At 17 years old, I decided I wasn’t going to get married or have kids.
I remember exactly where I was- second row, high-school auditorium, listening to an assembly featuring a female ambassador to somewhere, who earnestly imparted that we as women could have it all, including high-powered careers and wonderful relationships with our families.
The thing is, I knew how to count to 24. “There is no way,” I thought, “that you can do all of that in 24 hours.” And because I wanted to be great at whatever I did, I said to myself that fateful day that I would focus on my career and not worry about the rest of it. “But you’d be such a good mom,” my own mother would say. In response, again and again, I proclaimed work as my singular focus.
Seven years later, I remained locked in on building a career, first in teaching and then in finance. I did meet the love of my life, but continued to kick my own butt as my career moved into fundraising. We discussed kids- I remained con, he was super pro. We were willing to see where life took us, and we got married. Soon after, I took a demanding leadership role helping to scale a non-profit, remaining as committed as ever to my work.
A few years later, a magical woman facilitated a meaningful diversity and inclusion training for the senior leadership team of our organization. And during a conversation that examined our identities and the biases we’d internalized, I grew increasingly emotional. I realized that I had unknowingly accepted an entrenched and inequitable premise- that I as a woman had to be wholly dedicated to my career and completely dedicated to my family if I was going to be “successful.” At 17, I had internalized that the game was rigged, so I may as well not play. All the while, I had told myself that I’d made a bold and “feminist” choice of prioritizing my career, when I had really given in to thousands of years of other people’s opinions about what I should do with my one, precious life.
I wanted to be successful in this system that, candidly, doesn’t value parenthood as much as it values professional success. And I was letting this dictate my story.
In retrospect, this training was the beginning of a new chapter in my story. I’m so grateful for my then-employer, which offered me the chance to earnestly explore my identities and story. I’m forever grateful to our facilitator for holding space for me when I walked up to her with tears in my eyes. I’m grateful that somehow my husband knew I’d come around and that we have one of the cutest kids on the planet.
And I’m grateful my story doesn’t end here. Turns out, my mom was right. I am a great mom, and I have a fulfilling career. Turns out I was right, too- working parenthood in the United States is, in many ways, unnecessarily challenging. We’re making progress changing systems that weren’t set up with parents in mind, but there is so much more to do. That’s why I’m using my story and experience and talents to support working parents and their companies in figuring out a better way.
Today, on International Women’s Day, we want to know your story. What have you experienced that has shaped who you are (what you believe, value, have done, and want in the future)? And knowing that you have total control of the narrative you write, what story will you tell for your future and for our collective future?
