having it all...

Today I am inspired by a post from my friend Jessi this week in which she fessed up to only talking to a few people about her real hopes and fears.

She writes: “It turns out the more you share with your people, the more they support you, the closer you get, the more understood you feel, the better they feel, maybe they’ve even been there too....And then the burden lessens and you start to feel like you can breathe again. IT’S KIND OF AMAZING, I’m thinking this is gonna be big in 2019.”

The night I read this I was laying horizontal on my couch with my face to the internet. Recovering from a stomach bug, ignoring my family, my inbox and the tornado of a mess that comes with a day in the life of Mike and Mario McGrath. I began typing a comment back to Jessi on her post. It was funny it was heartfelt and it was additive to the conversation. Then I clumsily hit my thumb elsewhere on the screen and couldn’t get back to my response, it was deleted forever.

I spent some time debating wether or not I should try to rewrite the comment and ultimately decided to try my best to redo it and save it to my notes for a blog post. The original copy was much more pithy and to the point but I couldn’t quite recreate it, so here we are, what once was an IG comment is now a full fledged blog post, enjoy:

My commute home on a lot of days is 45 minutes of ‘me time’. I spend it like this: five minutes of trying to come up with a plan for dinner and then dedicate the rest to my favorite podcast, Second Life. A program dedicated to multi hyphenate women who have jumped outside their comfort zone and taken on a new business venture right in the middle of their own personal chaos.

Tuesday night I had finished a call with our China team and was feeling really lethargic. Once in the car I decided it was gonna be a 5 minute dinner night. Frozen fried rice & edamame courtesy my freezer drawer and prepped by chef Trader Joe. I dove into an episode of Second Life featuring Emma Grede, CEO of Good American. After getting thru her ups and downs that eventually led to defining a new space for women’s denim and inclusive sizing she touched on the hot topic of ‘having it all’. She spoke about how as a business owner, mother, wife, etc. etc. etc. she can get stuck comparing herself to other women. Thinking ‘they have it all’ and then once she has conversation with them they will say “yes, but I have not had sex with my husband in seven months.” or “yes but, I have not seen my kids in three weeks.”. Which made Emma realize that yes you can ‘have it all’ but you cannot ‘have it all, all of the time’. Which sounds kind of simple or obvious and honestly something we likely learned in pre school. But as a grown ass woman it is actually really powerful to acknowledge.

I share this because it hits on what Jessi was getting at. Surface level conversations benefit no one. Thru real conversation and dialogue everyone benefits, we find common ground, we ask for help, we get help and we support each other.

I encourage you to go over to Jessi’s post and read the comments and of course to listen to Second Life during your next commute/laundry session/mindless activity and call it ‘me time’.

thanks for reading & sharing & supporting

xx Ly