Hello my gorgeous, awesome, and totally put-together Full Time, All the Time readers.  It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I hope you haven’t forgotten about me while the fabulous Miss Britt held down the fort here.  I’ve been on an unexpected blogging hiatus.  I wish that I had witty reasons for my short-term leave of absence, but the truth is that life smacked in the face.  Then the gut.  Then push me down and kicked me some more.

In other words, I suffered through my first Summer Break as a working mom. Then right when I felt like I was getting it all in control, life sucker-punched me in the face with Kindergarten.

When my son finished preschool in June, we decided (and by “we” I mean, I thought I had the best idea ever) to let our son have a real summer.  We spent lots of time at the pool.  I spent countless hours shuttling between home and a morning-only summer camp.  We played outside with our neighbors.  Saw nearly every PG or G movie in the theaters. And my son finally found bravery to ride his bike without training wheels.  It was fantastic.

I also spent hours upon hours working late into the night to make up for the lost hours during the day. 
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You know what my favorite thing about summer is?

The dramatic reduction in working mom guilt.

I mean, OK, I still feel bad because my kids spend their summer at daycare programs instead of running the neighborhood with their friends.  And, yes, I wish I had more time to take them to the pool and the beach and on family vacations.  But with the help of family, friends, camps and weekends, my kids get plenty of fun and relaxation in between June and August.

But school is just around the corner now (and has started for many of you), and it’s only a matter of time before I’m once again asking myself, “am I the only mom who works?!?”

You know the drill.  The letters asking if you’d like to volunteer to be a chaperone for this year’s field trips.  The PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences held at 2 in the afternoon.  The requests for two dozen cookies sent home the night before two dozen cookies are needed.

And when I say “I have to work”, I feel like what’s heard is “I care more about my job than my children.”

Of course, that’s not true.  In fact, most of the women I know who work do so, in part, because of all the things they want to provide for their children.  Things like food and shelter, for example.

Moving away from a small town where I knew everyone helped to assauge a lot of the guilt I felt about not being able to be the Home Room Mom (whatever that is).  It’s a lot easier to focus on the realities of what’s important to your family when you don’t know the people you imagine to be juding you.  Once I got the Guilt Over Things I Am Probably Making Up In My Head out of the way, it became a lot easier to focus on realistic ways that I, as a mother who works full time, can be involved in my children’s education.

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The recent post about the benefits to children of working moms and the subsequent “Why are we still talking about this?” post have sparked quite a bit of discussion - both among the readers here and in my own head.

What?  You have discussions inside your own head, too, right?

One of the common themes that kept coming up was confidence.  Well, that and doubt - which I suppose is the opposite of confidence.

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I knew we were poor when I was growing up.

I knew the car we drove was beyond used.  I knew when the food I ate had come from a food bank.  I knew that we had to buy groceries from a list and that the type of juice we bought was dictated by government regulations.

And I knew better than to ask for things we couldn’t afford.

The reality of our circumstances could not have been concealed with even the most protective parenting.  I don’t, in any way, blame my mother for the fact that I knew more about money than most kids.  But at the same time, I’d always hoped to be able to protect my own children from that level of awareness.

Unfortunately, this sucktastic economy has put a swift end to those plans.

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Confession: I love business travel.  Now, I’m lucky that my need to travel for business is more rare (once or twice a quarter) and that nowadays it only requires a three hour drive.  But even when I traveled to lame places or had three hour layovers, I loved it.  And I didn’t feel guilty about it at all.

When I am traveling on company business, I’m not a mommy.  I am Robyn.  I am a highly-respected colleague.  I am a contributor to a team.  I am a problem-solver, a solution provider, and a subject matter expert. I feel like I’m Super-Woman instead of Super-Mom.  

The “Mom” in me is put on the shelf for a few days.  I don’t have to juggle. I don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner. I don’t have to wipe any butts.  Business travel is a luxurious break from my day-to-day reality.

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Boy, do we women love to talk about how we’re different.

And it takes about 30 seconds for those conversations to jump from “different” to “better” and “worse” and “harder” and “easier”.

The most recent example I’ve seen of this phenomenon is between the work-at-home-moms and the work-outside-the-home-moms.  Or the WAHMs vs WOHMs throwdown, as parental acronym experts call it.

For those of you who do not have to keep up with internet drama topical discussions on working mothers for the sake of a job, let me bring you up to speed.

Mother who works outside the home says working outside the home is different than working at home.  Possibly even harder.

Mother who works at home says working inside the home is real work, too.  Possibly even harder.

And mothers everywhere, once again, line up to take sides.

There.  You’re caught up.  Now, here’s my two cents.

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I recently had the conversation with my boss about potentially going part-time.  With my son starting kindergarten in August, I’ve felt the overwhelming need to be at home.  It surely isn’t a desire to be a SAHM; I love and I need to work.  But there’s been this all-consuming feeling that I need to be home at least part-time. 

There are two people on our team that work part-time, so I know that my boss is open to the idea.  In fact, she herself has worked part-time in the past.  After the birth of her first daughter, she came back from maternity leave working three days a week and slowly moved back up to full-time.  She understands the need to work less hours.  But she also offered a very strong opinion on what it would do to my career.

Essentially, if I went part-time I would be giving up any and all opportunities to advance. 

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I’ve talked about my need to relax here before.  You can’t read a website or a book about women without stumbling on at least one mention of getting some “me” time, or remembering to “take care of yourself”.

We’re reminded over and over again that the best thing we can do for the people who count on us is to take time to nurture ourselves.  Getting away, it seems, if only for the time it takes to enjoy a nice hot bath, is essential to our mental health.

My husband doesn’t get it.

He supports it.  He knows the need exists for me.  He is fully aware of the collateral damage that will result in me not taking care of myself.  But he doesn’t really get it.

Or rather, he doesn’t seem to need it for himself.

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Ever since my son was born, I’ve fought hard to break working mom myths.  I worked harder than ever to avoid the mommy-track by keeping focused at work.  Then at home, I tried to become “Mother of the Year” by making every meal, baking birthday cupcakes from scratch, and keeping a tidy home (alright, I utterly failed on that last one). 

After suffering from balance burnout last year, I’ve started making some changes in my life.  One of those was to stop focusing on the stuff that I’m not doing (and stop feeling guilty about it) and to start thinking positive about the stuff that I do accomplish. 

The Upside to Being a Working Mom

• Since my spouse and I both work, we have “double coverage” for our son’s health insurance.  That  means no out of pocket costs for any trips to the doctor. 
• My son barely watches any TV and has an active imagination, thanks in part, to a play-based preschool that he attend during the day while I work. 

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If there was any lesson to be learned in 2008, it was learning that balance is bunk for a working mom.  I like to think that I had it all together… but on any given day something was neglected in order for me to get my job done.  That job includes being an employee, a mom, a wife, and all those other roles that I wear like friend, daughter, blogger, writer, short-order cook, vacation scheduler, play-date organizer, and bill-payer. 

I’m still learning that juggling almost always means putting down a ball or two in order to protect the other balls I’m juggling.  I’ve learned the power of saying no - both in work and in my personal life - mainly from the consequences of always saying yes.  After getting extremely sick in during November, I realized that I was slowly killing myself by trying to DO IT ALL.  I had gained weight, resented obligations, and was generally unhappy.  With myself.   I certainly couldn’t blame others for the commitments I made to them. 

Something has to change.  And I am the only one who can change it.

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