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This is a tale of a female entrepreneur who used to have an American Express card but lost it in the chaos of the Internet bubble bursting and a breakup with a long term boyfriend.

Dear American Express,

I would like an American Express card, please.

Why, you ask?

Because I’m a successful entrepreneur with a fast-growing company in the emerging tech space.

Because I have regular travel expenses each month that I pay off the following month.

Because I love what I see American Express doing with the Open initiative for small businesses.

Because I love what I see American Express doing with cause-related initiatives.

Because I love the perks of having an AmEx card (Do you still do that extra protection for members when they rent cars? I used to love that.)

Because I love the prestige that having an AmEx card brings. Call me superficial, but it really is a status symbol to flash your AmEx (don’t leave home without it, and all that).

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Maintaining a close and happy relationship is a goal of most married couples. When other aspects of our life make us less than happy, that attitude can spill over into our closest relationships. Problogger, Gina Blitstein, explores the impact of happiness at work upon happiness in your marriage.

Most of us would agree in the theory that happiness begets happiness, right? Well, it seems that when it comes to career happiness and marital happiness, the correlation is more than speculation - it’s a fact.

In the results of a National Institute of Health study, the “Early Years of Marriage Project,” Terri Orbuch, PhD, has discovered a positive correlation between happiness in one’s career and happiness in one’s marriage. As project director of this, the longest-running study of married couples ever conducted, Dr. Orbuch has studied what makes marriages happy - and what breaks them apart - since 1986.

The conclusion of this landmark study is that those couples who include one another in every aspect of their lives - including their work - tend to have stronger, more cohesive relationships which are more likely to withstand the challenges that arise within the lives of married couples. It appears that because work is such an integral part of our lives, to avoid discussing it with our spouse is paramount to keeping secrets - or at the very least - to keeping our spouse at arm’s length. While it may not always be the most enjoyable topic, discussions about our work can foster deeper understanding, trust and commitment between spouses. Because work takes up such a large portion of our daily lives, talking to our spouse about our accomplishments and challenges in the workplace proves to be the ultimate act of intimate sharing - a true bonding experience. And couples who feel this degree of intellectual and emotional closeness are simply happier together.
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Traci Bisson is a businesswoman with two sons. In 2008 she founded The Mom Entrepreneur, a company that provides networking, support and resources for entrepreneurial moms. Pro-blogger, Gina Blitstein, recently interviewed Traci to discover how a lady who is so adept at helping other moms in business copes with her own life as a mom entrepreneur.

While Traci is somewhat of an unintentional entrepreneur, once she made the leap, she has fearlessly positioned herself as a beacon of hope and assistance for her fellow mom entrepreneurs. On behalf of Work It, Mom, I asked Traci about how she succeeds at “taking her own advice” in balancing both these challenging roles: motherhood and businesswoman.

WIM: What factors inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
TB: I was inspired to become an entrepreneur by watching three companies that I worked for go out of business. Of course I was scared about the risks involved, but I decided there would be more security for me and my family if I started my own business. Shortly thereafter the events of 9-11 unfolded and I decided life was too short. I needed to focus on quality of life, which I gained by becoming a mom entrepreneur.

WIM: How did your family react when you decided to become an entrepreneur?
TB: There was not much advanced warning. After the third company I worked for showed signs of going out of business; I gave my notice. Their policy was same day so I packed up my desk and headed home. At home, I asked my husband if he would take the box out of the trunk. That is when he learned about my decision. My husband has a lot of faith with me and has supported me from day one.
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We’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Laura Yecies, CEO of SugarSync, several times about the online backup, storage and syncing application. In those conversations, the topics of working moms, kids and work/life balance came up so we posed some more personal questions to Yecies. Here’s an excerpt of her bio on CrunchBase followed by our interview.

Chief Executive Officer at Sharpcast Inc. (makers of the award-winning SugarSync online data back-up and storage, syncing and file sharing service), is a consumer software and Internet services industry veteran with nearly two decades of experience leading top consumer brands such as ZoneAlarm, Yahoo and Netscape.

Yecies received her M.B.A. from Harvard, plus an M.S.F.S. from Georgetown School of Foreign Service where she graduated with honors in International Business Diplomacy. She received her A.B. Magna Cum Laude in Government from Dartmouth and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She has been on staff as a lecturer for International Marketing at Santa Clara University, and serves on the Board of several community non-profit organizations. She has lived in Brazil, Venezuela, England and France and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and French.

Q: What do you “do for a living and how much time do you devote to your work?”

Yecies: I’m the CEO of an exciting Silicon Valley startup that’s right in the middle of a hot new market. That means I’m working almost all the time. But the sacrifice could have major benefits for my family in the long run, so they understand. Communication is singularly the most important aspect of my job as a wife and mother during this crazy time. Even though I’m “online” a lot in the evening, we try to always have dinner together as a family and I set aside time each week to spend alone with each member of the family and in the case of my kids to go to their school events, sports games and concerts.
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I just saw an excellent, riveting movie - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - where a woman was abused and took control of the situations and avenged the crimes against her. I was blown away. First, I haven’t seen a movie in a very long time where the woman is not only not the perpetual victim but is also powerful enough and skilled enough to overtake her attackers or abusers without hesitation or apology. The last movie I recall seeing this kind of empowerment of a woman was Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis, and that character is weak in comparison to the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Seeing a woman in power - even considering the violence involved in taking that power and asserting that power - was pretty exhilarating. But is revenge a good thing? And if it is a bad thing, why does it feel so good?

I’ve blogged about my own difficult business situation with a business partner/boyfriend who controlled everything including me. I felt disempowered and while I never thought of exacting revenge after I finally extricated myself from the situation, looking back I am so frustrated by being stripped of my confidence during that time.
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I am a female entrepreneur with a tech company, a working mom with a 3-year-old daughter, and I try to instill good feminist values in my little girl. I tell her all the time that she can be anything she wants to be when she grows up. How she got it into her head that she couldn’t be a doctor is beyond me.

My 3-year-old loves playing doctor with her dolls and her stuffed animals so for Christmas I bought her the closest thing to a doctor’s kit that I could find in our small community - a Melissa and Doug’s veterinarian kit.

“You be the patient, mommy, and I’ll be the nurse,” she told me recently.

“Why not be the doctor, baby?” I asked.

She laughed at me as if to say “Crazy Mommy.”

Then she said, “Girls can’t be doctors, Mommy. Only boys can be doctors.”

Long pause. Mini internal freak out.

“Honey, girls can be doctors, too,” I assured her.

“Oh no, mommy, they can’t. Girls can only be nurses,” she replied.

“Sweetie, boys can be nurses, and girls can be doctors,” I explained.

She laughed and laughed. “You’re funny, Mommy!”

Where did I go wrong?!?

After a few more exchanges, I realized that I could not convince my little girl that she, indeed, could be a doctor if she wanted to be one.

Once the initial shock of my obvious failure as a feminist mom wore off, my next thought was who can I blame? Who told my little girl that she couldn’t be a doctor and that her only option was nurse. I was ready to march right up to them, get in their face, and tell them they better never, ever tell my daughter she can’t be a doctor if she damn well pleases.

Can I Blame the Princesses?

I have yet to figure out who told her girls could not be doctors, but then I began to scrutinize the books and DVDs on the bookshelf. Somewhere in the dozens upon dozens of books and movies, there had to be some images of women in non-traditional roles, right?

Wrong.

I found representations of women as mommies, teachers, camp counselors, princesses, queens, fairy godmothers, witches. No doctors, no travelers and adventurers (unless Dora counts), no female construction workers or female truck drivers or female scientists or female heads of Internet companies. Okay, she’s only three, however, I was floored to realize that the majority of female characters in the media she is consuming are animals and mostly mother bears and mother seals and mother ducks, etc.

I know there are feminist fairy tales, but what are some of the other books out there for a smart little girl who should believe she can be anything?

What are the books you’re reading to your kids to let them know they can be anything?

By Guest Blogger, Country-Fried Mama

This week, Guest Blogger, Country-Fried Mama, discusses the challenge of finding strong and capable role models for her young daughter. Country-Fried Mama is a transplanted Yankee raising two girls in the land of college football, sweet tea, and refined manners. Visit her blog at www.countryfriedmama.com and follow her on Twitter @countryfried.

As a recent transplant to the deep, deep, DEEP South, there are plenty of cultural norms in my new home which I am still struggling to adopt. The local affection for auto racing is one of them. A few years ago, I probably could have named one or two NASCAR drivers if pressed. I couldn’t have identified a single competitor in the Indycar Series.

My knowledge of auto racing remains pretty much nonexistent. I like driving around; I just don’t enjoy watching someone else do it on television. But even I now find it virtually impossible to avoid knowing who Danica Patrick is. She wasn’t the first woman to drive in an Indycar race, but in 2008, she became the first woman to win one. And this year, she’s moving to NASCAR, a much more exclusive boys club where she has an opportunity to use her fame and skill to open the door wider for more women drivers and appeal to a broader market of fans.

But the way she portrays herself off the track could blow it for her and for the little girls who might otherwise choose her as a role model.

If you do a Google image search on Danica Patrick, there are few pictures of her actually racing. You might see her posed near a car, but chances are good that she is nearly naked and sprawled on the hood rather than showing off her abilities behind the wheel.

I imagine Danica Patrick’s parents must have taught her that girls can do anything, even the stuff that seems reserved for the boys. My husband and I are on a mission to illustrate that idea to our nearly four-year-old daughter. It hasn’t been easy. We can tell Miss D. in six different ways that women have power, but the typical princess story tells her otherwise, and she loves princesses.

So my husband was pretty excited about sitting down with Miss D. recently to watch Danica in an ARCA stock car race. Here was a princess we could support, a woman literally keeping pace with the men in a rough environment. Our daughter stood in the living room wearing her plastic tiara and Cinderella shoes and cheered for Danica.

Then the network cut to commercial, and we scrambled to change the channel.

Clearly, our knowledge of Danica was new and narrow. We didn’t realize she’s the number-one “spokesgirl” for GoDaddy.com, which appears to subscribe to the Hooters philosophy of marketing.

To Danica’s credit, she is not stripping off her clothes to reveal skimpy tank tops and short shorts in these commercials; she is merely starring beside women who do. But as it turns out, the commercials we saw that day were tame in comparison to other pieces of her media portfolio.

I don’t fault Danica for going out and getting herself a paycheck. Good for her. She was one of a tiny number of women to break through a glass ceiling that was probably harder to crack than the paved track of a banked turn. There should be rewards for that kind of achievement.

But along with those rewards comes responsibility. When Danica shed her anonymity, she gained influence with an impressionable audience. When Miss D. sees Danica celebrated on TV, does she see a competitive, talented professional driver? Or does she hear a woman saying, “It’s not what you can do; it’s how you look while doing it?”

I was only mildly interested in the ascension of Danica Patrick. No matter how she chose to portray herself, it was unlikely I would ever have become the kind of committed fan who buys an RV and spends a week tailgating at Talladega.

However, Danica might have been a great example to my daughter that girls can do anything boys can do, including driving dangerously fast around and around a racetrack, if that’s how they find their joy. Had Danica chosen to skip exposing herself in magazines like FHM and Sports Illustrated in favor of highlighting her talent, I might have felt better about encouraging my daughter to cheer her on in front of the TV.

No matter where Danica finishes in her races this season, though, she lost us as potential fans.

How do you inspire your daughters to go for their dreams? How do you utilize - or discourage - the influence role models can exert over them?

What is it like being an entrepreneur mom in a family business? Pro-blogger, Gina Blitstein, recently interviewed Shane Evans, founder of Massage Heights, a massage therapy company sporting nearly 60 locations around the U.S. How does Shane manage her life and relationships while working side by side, day in and day out with her husband, brother and children? Shane provided the answers to these questions and much more in this interview on behalf of Work It, Mom!

Since launching Massage Heights in 2004, this energetic mother of three has managed to create a sense of graceful balance between her life and work. Here’s what Shane had to say when I asked her about her life as an entrepreneur mom:

WIM: What did you do for a living before you decided to start Massage Heights?
SE: I’ve held various marketing and medical sales positions. Before I started Massage Heights, I held a marketing position for a property management company in Chicago.

WIM: What factors made you first consider going into business for yourself?
SE:* My husband worked for a national fitness chain for 14 years and we were constantly moving from one city to the next.

• Our roots are in Texas and after we moved back to San Antonio from Chicago, we were pretty well established, we had our three children, and new home, and we didn’t want to give up what we had for my husband to make a lateral move at his company.
• I’ve always been a massage connoisseur, and after having a few bad experiences of paying $150 for just mediocre service, or having my massage cut short, I recognized the need for affordable, convenient, professional massage therapy
• My parents and brothers always had their own businesses; I’ve always been around entrepreneurs and knew that one day I wanted a business of my own, but I needed it to be the right time and concept

Working with family presents many blessings as well as challenges…
WIM: What are the best things about working with family?
SE:

• Trust – we have a level of trust that I simply can’t achieve with anyone else
• A new relationship/perspective – when you work with family, you have the benefit of also building a professional relationship with a person that is so important to you; it gives you different respect level for that person and even strengthens your personal relationship.
• Because we are such a close family, we make a very strong leadership team, something that allows us attract high quality employees and business partners

WIM: What are the biggest challenges when working with family?
SE:

• It is natural to be very comfortable with family – so its easy to react to a situation in a much more passionate or unrestrained manner when compared to how you’d react to an employee or employer.
• Define responsibilities – especially when starting the business, it is difficult to define your separate and specific roles, identify your strengths and weaknesses

WIM: How do you maintain professionalism in the workplace when working with family?
SE: We respect each other, and our employees in the workplace – just as if any company executives had a strong disagreement, they would address them behinds closed doors. We keep any family/personal issues out of the workplace, because again, you can react very passionately b/c you are so comfortable with family.

WIM: How do you keep business issues out of family life?
SE: This is very difficult and it’s hard to have a family dinner without talking about some aspect of work, but as now that our business is established and we’ve built a strong foundation, the work talks becomes minimal at home. When you are first starting out, you don’t have much or an option to live and breathe your business.

WIM: When work and personal life collide, how do you maintain balance?
SE: I’ve managed to find a healthier balance over time; I make sure I set aside some time that is just devoted to the kids. I never miss a single sport event or school function even if there is a lot of work to be done.

WIM: How do you involve your children in the running of Massage Heights?
SE: When she was 15, our oldest daughter worked in summer helping us w/ data entry and answering phones at our corporate Massage Heights retreat location.

WIM: What do your children learn from having a mom who is an entrepreneur?
SE: I think they’ve seen that hard work does pay off; they see the freedom that business ownership provides, but they also see that you must work hard to achieve the American Dream.

Your business is the “business” of pampering others.
WIM: How do others pamper you?
SE:

• For as long as I can remember, my husband brings a cup of coffee to me in bed each morning. This is the only way I will wake up. If he is traveling, he will set up the coffee pit on my night stand and set it to brew in the morning so it’s right in reach!
• I can also say that my staff really caters to my needs. They are always asking if there is something they can help out with, or do for me personally just to make my life easier.

WIM: How do you pamper yourself?
SE:

• Massage, of course! I also sleep in when you can and when I have a less hectic weekend, I like to relax around the house.
• I take advantage of travel – since I’m not with my kids, I have more time to just relax in the hotel room and I often use spa services if they are available

WIM: When you can’t do it all, is it easy or difficult for you to delegate?
SE: Always been a bit of a control freak, used to be hard to delegate, and hiring qualified people

WIM: To whom is it hard to delegate?
SE: New employees with whom I haven’t yet built a strong trust.

WIM: To whom is it easier to delegate?
SE: I have to say that as a bit of a “control freak” it has been tough to delegate important tasks to other people. But of course the staff that has proven themselves and gained my trust do take on more responsibility.

WIM: What do you know about yourself now that you didn’t know before you became an entrepreneur?
SE: I am stronger than I ever thought I was, capable of a lot more than I ever recognized.

WIM: In your opinion, is everyone cut out to be an entrepreneur? What qualities are most beneficial to an entrepreneur?
SE:

• No, not everyone is cut out.
• Drive and ambition to do what it takes to have some control over your future
  You need to be able to envision past tomorrow, think big, always improve on your business and your operating systems
• Recognize that you can’t do it all and be able to hire the right people, bring on the right business partners who can help you achieve your goals

WIM: What will be your legacy - as a mom, as a business person, as a human being?
SE:

• Mom: kids will remember that regardless of work load, that I loved them, was there for them, they weren’t overlooked
• Business Person: that I led by example, that I was passion about what I did, dedicated to people who have entrusted me with their future, employees, franchise owners

Working with family could complicate Shane’s business and her personal relationships but she has embraced this element, making it work in everyone’s favor. She stands as a strong example of how the different components of life can be integrated into a successful business scenario. The key is to keep in mind the the emotional elements and personal needs of everyone concerned. When everyone is taken into consideration, the business needn’t take presidence over family and the needs of the family needn’t interfere with those of the business.

Could you work with family in your business?

Pro-blogger, Gina Blitstein, recently interviewed entrepreneur mom, Lucinda Cross, founder of Corporate Mom DropOuts. As the name implies, Corporate Mom DropOuts supports women who have left the corporate world to start an at-home business while managing their families needs. Lucinda also runs a blog and radio show, and is the author of the book, Corporate Mom DropOuts.

Lucinda Cross says that she’s made it her life’s mission to uplift, inspire and change people’s lives. She likes to call herself a catalyst for motivation, passion and high energy and works with small business owners supporting them to work on their business and not in their business. Cross also trains and coaches women who are interested in learning how to work from home, take charge and create the life they love.

On behalf of Work It, Mom, I asked this dynamic lady some questions about her life as she gracefully bears the responsibilities of being a mother and an entrepreneur.

WIM: What factors inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
LC: My biggest inspiration is my children. I have two little ones and the fact that I was only spending 45 min a day with my kids after I came home from work was beginning to put a strain on the relationship I had with them.

WIM: How did your family react when you decided to become an entrepreneur?
LC: My spouse was not in agreement and we ended up in a separation but the kids absolutely loved it and of course my family thought I went crazy…

WIM: What is the most gratifying part of being an entrepreneur?
LC: Being able to live my life and use my creativity to create revenue. I am my own boss and it feels good to do what I want when I want and how I want.

WIM: What is the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur?
LC: Charging what I am worth. It was hard to adopt a sellers mindset when it came to pricing my products and services because I love what I do so much that I would give it away for low value. This was the most challenging part of my business setting my rates and sticking to it.

WIM: How does the life of an entrepreneur mom differ from that of other working moms?
LC: There is no hustle and bustle in my life as an entrepreneur mom. I don’t have to negotiate time with my kids or time with myself versus time on the job. My health is better physically and mentally. Less coffee, good meals throughout the day versus munching on a grab and go meal. Mentally I am not aggravated any more or exhausted all the time. I can breathe, follow my workout plan, nutrition plan, include meditation and prayer in my day and most of all my kids get to see me smile and play with them more often.

WIM: How do you keep yourself inspired to move forward with your business each and every day?
LC: I love what I do, I love inspiring and impacting other women and moms lives by helping them attain a lifestyle mompreneur business as well. I look forward to reaching out and connecting with fabulous women doing fabulous things.

WIM: Are you more likely to combine family time and business time or draw a sharp distinction between the two?
LC: There is a line I draw between family time and business time. I have business hours posted in my office space; I set my working hours according to their schedule. I have incorporated a system called the “no trespassing zone” which let’s my kids know that they cannot enter the office space or interrupt during the time when my orange cones are around. “No toys in the area, no noise in the area and no screaming mommy in the area.”

WIM: What do your children learn from having an entrepreneur for a mom?
LC: My kids are so excited about my business and I involve them in the process. They have already started to create little side businesses for themselves. They want to work for themselves and they are also learning that their creativity can make them money and make them happy. They watch every move I make and they are proud to say to their friends that their mom works from home. They have confidence to think out loud know. I see the change and the confidence.

WIM: How are you at delegating?
LC: I have a team of virtual assistants which I call my trusted advisors. I delegate most of the things that take my attention away from what I am good at. As a former virtual assistant and virtual assistant coach I understand the value of delegating and I do it in order to keep my business up and running and in order. I delegate my blog updates, research, media outreach, follow up calls. I delegate most of my income generating task.

WIM: How are you at managing “me time.”
LC: I create focus days and Wednesday is my “me time” day to do whatever I want to do, nap all day, hair salon, massage, food shopping, book store, and library. I love Staples so I like to go there and just browse and buy.

WIM: How does the business you are in help other moms?
LC: My business helps other moms learn “where” to start and “how” to start her own company to gain the freedom she desires, build better businesses, learn techniques that can balance both business and home. My business provides other moms with the learning tools to succeed such as webinars, tele-seminars, workshops and most of all coaching and mentoring.

WIM: What is your proudest professional achievement?
LC: Self publishing my book Corporate Mom Dropouts and an interview on ABC NEWS as the Mompreneur.

WIM: What is your proudest personal achievement?
LC: My proudest personal achievement is publishing my book Corporate Mom Dropouts

Lucinda firmly believes that there is a strong similarity between giving birth to a child and giving birth to a business, which both include “a lot of love, dedication, commitment, hard work – and occasional frustrations.” In accordance with that belief, Lucinda has partnered with Traci Bisson, founder of The Mom Entrepreneur for the launch of a contest called, The Business Baby Shower. The contest will celebrate and create awareness of companies that are run by mothers.

Even though raising a family while running your business is fraught with challenges, Lucinda shows that entrepreneur moms likewise enjoy unique benefits and a very special sense of accomplishment. She is proof positive that with ambition and diligence, you can drop out of the corporate rat race and create a life you’ll love in business.

Could you leave the corporate world behind to strike out on your own in business?

What’s the use of planning? It seems like every time you plan for something, Murphy’s Law kicks in and anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Case in point:

I got back from a conference last week and met up with my family for my husband’s business trip. The plan was that our 3-year-old would be with a babysitter every day for the week while I met with clients and got caught up with my work. Plus I’d get the chance to see friends and arrange play dates so my daughter could see her friends.

Enter good old Murphy.

On Sunday night, my little one came down with a sore throat with a barking cough and fever. Plus my husband’s chronic cough was getting worse. So on Monday, I set up doctors appointments for both of them. When I learned that our daughter had The Croup, I had to put the babysitter on hold.

Suddenly what was going to be an uber-productive week for me turned into 24/7 mommydom.

I began sending out messages to clients to rearrange or postpone calls and meetings even before we checked into our hotel. I was already drowning in work, however, could no longer see the life preserver of a babysitter in my sights. Instead of having seven uninterrupted hours of work every day for a week, I was couped up in a hotel room with Nickelodeon playing in the background, sequestering myself in the hotel bathroom during really important calls that I felt I couldn’t cancel or postpone.

Putting a 3-year-old and a working mom in a hotel room for hours on end is a recipe for disaster. Eventually, she began deliberately doing anything at all to get my attention, even things that she knew would annoy me like hanging on my arm if I tried to type on my computer and banging on the bathroom door when I tried to get on a call.

Our nights were filled with hacking coughs which kept waking us all up so sleep deprivation was added to the general cabin fever and malaise. I finally went to the doctor myself because I was feeling terrible.

“You’re exhausted,” he said. Really?

I asked him if he could write me a prescription for a trip to Hawaii. Alone. He laughed. I was dead serious.

By Thursday, I was cross-eyed with frustration and practically catatonic from exhaustion plus I had a small speaking gig that day. I had no other recourse than to bring my daughter with me. And it was then that she announced to me that resistance was futile.

“I don’t think I’m going to be on my best behavior, Mommy,” she told me with a glint in her eye and smirk on her lips. And she proceeded to prove herself with carefully orchestrated bad behavior. How was I going to get through my presentation?

Luckily, my husband called moments before I was going to speak to say he was on his way to help out during his lunch break. Right before he arrived, I started my presentation only to have my daughter walk up to me with one of her dolls asking me to dress the doll.

“I will in a moment, honey. Mommy’s speaking.”

“Dress Snow White, Mommy!” she insisted. I proceeded to dress tiny princess dolls while discussing blogging for business. I was already to far gone over the edge to think of a logical solution other than biting my tongue until my husband arrived.

That afternoon, our daughter’s cough changed from a bark to a horrible sound full and thick with gunk. I brought her to her pediatrician again and it turned out that she had developed RSV. We headed back to the hotel with a nebulizer and dashed hopes that she was no longer contagious. The hope of a babysitter on Friday was gone. I had a sick child, and I was her mommy and that was that.

Looking back at the past week, still exhausted and drained from it all, I don’t know why I didn’t just shut down the work side of my life and devote my entire time and energy and attention to my daughter. I was so entrenched in work mode, panicked that I would fall even further behind on deadlines or frustrate my team or let a client down that I couldn’t shift into full mommy mode.

Then I think of how “lucky” my husband is because he is so entrenched in old societal stereotypes that the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker and mommy that he gets to go to work - or in this case, a training conference - and not think twice about leaving me to be with our daughter while she’s sick, even if it means that I missed a full week of work. Somehow, because I don’t go into an office and don’t have a “boss” since I own my own company, my work just isn’t really work in his mind. I know he felt bad about the situation to a certain extent but not bad enough to miss a day of training so I could get something done with my job.

I’m convinced yet again that there is no such thing as work/life balance. I have often called it a “juggle” rather than a “balance,” but in this case, I dropped all of the balls.

What would YOU have done in this situation?