From the heart-wrenching return to work after maternity leave to the lack of sleep to the school obligations to competing with men and women who do not have children, being a working mother is hard. But there is a path, and an important one. Working mothers are a critical piece to changing the narrative of the women in leadership gap.
Welcome. Thank you for visiting. In this initial launch phase of momiculture, your support and interest mean so much.
I should probably start by sharing with you that I am not a writer, nor a creative. In fact, I’ve spent the bulk of my career in finance. My husband is actually the creative in my family. So why am I writing this?
6 years ago, on my first day back from my first maternity leave, I was standing in the parking garage, waiting for the elevator to bring me down to the lobby, fighting back tears (by the way, I am almost always a very even-keeled, relatively unemotional person so this was not typical), heart racing, exhausted and thinking, maybe for the first time ever in my life, “I don’t know if I can do this.” My heart was ripped out of my chest thinking of my baby boy that I had left a mere 30 minutes ago. 3 months prior I had walked out of the building with my career in an upswing, my possibilities endless. That day I walked back into the building wondering if I’d ever find “the right path”.
Despite my very logical, very driven and very focused mind that served me well throughout my career, I was completely shell shocked and was very quickly faced with the seemingly impossible, heart breaking task of nurturing my child while also nurturing my career. I kept saying to myself… THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY.
Enter momiculture.
“When a flower does not bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” Alexander Dan Heijer
momiculture is my dream to create a community that empowers working mothers to be their own brightest bloom. Horticulturists apply knowledge, skills and technologies to cultivate beautiful greenery. momiculture-ists apply the same to cultivate consummate working mothers. I hope you will be a momiculture-ist.
Side note – this is not my “easy out” or a pet project. This is something I take seriously. I have a high powered job and my family depends on my income. But, it’s not enough for me to just get a paycheck. Life is too short and I want to make an impact.
Disclaimers – we are new, we are learning, we want you to help inform how we get this right.
So, yes, I’m writing this to get you to opt into our email distribution list, visit our website, sign-up for one of our services (coming soon), follow us on social media. But I also write this because it is incredibly important and we need to do something to help working mothers navigate the impossible tug-of-war that is our lives. We owe it to ourselves (who we almost always ignore), to our children (who are watching us), to our partners (who miss us) and to our teammates at work (who need us).
You’ll hear from me more, but for now I will leave you with a few statistics that I think speak volumes.
Breastfeeding for 1 year is ~1800 hours. A full time job, after vacation, is ~1900 hours. Yep, breastfeeding really is a second full time job.
2/3 of working mothers say returning from maternity leave is difficult or extremely difficult.
1 in 5 working parents report that they or their partner are considering leaving the workforce to care for childcare; working mothers are almost 50% more likely than their male counterparts to leave their employer in a year’s time due to their “workplace experience” during the pandemic
Gallup studies show that companies with strong female representation in the C-Suite and on the Board have a competitive advantage in metrics like recruitment, retention, and engagement of top talent, as well as in return on equity; Working mothers make up 15% of the total US work force – we must invest in this demographic to enable a “strong female representation” pipeline
Thank you for being here. Please keep coming back. You’ve already planted the first seed...