups and downs. But slowly, I feel like I’m making inroads.

Let me share with you the reason I picked up that book. I’m a full time working mother. Despite my best efforts, I was spending the most part of the day:

(1) Stressing about the million things I had to get done (grant application, commute to work, meetings, job applications, writing papers, prove myself to the world, exercise, make lunches, connect with my children, make nutritious food, remember the note for the excursion, do my Business Activity Statement, groceries… you get the picture),  and

( 2) Spending every evening wishing my children were in bed already. This second part made me stop suddenly and think, this is not a way to be living. To wish my children away, because I am so overwhelmed I just need some space on my own. And Number 1 made me feel like a “human doing” as JKZ says, not a “human being“.

Yes I can outsource, I can delegate, I can take shortcuts, I can reduce my expectations, I can do all those things that working mothers are blithely advised to do. It wouldn’t solve my problems. My problems are all in my head.

Here is the first part of my journey. I’ll share more as I go along. I hope these will help you too. It’s not unique to working mothers – I think everyone can relate. But I struggle daily with the demands of work and home, so my aim is to thrive and experience every moment without any regrets and without having wished these years away.

1. I learned that thoughts are not real. They’re things I have made up.

That’s right – thoughts are not reality. When I realised that I don’t actually have to think quite so much, it was such a relief I almost cried. Even now when I remind myself of this, I feel my brain suddenly relax and give out a huge sigh. What? I don’t need to obsess and think all the time? It’s not real? Life will go on if I stop going around in circles in my head with my endless to do list? Wow.

2. You cannot get rid of your thoughts. But you don’t have to get carried away by them.

This was another revelation. I always thought I had clear my mind and not have thoughts. Once I accepted that they would always be there, bubbling up from the surface like a simmering stew, I could accept them and let them go. They are just my brain cells firing after all – if I didn’t have thoughts I may very well be in a coma! But I don’t have to grab on to the endless thoughts that pop up in my head and end up in hopeless rumination. It’s like sitting next to rapids and watching sticks bob around and flow down the river. As long as you stay on the banks, and don’t jump in, nothing will happen to you. (The sticks are like thoughts, obviously). But the moment you dive in and grab on to a stick… good luck to you. In the words of Queen Elsa – Let It GO!

3. Mindfulness allows you to see things as they really are.

It’s not that I don’t have thoughts, but I can challenge negative ones a bit better. And then I have really useful thoughts, you know, the ones like “Maybe I should ask so and so to be on my team at work, that would be really helpful!” And mindfulness helps me refocus, to get out of my head so to speak. It’s a bit like zooming out of a shot and seeing the entire ocean or forest or beautiful landscape in front of you instead of focussing on one tiny leaf that has been magnified hundreds of times. I honestly feel as though my head, which sometimes feels enormous from so much over-thinking, suddenly shrinks to a normal size, and I become a normal person again. I suddenly remember my place in the world, and that there are billions of people with problems, and that mine aren’t particularly special, or difficult, and that the sky is blue right now, the leaves are moving gently with the breeze, sounds of the outside world suddenly reach my ears, and I notice people, cars, trees, flowers, clouds again when before I was just existing in a maelstrom in my head.

There are more insights from the book which I’ll save for another post. The link is an affiliate link which means Amazon pays me a dollar if you buy the book after clicking on my link. But that’s not the reason I wrote this post at all. I just wanted to share what it’s brought to my life, and I’ve been sharing it with many of my patients. I hope it helps you x

Last week I had what I refer to now as the “24 hours from hell”. It started from the moment a ceramic mug fell on my head while I was reading The Gruffalo to my children. One minute I was sharing some precious memories, the next I was assaulted by a rogue mug that toppled over when my son jumped onto the cupboard next to my head. (Long story). I screamed, the children cried, milk went everywhere, and milk was cleaned up and children sent to bed immediately while mummy nursed an egg on her head with some ice. That night both children wet the bed, which meant two changes of bedding in the middle of the night; the following morning my tram ride was cut short by a random strike in the city meaning I had to get off and walk three blocks to get another, and what followed was a frantic day trying to get both my thesis finished for the evening’s formatting session, and changes on a very important journal article finished by midday. It was on that day that I said to myself, “Clearly this is a sign that academia and motherhood do not mix”. The juggling, the lack of sleep, the competing priorities, the toddler-induced mug injury, the urgent article revisions with less than 48 hours notice. No, motherhood and academia do NOT mix, I thought to myself with gritted teeth.

Then I paused, because I realised that this was just one day, just one lot of 24 hours. To define my life and my status as academic working mother by these 24 hours is like making a conclusion based on an outlier. It’s simply not valid. I thought about all the mornings when things go (relatively) smoothly and I sail into the office and drink my tea while calmly writing an article, my favourite “Peaceful Piano” playlist filling my soul with serenity and sending my spirits soaring, as I think, “This is the life! I get paid to write and listen to music!” On those days, I do indeed feel wholeheartedly that academia and motherhood mix very well, thank you, and I wouldn’t give up the mix for anything.

I should apply this to all aspects of my life – I should choose to only remember the good moments, because there are so many good moments. It’s like the song goes, “Ac-centuate the positive…” In any given day, I experience an astoundingly wide range of emotions, from white hot irritation, contentment, tenderness, boredom and anxiety. My children are a bit of a barometer, with their behaviour ranging from adorable to expletive-inducing. I have made the decision to let go of the latter and hold on to the former. I try to let go of the cranky comments, the whingeing, the tantrums, and the inability to walk in a straight line. They are usually momentary (except the walking thing – when do they learn to do this?!?!) and shouldn’t define our day. I used to mentally write the day off the instant we had some bad behaviour or a tense moment – “Today is an awful day”. Now, I shrug it off, carry on, and try hard to hold on just a bit longer to the warm and fuzzy bits, which are never too far away as long as I keep my cool. My almost-three year old son grabbing my face and kissing it with gusto. Two small sleepy heads on my pillow in the morning. My daughter declaring that I’m the best and most perfect mummy in the world. The giggling and the patter of little feet in our house. The impromptu dancing. The naked toddler streaking through the house snorting with laughter. The pre-bed snuggles (minus the falling mugs).

It’s the same with my life – I am trying to remember the days that go right instead of the days when everything seems to go wrong, the days when I manage to fit most of it in – work, family, love, a nutritious meal (extra points if home-cooked), exercise, some me-time, some couple time. Not all, but most of it, and I fall into bed a very tired but happy woman. Life is made up of all of these moments, and I want mine to be mostly lovely moments with the very slightest sprinkling of the cranky, messy, sleep-deprived times just to keep me honest – and hopefully, very few falling mugs.