Speaker 1: Welcome to She Pivots. I'm your host to Emily Tish Sussman.
Speaker 1: One of my goals in starting this podcast is to
Speaker 1: highlight voices and stories of women who went through something
Speaker 1: deeply personal, only to come out of it on the
Speaker 1: other side better than they could have imagined. After launching
Speaker 1: She Pivots last year, it's clear it's not a small group.
Speaker 1: This applies to most women, whether it's a big pivot
Speaker 1: or even just a tiny pivot. What's clear is there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of unpacking to do around pivoting. So
Speaker 1: as we're continuing to build this platform and community through
Speaker 1: new episodes, I wanted to also bring you more stories,
Speaker 1: unfiltered and honest. So I'll be sitting down with more women,
Speaker 1: maybe the occasional man, some of whom have mastered their
Speaker 1: own pivot, some are just starting the pivoting journey. Are
Speaker 1: some just have something to teach us about the deeply
Speaker 1: personal moments of life. So stay tuned for more of
Speaker 1: the candid conversation this season.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 1: This conversation today is probably one of the most substantive
Speaker 1: that I'm going to have on this podcast about what
Speaker 1: it means to pivot and what it means for your
Speaker 1: identity when you're doing all of that, because this is
Speaker 1: the expert in this field as it is evolving right now,
Speaker 1: the founder and I guess principle of mother untitled Neha
Speaker 1: Rush Neha.
Speaker 2: Let me just formally welcome.
Speaker 3: You to she Pivots. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So we were just chatting a little bit about how
Speaker 1: we met, and I'm going to give it to you
Speaker 1: to recount.
Speaker 3: You had just run that fabulous piece for she knows
Speaker 3: that my kids killed my career, and not one but
Speaker 3: like fifty people sent it to me, but to it
Speaker 3: in particular, said like, you two must meet, and I
Speaker 3: feel like we made that happen within thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I had the flip side of it.
Speaker 1: As soon as I wrote the article, people were like,
Speaker 1: but you must have gotten this from Neha, and I
Speaker 1: was like, tell me more about Neha.
Speaker 2: I'd love to meet her. So how did you start it?
Speaker 3: So when I had my first son in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: he was born New Year's Day and it was at
Speaker 3: the height of the Girl Boss era. Leanin had been
Speaker 3: the rallying cry of my business school graduation and yet
Speaker 3: when I was rocking in that chair with him, I
Speaker 3: felt the sense of contentment and belonging that I had
Speaker 3: been looking for. I'm not going to paint that with
Speaker 3: like rose colored lenses and say like I wasn't leaking
Speaker 3: milk and like sleep deprived. But I did find something
Speaker 3: I'd been looking for and lacking in my career to
Speaker 3: that point. And I, you know, spent a decade in advertising.
Speaker 3: I'd just gotten my MBA. The expectations were high on
Speaker 3: my like very linear career track. But I sat at
Speaker 3: that point that I wanted to downshift, and I started
Speaker 3: to come face to face with like all the societal
Speaker 3: stigma that comes with the quote unquote stay at home mother. Right,
Speaker 3: So I started hearing like, ugh, you took a spot
Speaker 3: at Stanford, Like you took that spot just to stay
Speaker 3: at home, and or like what are you going to
Speaker 3: do all day? All of the perceptions that you assume
Speaker 3: with choosing to focus your life on caregiving for a chapter.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, on the opposite like days when I wasn't
Speaker 3: still consulting because I initially downshifted, I was meeting all
Speaker 3: these incredible women who were the women you assume like
Speaker 3: they were in New York. They'd built huge, wonderful, meaningful careers,
Speaker 3: and we're saying, you know what, I want to take
Speaker 3: a thoughtful pause and make room for family life for
Speaker 3: a moment, or I really trust my career to date,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to start to freelance or consult just
Speaker 3: to build in some more flexibility. And none of it
Speaker 3: matched this caricature that I was being served up of
Speaker 3: the stay at home mom. And I was looking around
Speaker 3: and there was a ton of traditional content around the
Speaker 3: working monther quote unquote, but everything had abandoned the stay
Speaker 3: at home mother in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: But did you did you really feel like there were
Speaker 1: professional women even in twenty sixteen. I'm not talking like
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, but that many years ago that were
Speaker 1: openly saying I'm looking to take some kind of down
Speaker 1: shift for personal reasons.
Speaker 3: Yes, because I didn't feel like I heard that.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was because I was in Washington and in
Speaker 1: politics and you were You didn't exist if you didn't
Speaker 1: work in mean people that worked in different industries that
Speaker 1: live in Washington were like, yes, I was. What did
Speaker 1: my friend referre to himself as he said he was
Speaker 1: like mister cellophane in Chicago like everyone just like looked
Speaker 1: right through Hi because he wasn't important in politics. But
Speaker 1: so I felt like I didn't necessarily hear people acknowledging
Speaker 1: that you did hear it.
Speaker 3: I did, but you had to stop to listen to
Speaker 3: hear it because it was layered with a little bit
Speaker 3: of shame yet a little bit, but it was masked,
Speaker 3: I mean. And by the way, like one of my
Speaker 3: favorite anecdotes is I was sitting at a dinner and
Speaker 3: there was a woman I knew who worked two days
Speaker 3: a week, and I worked two days a week at
Speaker 3: that time, I identified with being on a posit or
Speaker 3: a downshift, and she was like, no, I'm a full
Speaker 3: time working mother. And it was and I was looking
Speaker 3: at her and thinking, we work the exact same amount,
Speaker 3: and we're at home the exact same amount. But there
Speaker 3: was a sort of veil of and I wouldn't say
Speaker 3: that she was intentionally masquading, which you know, her version
Speaker 3: of balance. It was she identified and didn't she identified
Speaker 3: with working out of the home, and she did not
Speaker 3: want identify with any sense of slowing down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear it is that she didn't want to
Speaker 1: lose that like the privilege of that identity, yes, of
Speaker 1: being a working out of home person person but whether
Speaker 1: it was mother or not mother, but like a out
Speaker 1: of home working person, she didn't want to lose the
Speaker 1: privilege of that identity.
Speaker 3: Yes. And so the short answer is there were incredible
Speaker 3: numbers of women who were already making room for family life.
Speaker 3: And what I will tell you also is what I
Speaker 3: was looking at was, if you go back to twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: Pew Research was already saying this generation of women identify
Speaker 3: with motherhood more. There was a rise of flex work
Speaker 3: right like the wing work WRK, the flexible work marketplace,
Speaker 3: it was all on the rise. So I was looking
Speaker 3: at it saying, like, you're going to see an increasing
Speaker 3: population of women who have the access to be able
Speaker 3: to create a career on their own terms, and an
Speaker 3: increasing number of women who want to make rim for
Speaker 3: other priorities for a period of time. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it was the moment in
Speaker 3: time in twenty sixteen was it was this perfect collision
Speaker 3: of like me wanting my own space where I could
Speaker 3: start to string together a collective of women who are
Speaker 3: reshaping the narrative for my own sake to say, like, wait,
Speaker 3: there's like an incredible cohort of women that I belonged to,
Speaker 3: and also feeling like there was a dearth of any
Speaker 3: representation of anything that was beyond the prototypical.
Speaker 1: Yeah that wasn't like the black and white Yes, the
Speaker 1: working not working.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting over the course of doing the interviews and
Speaker 1: doing this show is that I anticipated that two points
Speaker 1: would be common that I would hear as like the
Speaker 1: intervening life event, like the personal thing that changed your perspective.
Speaker 1: I anticipated it being one having kids whenever you had them,
Speaker 1: although I do I definitely don't have exclusively mothers on
Speaker 1: the show, and the other being the pandemic as being
Speaker 1: things that really reshaped people's perspective in their lives.
Speaker 3: And what has surprised us as.
Speaker 1: We go through these interviews is more likely it's actually
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen and the election, the surprise that people felt
Speaker 1: in the election of Donald Trump and what they thought
Speaker 1: that meant for their own identities as women working out
Speaker 1: of home or not, and the country's perception like what
Speaker 1: was acceptable you happened to have had your son in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, which I also did, Was that a factor
Speaker 1: in it for you?
Speaker 2: At all, I've just heard that from so many guests.
Speaker 1: Do you think that, I don't know, change your perspective,
Speaker 1: but added to the perspective that you were as you
Speaker 1: were thinking about your change and identity.
Speaker 3: That's such an interesting part of it. I think that
Speaker 3: now you said that, and I've remembered this picture I
Speaker 3: have of my three best friends from home. So I'm
Speaker 3: really close to my friends from home, and they had
Speaker 3: all come. I was the first to have a child,
Speaker 3: and we have a picture of Bodie I'd brought like
Speaker 3: American flag balloons. We thought we were electing the first female,
Speaker 3: right yeah, And that was what we really believed, sitting
Speaker 3: in life the New York City Echo Chamber, and in
Speaker 3: that moment, I remember feeling the most feminist I'd ever felt.
Speaker 3: And you know so much of Mother entitled When we
Speaker 3: parse around where do the stigmas exist around quote unquote
Speaker 3: stay at home mother, one of them is around if
Speaker 3: you choose this, choose to pause, you are an anti feminist,
Speaker 3: which is obviously like a trope that we want to upend.
Speaker 3: Whereas I was feeling the most connected to women that
Speaker 3: I'd ever felt. And I think that to your point
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen was a feeling of banning to get other,
Speaker 3: wanting to do our part, believing so much so that
Speaker 3: my feminism was not dictated by whether I was working
Speaker 3: out of the home or in the home, but because
Speaker 3: I was part of this collective, collective voice advocating for
Speaker 3: what felt right for us and our families at the time.
Speaker 3: And I do think that collective power in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: probably did help shape that that sense of wanting to
Speaker 3: be a part of it, wanting to explore it and
Speaker 3: pull the threads apart.
Speaker 1: I mean, you make a good point about what I
Speaker 1: considered to be feminism right now, I think as compared
Speaker 1: to what we had been taught as kids. And I
Speaker 1: think the way that our parents thought about feminism is
Speaker 1: that I just think generationally, I just think it's the
Speaker 1: way it had to happen. I don't know that it
Speaker 1: could have happened another way. Maybe it could have, I
Speaker 1: don't know. But the way that women went to work
Speaker 1: out of home was to emulate men, and so they
Speaker 1: couldn't show up in the workplace as anything other than
Speaker 1: I am showing up essentially as a man in a workplace.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yes, And you know, if you really go back
Speaker 3: to the history, because as I've been writing the book,
Speaker 3: it's been really interesting delving into it more of the
Speaker 3: origins of like first wave, second wave, third wave feminism.
Speaker 3: Women went into the workforce really during the World War
Speaker 3: to just fill the slots, and then it just exposed this,
Speaker 3: wait a second, we want to like stay in the workforce.
Speaker 3: Except at the same time there was this incredible push
Speaker 3: around advertising and the advent of television. We started to
Speaker 3: see these ads depicting the woman at home wearing heels,
Speaker 3: pushing a vacuum around. And what emerged was this like
Speaker 3: huge chasm, this power chasm between the woman in the
Speaker 3: workplace making money and the woman like teetering around in
Speaker 3: heels like serving up her like cocktails at the end
Speaker 3: of the day. And that power chasm never went away.
Speaker 3: And you know, the media really invented the mommy wars,
Speaker 3: like just because like media loves a moment where they
Speaker 3: can like pit two sides against each other, and so
Speaker 3: the mommy wars were like invented over the course of
Speaker 3: the eighties, and we created this power chasm that really
Speaker 3: like obviously had to close over the years because so
Speaker 3: much changed. Women had access to digital learning, so that
Speaker 3: they're able to like keep their hand in the game.
Speaker 3: They were like getting married and having kids much later,
Speaker 3: so their decrued education and work experience. None of the
Speaker 3: fictions around that, like ad with the woman pushing the
Speaker 3: vacuum in heels, actually existed, and yet we sort of
Speaker 3: inherited it and brought it with us and like perpetuated
Speaker 3: the idea of what was feminist and what was not right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now I feel like my acceptance, like my
Speaker 1: version of feminism is just to say, like, do what
Speaker 1: makes you happy. Like, not everyone's going to have the
Speaker 1: same model. In fact, nobody can have the same model
Speaker 1: as anybody else. But I actually don't think that the
Speaker 1: generation above us has an easy time accepting that because
Speaker 1: it wasn't the way for them.
Speaker 3: No, And I think that that version feminism had to exist, right,
Speaker 3: like second wave feminism has to exist to push women,
Speaker 3: you know, into a place of being respected for their
Speaker 3: contributions and their value in the workforce and the ability
Speaker 3: to advocate for equal play like all of that stuff that,
Speaker 3: by the way, is still we still need all of that.
Speaker 3: And so I think the generation prior would say, we
Speaker 3: aren't done. We're not done with that. Why are we
Speaker 3: like pushing choice feminism now is it going to unwind this?
Speaker 3: And I think what's interesting about feminism today is I
Speaker 3: don't think it's just about yes, we want the choice
Speaker 3: and like we should all do whatever makes us happy
Speaker 3: and strong and all the things we're advocating for the
Speaker 3: supports to be able to set us up for success
Speaker 3: on feminine terms, right, it's recognizing that we can't like
Speaker 3: we do birth children. Our bodies are actually constructed differently,
Speaker 3: and so the workforce and or like the way in
Speaker 3: which we approach work family has to align with the
Speaker 3: realities of what it means to be a woman, which
Speaker 3: means taking a closer look at what that is right.
Speaker 3: And so it's interesting because some of them when I
Speaker 3: first launched Mother Untitled, I did feel like a lot
Speaker 3: of women perceived what I was doing as in some
Speaker 3: ways traditionalist, when by no means, first of all, let
Speaker 3: me just say, like, I don't actually think choosing to
Speaker 3: pause or downshift your career at any point is the
Speaker 3: right thing for children and or the right thing for families.
Speaker 3: I think it was the right thing for me in
Speaker 3: that moment, and I think many women either because they
Speaker 3: can't offset the cost of child care and or because
Speaker 3: they actually want to be at home for a period
Speaker 3: of time, that is the right choice for them because
Speaker 3: it works for their families. But it's not. You know,
Speaker 3: there's proven successful outcomes for children and families no matter what,
Speaker 3: whether you're working in the home or out of the
Speaker 3: home or existing in between. But when I started, I
Speaker 3: think a big thought was, well, she's encouraging women to pause,
Speaker 3: And what I would say is no, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: create a narrative wherein if women choose to pause or downshift,
Speaker 3: if they they do step out of the traditional workforce
Speaker 3: for a period of time, they're not only respected and
Speaker 3: valued for the contribution in the home, but they're not
Speaker 3: seen as their brain dying. So that when and if
Speaker 3: they choose to go back, which ninety percent of women
Speaker 3: do and aim to do, when and if they choose
Speaker 3: to go back, they have an easier time entering because
Speaker 3: they're not ritteno off and counted out as like shriveling
Speaker 3: and like their homes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so funny you put that language saying to it,
Speaker 1: saying that it was seen as traditionalists because even though
Speaker 1: I was basically launching like a corollary concept.
Speaker 3: I think at.
Speaker 1: First I also saw it as traditionalist, and I was like,
Speaker 1: but wait, I want to talk about the workplace. And
Speaker 1: I think it was because I had such a hard
Speaker 1: time seeing myself. I think it's why identified with that
Speaker 1: story you were saying about the woman who couldn't see
Speaker 1: herself as not working. I couldn't see myself outside an
Speaker 1: identity as not a working person. And it had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with being a mother or not. I didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to be like a working mom.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't.
Speaker 1: It was too hard for me to accept my identity
Speaker 1: as anything other than a working person, and so no
Speaker 1: matter how much I was working, it was hard for
Speaker 1: me to give the same And I think I probably
Speaker 1: still struggle with this, but to give the same level
Speaker 1: of acknowledgment of like the work that goes in if
Speaker 1: someone is not doing any work outside the home and
Speaker 1: in any way like whether it's a little bit part
Speaker 1: time or full time.
Speaker 2: But I think I still struggle with that.
Speaker 1: I think it's so ingrained in my identity that the
Speaker 1: place that I find value is whether the work product
Speaker 1: that I create in work outside the home is valuable. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's so ingrained in me that it's very hard to
Speaker 1: view myself in terms of success, like being successful in
Speaker 1: any other way.
Speaker 3: I think it's the single biggest stumbling block for women
Speaker 3: when they choose to part with the linear career your track,
Speaker 3: even if they're not identifying with taking a full pause
Speaker 3: to be at home, like, even if they're doing anything
Speaker 3: apart from the linear career track that they were on.
Speaker 3: It's this idea of so much self worth is tied
Speaker 3: to our salary and our titles. And I mean that's
Speaker 3: the thesis around untitled with mother Untitled is this idea
Speaker 3: that when you step into this untitled chapter, we part
Speaker 3: with a lot of the ego and the identity derived
Speaker 3: from career ascension. And what does that feel like to
Speaker 3: exist in the vastness of the untitled space? Right? And
Speaker 3: by the way, the other part of that is the
Speaker 3: other part of untitled is the dismantling between the antiquated
Speaker 3: titles of stay at home and working mother right, and
Speaker 3: so stay at home you can understand why we would
Speaker 3: champion to start to blow the edges around that because
Speaker 3: it's so black and white, it comes with so many
Speaker 3: societal trips. But working muther right when you so closely
Speaker 3: ident What I'm hearing from you is you so closely
Speaker 3: hold on to like I am a working mother, that
Speaker 3: anything that is not that or that is working in
Speaker 3: other ways, whether you're volunteering or whether you're working in
Speaker 3: the home, feels antithetical as opposed to just part of
Speaker 3: an expansive identity. Yeah. Right, And I think that that
Speaker 3: is the really the opportunity for women right now is
Speaker 3: to exist in the gray, is to exist in that
Speaker 3: mast in between and say that way you're you're not
Speaker 3: confined to worth and success in one format, and your
Speaker 3: options are open so that you can sort of tap
Speaker 3: into what you need to make room for in that
Speaker 3: moment in time without penalty on the other side, Right, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's so they're so complimentary, like what you're doing
Speaker 1: and what we're doing with she Pivots, I always look
Speaker 1: I respect your work so much, and I always look
Speaker 1: at them as being sort of like two sides of
Speaker 1: the same coin. Like I feel like what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do with she Pivots is to tell the stories
Speaker 1: about the personal events that happens to someone that changes
Speaker 1: their perspective so that they can then find a different
Speaker 1: thing they create, whether it's a career, whether it's a
Speaker 1: business like whatever, maybe it's happiness in the same thing,
Speaker 1: but changing their perspective due to personal reasons and then
Speaker 1: finding something professional that comes out of it, like changing
Speaker 1: that narrative around that.
Speaker 3: And I feel like you are really sitting.
Speaker 1: In that place, like in that moment of the change,
Speaker 1: and specifically for mothers in the child here, and I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of debate around like, you know,
Speaker 1: should we have should we just talk about parenthood, should
Speaker 1: you talk about motherhood? Did we just talk about women
Speaker 1: in general? I get that a lot. We just did
Speaker 1: our first heap pivots, but you know, really, oh yes,
Speaker 1: it was our very first.
Speaker 3: Which is a gift, by the way, for men, I
Speaker 3: think the men need that permission. By the way, there's
Speaker 3: a rising stat around men choosing to positive careers. But
Speaker 3: I think men unfortunately are you know, feeling limited sometimes
Speaker 3: by the expectations of what that role is supposed to
Speaker 3: include being a male partner in a family, in a
Speaker 3: two parent households right, And so then when men find
Speaker 3: themselves at career junctures that we have a lot of
Speaker 3: discourse around, they don't have the same resources and conversation
Speaker 3: and I think that is one of the privileges of
Speaker 3: being a woman is that we talk a lot, especially
Speaker 3: I I mean, like we like to talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could do the show, maybe make it like
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour talk, then we could go all day.
Speaker 3: But I do think, like I think about for the
Speaker 3: male at home parent right now, there are you know,
Speaker 3: at least women who choose to pause or take a
Speaker 3: non linear path half your podcast. They have mother untitled
Speaker 3: that there's an absence of that. So I'm glad that
Speaker 3: you're doing my heap pivots. I totally agree.
Speaker 1: I think that even what I'm seeing, I feel like
Speaker 1: most people I know who had kids like pandemic on
Speaker 1: like in the last three years are gay men. Is
Speaker 1: most of the parents that I know, and of new
Speaker 1: parents that I know, and of the parents that I
Speaker 1: see of kids that are sort of school age when
Speaker 1: parents are starting to kind of like group off and
Speaker 1: like make plans, I find it hard for I think
Speaker 1: the gay dads in particular to find their pla because
Speaker 1: they just sort of don't naturally fall into any of
Speaker 1: the like very hetero categories of like the way that
Speaker 1: families tend to group. And so I think we do
Speaker 1: need to be intentional about this, And I actually try
Speaker 1: to talk about every time we have these like parenting talks,
Speaker 1: but like think about the makeup of the parents in
Speaker 1: your class, like how they naturally have these random encounters
Speaker 1: and like you know, how they'd get included. But you know,
Speaker 1: a part of the reason that I decided to only
Speaker 1: have women on sheep Pivots and even call it sheep
Speaker 1: Pivots well after I got the seasoned desist order, but
Speaker 1: then there was an intentional reason after that, and I
Speaker 1: thought I actually wasn't giving up that much, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: men need it, but I actually don't think men are
Speaker 1: evolved enough right now to be able to have a
Speaker 1: really thoughtful conversation about where they feel included excluded, how
Speaker 1: they think about their identities. Like I think most male
Speaker 1: conversations right now would unfortunately be a little bit too stunted.
Speaker 1: It would be like a real short podcast. So hopefully
Speaker 1: season ten of she Pivots is maybe it's a full
Speaker 1: he pivots.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Here's new ideas, because I agree with you the world
Speaker 1: needs it. The way that I ended up attacking it
Speaker 1: was by another article that I wrote called sensitive is
Speaker 1: the New strong thinking about raising our sons and looking
Speaker 1: at it from that perspective, Like we're always talking about
Speaker 1: you know, we've had these ideas that we need to
Speaker 1: especially if a child, but especially a son, is showing sensitivity,
Speaker 1: then we have to show them how to overcome that sensitivity.
Speaker 1: But I want my son to see his sensitivity as
Speaker 1: an attribute. Yes, yes, And then I think we can
Speaker 1: start to have a generation of men that will be
Speaker 1: thinking about talking about their feelings, how they see their identities.
Speaker 1: But like, we're of a generation right now like parenting
Speaker 1: young kids, like we can build them up from scratch,
Speaker 1: we have huge opportunity.
Speaker 3: You know, as you're talking, I'm reminded of one of
Speaker 3: the biggest differentiators of our generation of parents is just
Speaker 3: the intellectual nature of parenting today. Right, Like we talk
Speaker 3: a lot about the impact if you do nothing else
Speaker 3: and you're focused on raising your children right now and
Speaker 3: bringing love and care to that, you know, you're raising
Speaker 3: the love generation. And I think that a lot of
Speaker 3: the women that make up our community are very intentional,
Speaker 3: very conscious parents. Who really I mean is there is
Speaker 3: such a wealth of information, maybe too much information around
Speaker 3: parenting and this is the first generation of parents that
Speaker 3: have been exposed to that and are taking that in
Speaker 3: And whether you're focused on nutrition or you're focused on
Speaker 3: gentle parenting or respectful parenting, that is a level of
Speaker 3: intellectuality that is that is unparalleled with any other generation.
Speaker 3: And so it's both impactful and it's a lot more
Speaker 3: around self healing and self growth. And one of the
Speaker 3: things we talk a lot about, and this is another
Speaker 3: way women are, you know, an evolved species, is that
Speaker 3: when women step in to parenthood today, we're not only
Speaker 3: committed to how can we raise our children meaningfully, but
Speaker 3: how can we raise ourselves alongside? Yeah, and that is
Speaker 3: something really interesting when I think about, you know, the
Speaker 3: power you talk about the pivot. I talk a lot
Speaker 3: about the power in the pause and in the transition,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a lot of that power lies
Speaker 3: in the personal development that this sort of time and
Speaker 3: transition in our life is so so primed for.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk about that, that that power
Speaker 1: in that moment, because what's I struggle with a little
Speaker 1: bit sometimes and I think that.
Speaker 2: You I'm gleaning that you do too.
Speaker 3: Is what's interesting here is.
Speaker 1: That we're building businesses around not being in the business.
Speaker 3: We were in before. M m mm hmmm, mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: And so in some ways it's great because we can
Speaker 1: design the way we want to work and what we
Speaker 1: put out into the world, and it feels meaningful, it
Speaker 1: feels like culture change. But there's also a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tension around it.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I mean, I said for a long time.
Speaker 3: So there is a great irony in building the first
Speaker 3: platform for women on career pauses and change the narrative
Speaker 3: around career pauses while being on a career pause. And
Speaker 3: so the thing that I have had to sit with
Speaker 3: and the discomfort has been not letting my pace outweigh
Speaker 3: my purpose. So I launched, I talked about having my
Speaker 3: son in twenty sixteen. I launched on January tenth or
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, and I came out of the gateheard right
Speaker 3: like it was. There was a lot of quote unquote
Speaker 3: working mother communities, and I was excited about this little
Speaker 3: haven of shining the light on women who were making
Speaker 3: room for family in a new way. So excited about it.
Speaker 3: Twenty seven to teen to twenty eighteen, there was great
Speaker 3: sort of organic growth. I had my daughter in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and where I'd perfected this like perfect two days a week.
Speaker 3: You know, I was consulting at the time and working
Speaker 3: on this platform. I had sort of thought I'd nailed it,
Speaker 3: and then I had my daughter, and it like up
Speaker 3: ended any sense of rhythm that I'd constructed. And so
Speaker 3: it was like I was hitting pause on pause, on
Speaker 3: pas on pause. And then twenty nineteen came and I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, this is going to be the year.
Speaker 3: And then I had shingles, and then twenty twenty came,
Speaker 3: and then it was twenty twenty one when both my
Speaker 3: kids were school aged, and there was sort of this
Speaker 3: incredible divine timing where suddenly the world and culture felt
Speaker 3: ready to re examine work and family in a way
Speaker 3: that they hadn't right, and you talked about the pandemic
Speaker 3: being a potential catalytic moment for a lot of your guests,
Speaker 3: and so even though I started noodling on this in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and really putting it out of the world
Speaker 3: in the world, then twenty twenty one, in post pandemic,
Speaker 3: was really the moment I said, no, this is the
Speaker 3: time to step in and really drive this conversation. And
Speaker 3: it happened to align with personal timing too, but there
Speaker 3: was a lot of planting the seeds in the years
Speaker 3: prior and then when the timing worked for myself and
Speaker 3: my family, dialing it up right.
Speaker 1: Did you see specific moments of growth and like, okay,
Speaker 1: you have a significant following on instagramming that's probably where
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of audience evaluation is coming
Speaker 1: from me. I remember, like you, doctor, Becky's often talked about,
Speaker 1: and you talked about it on this podcast, how she
Speaker 1: had went on Instagram like the day before the lockdown
Speaker 1: or something crazy like that was like her first video.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was.
Speaker 1: It was the perfect timing of everyone saying, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how do I deal with my kid when I'm locked
Speaker 1: in with them now? All of a sudden, like did
Speaker 1: you see specific moments or specific content that took off?
Speaker 3: So I do think it's funny because I remember she
Speaker 3: and I'm messaging back then and then popping back onto
Speaker 3: her page and being like what happened? Like weird? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just like a little person again now, and she
Speaker 3: she I mean, her timing was fabulous, and I think
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one had a similar feeling for me, but
Speaker 3: it was twenty twenty two that I saw them like
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, I you know, where I had been, like,
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're going to talk about it from
Speaker 3: Instagram numbers, I was like, had sort of just maintained
Speaker 3: from the time of my second daughter till twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the big shifts for me
Speaker 3: was sharing content as I was like experiencing and living
Speaker 3: in the pause versus like, I've now studied this and
Speaker 3: like interviewed two hundred women and I'm going to start
Speaker 3: speaking about it as an expert. And I really shifted
Speaker 3: into much more thought leader content around and the reframes
Speaker 3: that you know are shared widely, and I think that
Speaker 3: that was the catalytic moment of growth. And I think
Speaker 3: it was twenty twenty two that I really started to
Speaker 3: share content around re examining our worth in sort of
Speaker 3: quantifiable terms, the worth of an at home parent, sharing
Speaker 3: reframes around how to think about financial interdependence, you know,
Speaker 3: with our partners. So if you're someone if you are
Speaker 3: the partner not working at home or sort of not
Speaker 3: working for pay versus providing unpaid labor in the home,
Speaker 3: how to think about that as like a financially intertebeddent
Speaker 3: organization as opposed to like, one of the unfortunate limiting
Speaker 3: beliefs is like I am now and dependent and that
Speaker 3: can feel really hard for an ambitious woman, Right, So
Speaker 3: that reframe really took off reframes around not feeling like
Speaker 3: you can't ask for help. I think so many of
Speaker 3: the women I've interviewed will say, like, if I'm not
Speaker 3: working for pay, I don't deserve help. So really challenging
Speaker 3: some of those false beliefs and using social media to
Speaker 3: do that and have a discourse about that, those pieces
Speaker 3: of content were shared and really helped grow the audience
Speaker 3: in a huge way. How do you sit with that
Speaker 3: exposure of vulnerability?
Speaker 2: It's a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes I have these vulnerability hangovers after probably
Speaker 1: conversations like this.
Speaker 2: So how do you how do you handle that.
Speaker 3: I'm more boundared than I think I appear, like, I
Speaker 3: really think that I have sort of key content pillars
Speaker 3: that I am really happy to have conversations about that
Speaker 3: I know are going to make a difference for the
Speaker 3: woman on the receiving end, right, Like, and if I
Speaker 3: can share about myself and like reflections I'm having about
Speaker 3: the nature of like let's take the pace, like knowing
Speaker 3: that I'm going to move more slowly today and that
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean I'm any less successful. That means I'm
Speaker 3: being deliberate and that I trust that process, right, Like
Speaker 3: sharing that is a personal reflection. But I don't share
Speaker 3: about parenting like. I don't share like I will never
Speaker 3: claim to be a parenting expert. I love parenting, I
Speaker 3: really do. I think I've grown tremendously in it. But
Speaker 3: I think I've made mistakes and I think i'm learning.
Speaker 3: I'm a consumer of other people's wisdom and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to do the best I can. But I do not
Speaker 3: talk about unless it's in the context of parenting is
Speaker 3: helping me and helps women grow themselves, and that's the
Speaker 3: ripe opportunity and career pauses, that's the power, that's the
Speaker 3: unlocked potential. So I really keep it tight as to
Speaker 3: what are the angles. I'm willing to share and explore.
Speaker 3: But I don't openly share about what it feels like
Speaker 3: to stay up at night worried about my child and
Speaker 3: something that they're going through, Like that's off limits to
Speaker 3: me and or my marriage and or my parents. You
Speaker 3: know that to me is irrelevant to community who's collectively
Speaker 3: exploring what it means to exist in the gray area
Speaker 3: of holding personal pursuit and personal ambition alongside motherhood and
Speaker 3: that constant recalibration. Well, Mylilah loves yourlila, so you're obviously
Speaker 3: doing a great job. And the parenting that's so nice.
Speaker 3: I hear good reports from there. But like you know,
Speaker 3: at home is always different. It's a different level of chaos.
Speaker 2: Oh god, the level of chaos.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that because I would think of you,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're trying to think about like a category,
Speaker 1: like I probably would have put your work in a
Speaker 1: parent in category, because those are the only categories we have.
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking specifically about you know, when we're submitting podcasts,
Speaker 1: we have to check in boxes what are we are?
Speaker 1: And we never really know, like for she pivots, like
Speaker 1: are we in career, business?
Speaker 3: Are we in parenting? Are we in lifestyle?
Speaker 1: Like we're kind of at the center of all of them,
Speaker 1: but also a little bit none of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think the.
Speaker 1: Idea that you're coming at this only talking about the parent,
Speaker 1: like only talking about the mother and not talking about
Speaker 1: the impact on the child is smart, and you are
Speaker 1: creating a new category.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would actually say inversely, the child's impact and
Speaker 3: the mother, right, Like, I think the act of parenting
Speaker 3: is enriching. But I think it's interesting because with the book,
Speaker 3: you have to assign it categories, right, Like, there's a category,
Speaker 3: but it's nonfiction self development, right like it's and it's
Speaker 3: more in the career. You know. One of the big
Speaker 3: societal tropes, like the big game changer that we're trying
Speaker 3: to enact is that women on career pauses should still
Speaker 3: be considered career like it is one chapter of an
Speaker 3: evolving story of her career and she can't be counted out.
Speaker 3: And so it's actually like a lot of this work
Speaker 3: is keeping her confident and clear that this is one
Speaker 3: part of her story, and then from a larger macro level,
Speaker 3: shining a light on the gray area around her role
Speaker 3: at home, the ways in which she's volunteering, the way
Speaker 3: that she's networking and meeting incredible women that she's you know,
Speaker 3: at the playground, the way that she's taken an online
Speaker 3: class or freelancing, and so that side of it is
Speaker 3: just proactively trying to blurrow the edges. So that she
Speaker 3: has never counted out of the career conversation.
Speaker 1: Where do you think people generally find you? Like, do
Speaker 1: you know, like do you really have an idea? Like
Speaker 1: who you're speaking to? Like women who are thinking about
Speaker 1: taking a career pause, are they already in it? Are
Speaker 1: they trying to find their way out?
Speaker 3: So it's fifteen percent or fifteen to nineteen like fluctuates
Speaker 3: depending on the month, are like in the preparing Then
Speaker 3: there's a significant majority who are on the pause, and
Speaker 3: then the remaining is starting to edge their way back
Speaker 3: into freelance, consulting, small business, a lot of the gray.
Speaker 3: There's just so much movement between those, right, and then
Speaker 3: there's like ten percent that are returning to the workforce,
Speaker 3: like the's traditional workforce.
Speaker 1: What do you feel like people ask you the most
Speaker 1: They want advice.
Speaker 3: On how to deal with the stigma. Which is the harder?
Speaker 3: You know, it's both. It's both the thing I can
Speaker 3: probably speak volumes about right like, you know, because I
Speaker 3: had to do that personal work, and it's the thing
Speaker 3: that I like, I'm most committed to changing to a world.
Speaker 3: You know, we recently released the results of the AMP
Speaker 3: Survey American Mothers un Pause it's the first of its
Speaker 3: kind survey of twelve hundreds at home moms and then
Speaker 3: a thousand general pop and it was really centered around
Speaker 3: taking a closer look at this new woman making room
Speaker 3: for family life and from a general population perspective, we
Speaker 3: really wanted to understand perceptions. And what's wild is seventy
Speaker 3: eight percent of women say they feel completely misunderstood for
Speaker 3: their role at home. You know, that's the disconnect that
Speaker 3: we want to solve for because it's one part feeling
Speaker 3: completely undervalued for the contributions of unpaid labor. Because where
Speaker 3: that holds you back is then your ability to ask
Speaker 3: for help. And when you ask for help, then you
Speaker 3: help your mental health, you help your ability to stay
Speaker 3: connected to the workforce and other community contributions in other ways.
Speaker 3: But in the other way, like that misunderstanding makes very
Speaker 3: challenging for women to re enter.
Speaker 1: I want to get to that piece, the child's care,
Speaker 1: having whatever child care and support looks like in your
Speaker 1: family in different homes. I do feel like for me,
Speaker 1: I'm transparent about a lot of things. That's something that
Speaker 1: still feels too vulnerable for me to talk about, feeling
Speaker 1: judged in it or not judged in it or whatever
Speaker 1: the case may be, You've been quite open about it.
Speaker 1: Did that How did you come to being so open
Speaker 1: and how does it feel?
Speaker 3: I think I really feel committed to that transparency because
Speaker 3: I think it helps women ask for the help that
Speaker 3: they deserve. And I really do believe that it is
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I came to that conclusion for
Speaker 3: a few reasons. One because I didn't want to perpetuate
Speaker 3: this idea that I could create and build a platform
Speaker 3: like in the fringe Hours of motherhood. Yes, like that illusion,
Speaker 3: because you have to remember that there is a community.
Speaker 3: My community is mainly centered are on women that either
Speaker 3: have part time, very intermittent childcare or none. And so
Speaker 3: I never want that woman to feel like my day
Speaker 3: wasn't purposeful because I didn't share life five hundred i
Speaker 3: Instagram stories and reframs that are going viral like that,
Speaker 3: that isn't We cannot all share the same metrics of
Speaker 3: success and the same metrics of productivity in a day,
Speaker 3: but we certainly can't if we don't understand the other
Speaker 3: person's support system, right. And also I had to remember
Speaker 3: for myself in a personal experience, right because I had
Speaker 3: you know, I had sort of oscillating levels of care.
Speaker 3: Mostly not because I have the privilege to be able
Speaker 3: to have childcare if I want it. I really just
Speaker 3: don't like people in my space, Like I am like
Speaker 3: a very classic only child, and so when I'm with
Speaker 3: my kids, I want to be with my kids and
Speaker 3: I don't want anyone else around. So I always it
Speaker 3: worked for me to have two days of childcare, sometimes
Speaker 3: three afternoons of childcare, depended on the on the phase
Speaker 3: we were in, and I would look around and think,
Speaker 3: like I could be doing more, I should be doing
Speaker 3: more from other untitled and I had to remind myself
Speaker 3: but like, I don't have the support to do that
Speaker 3: right now, and I will one day one day, and
Speaker 3: I'm in that day right now. One day my children
Speaker 3: will be at camp from nine in the morning till
Speaker 3: four thirty and I will have that time. But it
Speaker 3: was really important for me to remember and reflect on
Speaker 3: that myself, and to make sure that other women weren't
Speaker 3: comparing themselves to me. And how do I feel about
Speaker 3: it after I share? Sometimes I feel nervous. I feel
Speaker 3: nervous that someone's going to turn around and be like,
Speaker 3: and someone did say this, well, you're not truly fully
Speaker 3: an at home parent because you have you know, X
Speaker 3: amount of hours of childcare, to which I would say
Speaker 3: like great, because I'm trying to dismantle the trope of
Speaker 3: like a black and white nature of an at home parent.
Speaker 3: You're right, I'm somewhere in between, and I'm so lucky
Speaker 3: to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: And I think it does open up the conversation. I mean,
Speaker 1: we get this question a lot talking about people's pivot.
Speaker 1: Is there is a presumption that pivoting is a totally
Speaker 1: privileged opportunity. I thought going into the first season of
Speaker 1: this that that was a big priority for me to dismantle,
Speaker 1: and so we have had guests on that have used
Speaker 1: government programs, government assistants.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: We had one guest who was renting out a tent
Speaker 1: in her living room was an airbnb, you know, to
Speaker 1: be able to get by.
Speaker 3: She definitely doesn't have a problem with people in her space.
Speaker 2: That was like a whole nother level.
Speaker 1: I was really anybody on She's like, yeah, it didn't
Speaker 1: go long, and I do still I do still see
Speaker 1: it as a priority for me to have those stories
Speaker 1: on and continue to tell those stories. But I actually
Speaker 1: think that there is such an abundance of because it
Speaker 1: is the stigma, and it is societal of women who
Speaker 1: consider themselves professional and white collar and high achieving, who
Speaker 1: thought they had options, like the options are what make
Speaker 1: them anxious? Yes, Yes, because you always, like you said,
Speaker 1: you always felt like you were supposed to be doing more.
Speaker 1: You always think you're supposed to be doing more. That
Speaker 1: I when I think about this show as the opportunity
Speaker 1: for culture change by opening up and telling stories, I
Speaker 1: think maybe that's a more impactful path for us right now,
Speaker 1: like us being like you know, cheap hboits and the team.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean to say this.
Speaker 1: And to suggest that what you should be doing, you
Speaker 1: should be doing what you are doing.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I know what you're saying, and I it
Speaker 3: resonates because I do think often that is the pushback, right,
Speaker 3: and I will you know, I've sort of I have
Speaker 3: deep thoughts on that that I share about. But where
Speaker 3: I come back to is if you are in the
Speaker 3: privileged position to be able to do this work and
Speaker 3: shine a light on people navigating non linear careers and
Speaker 3: making the best choices for them and their family, and
Speaker 3: you can do the work of dismantling stereotypes and opening
Speaker 3: up options. There's a ripple effect there, and so I'll
Speaker 3: tell you also in the AM survey, three and ten
Speaker 3: women had to make the choice to pause their careers
Speaker 3: because of the cost of childcare. So yes, we often
Speaker 3: speak to and speak about the other seventy percent for
Speaker 3: whom it was the privilege to choose. But the ripple
Speaker 3: effect when we change the perception of the pause is
Speaker 3: felt by everyone. It's felt also by the women who
Speaker 3: don't get our right to choose. And I would say
Speaker 3: the same for you, because women come across men and
Speaker 3: women come across pivots for a whole onslot of reasons.
Speaker 3: But whatever the profile of the guests you have, you're
Speaker 3: shining a light on this very big, powerful moment where
Speaker 3: women are transitioning and it's unlocking huge amounts of opportunity
Speaker 3: and it's sort of you're infusing trust into that process
Speaker 3: that can be really hard, and that is felt by everyone. Right, Well,
Speaker 3: we actually haven't gone through your own personal story.
Speaker 1: I mean we did a little bit at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but like, can you give us like a little bit
Speaker 1: more background into the background that got you there? Also
Speaker 1: the fact that we went to college together but yeah.
Speaker 3: I know, but didn't know each other. Yeah, because and
Speaker 3: I really think this is why. So I guess the
Speaker 3: conversation starts with you know, I've been reflecting on why
Speaker 3: am I more risk tolerant because I to think that
Speaker 3: a fair amount of taking a pause and feeling so
Speaker 3: trustworthy of that pause comes with a sense of self trust,
Speaker 3: right and risk. I'm not going to discount that it
Speaker 3: and I think it came from when I was in
Speaker 3: I grew up in a very small town outside Boston.
Speaker 3: It was predominantly white, and I'm not going to go
Speaker 3: on like a big racial tangent, but I will tell
Speaker 3: you I did self sabotage, honestly in my teen years
Speaker 3: to fit in. I think I wanted to dismantle I
Speaker 3: was all about dismantling stereotypes even then, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to dismantle the stereotype of being an Indian girl. So
Speaker 3: I was like, Ah, the best thing to do is
Speaker 3: like tank my math grades, you know, or like party
Speaker 3: really hard, or do whatever. And I woke up one
Speaker 3: day it was the morning of my graduation, and I
Speaker 3: said to my parents, I don't know how I had
Speaker 3: this one moment of wisdom because I hadn't had many,
Speaker 3: but I came downstairs and said, like, if I go
Speaker 3: to college right now, I'd already been accepted. But I said, like,
Speaker 3: if I go now, this like path is just going
Speaker 3: to continue and I need to take a pause. And
Speaker 3: I went to India for a year. My parents were like,
Speaker 3: you do what you do, you you do whatever you
Speaker 3: need to do to get back on track. And I
Speaker 3: felt like breaking from the path was what I needed
Speaker 3: to return to myself. Like that trip started with like
Speaker 3: three weeks in the Himalayas. And I'm not outdoorsy, like
Speaker 3: I just like I claim to be many things, I'm
Speaker 3: not outdoorsy, except there was something about separating from everyone
Speaker 3: and everything and all the expectations and all the wanting
Speaker 3: to fit in that you come back to, Okay, what
Speaker 3: do I really like? What do I not really like?
Speaker 3: What do I want my life to look like? And
Speaker 3: that was a gift from breaking from the path. And
Speaker 3: I think that that gave me the trust to obviously
Speaker 3: replicate that experience in motherhood, you know, decades later. But
Speaker 3: in between I came back. I did go to college.
Speaker 3: I think I came back it to college with like
Speaker 3: a very renewed sense of ambition, like and I think
Speaker 3: I really went to college to just go, like I
Speaker 3: just wanted to get through it, and I got in
Speaker 3: three years started a career in advertising. I got lucky
Speaker 3: because I started in the advent of digital media, so
Speaker 3: like Twitter had just launched, and they basically were like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're twenty two years old, Like you seem like you
Speaker 3: know what you're doing, Like you should probably do this,
Speaker 3: and mom blogs was my beat, like that was what
Speaker 3: I was so hilariously, that was what I was assigned
Speaker 3: to work on, and I fell in love with women.
Speaker 3: I fell in love with digital media. My boss took
Speaker 3: me over to start digital strategy at a larger agency
Speaker 3: called Hill Holiday. So I got lucky. I got some
Speaker 3: like lucky timing, lucky breaks. Had a really nice career there,
Speaker 3: focused on mom brands, and I knew I wanted again,
Speaker 3: like a pause. I wasn't ready to part with the
Speaker 3: perceptions and optics like I wasn't I was still in
Speaker 3: my late twenties, like I wasn't about to take a
Speaker 3: career break then, But I did go to business school.
Speaker 3: That was my juncture, that was my train stop to
Speaker 3: surround myself with smart people figure out what came next.
Speaker 3: Came back and you went to like the top business school.
Speaker 3: I did, I di I did. It was the only
Speaker 3: one I applied to because I really did. I don't
Speaker 3: think advertising people usually go to business school, like that
Speaker 3: isn't a typical path, But I think Stanford is like
Speaker 3: really really receptive of that sort of unique, non traditional background.
Speaker 3: So it was the right school for my background and
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do. And I came back. I
Speaker 3: thought I'd be in the startup world, and then I
Speaker 3: had my son, and I think motherhood was sort of
Speaker 3: this incredible collision of two things. It was similar to
Speaker 3: business school a train stop to like surround myself with
Speaker 3: incredible people. And that's something I talk about all the time,
Speaker 3: is that, like I met some of the most diverse
Speaker 3: women across industries on the playground, like in baby classes,
Speaker 3: because otherwise I'd been in the lack halls of ad agencies.
Speaker 3: I'd met one specific type of person, one specific type
Speaker 3: of industry prior to that, and so it was a
Speaker 3: real opener and expander in that way. And the other
Speaker 3: thing it brought up was that time like back in
Speaker 3: the Himalayas and then teaching in India, where you know,
Speaker 3: when you're stripped away from other people's expectations, the ego
Speaker 3: of like trying to fit, you can really figure out
Speaker 3: like what really matters?
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there anything we haven't covered? We've covered a lot,
Speaker 1: We did cover a lot. What's the main point that
Speaker 1: you want to get across? What do you want people
Speaker 1: to know about when they hear about mother entitled?
Speaker 3: You know we really are like, yes, we're an oasis
Speaker 3: for women on career pauses to comment surround themselves with
Speaker 3: women that help them feel confident and still connected to
Speaker 3: their creativity and the opportunity and their career pause. But
Speaker 3: it's also above all things, it's a movement to change
Speaker 3: and dismantle the tropes around stay at home motherhoods so
Speaker 3: that women can choose to pause or shift and exist
Speaker 3: in this like vast gray area between stay at home
Speaker 3: and working mother so that we can make the right
Speaker 3: choice for right now and transition back to the workforce
Speaker 3: when we're ready.
Speaker 1: What is one thing that at the time you saw
Speaker 1: its like a real negative and now in retrospect you
Speaker 1: really see it as maybe having put you on their path.
Speaker 3: You know, short term, I'll tell you that in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, it was really hard to look around and
Speaker 3: see the wing was blowing up. Hey, Mama was growing.
Speaker 3: You know, there were all these amazing women led companies.
Speaker 3: Obviously they've all had their challenges, you know, since and
Speaker 3: I wished I really saw what I was doing as big,
Speaker 3: and yet I couldn't make it big at that moment,
Speaker 3: right Like I was in the depths of postmarket and
Speaker 3: anxiety transitioning to two children, like sitting there being like
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to split my hours up
Speaker 3: in the day, let alone like run this thing alongside,
Speaker 3: And I don't think I would have sold. I wanted
Speaker 3: to write this book, The Power Pause. I wanted to
Speaker 3: write it back then. But if I'd tried to sell
Speaker 3: that book in twenty eighteen, it wouldn't I've sold.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Timing is everything everything. Twenty twenty two, they were ready,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, they were ready. I was ready, And
Speaker 3: so there's a lot around trusting timing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a important point that we should
Speaker 1: bring out more. I feel like, even when I'm booking
Speaker 1: guests for this show that if someone says no, like
Speaker 1: I don't take it as like a no forever and like,
Speaker 1: well our timing was off, like I'll come back to
Speaker 1: you or they come back to me, Like maybe I'm
Speaker 1: ready to have a different kind of guest on or
Speaker 1: have a different kind of conversation.
Speaker 3: Well, a different conversation because the conversation evolves, right, Like
Speaker 3: I think back in twenty eighteen, it would have been
Speaker 3: so personally rooted in living it. And for me now
Speaker 3: with sort of the plethora of women we've gotten a
Speaker 3: chance to interview on the site and profile, it's sort
Speaker 3: of opened up the angle and all the angles we
Speaker 3: want to cover and all the phases of the journey
Speaker 3: and the areas that women need support in a way
Speaker 3: that we're still unknown to me. And I feel like
Speaker 3: I'll just keep I think we'll all keep exploring it,
Speaker 3: like you're season ten. Yeah gonna look a lot different.
Speaker 3: It's called he pivots, like apparently we just announced it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: here breaking down. I think our husbands are going to
Speaker 3: be like the first ones on it, I know, except
Speaker 3: the first guess. I know.
Speaker 1: It does often surprise people find it. My husband was
Speaker 1: an army officer and.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. Yeah, my husband was an Army officer.
Speaker 1: He went to West Point, he served two tours in AREC,
Speaker 1: and now he just, like you know, gets by as
Speaker 1: one of the regular dads.
Speaker 3: I know, in a community where no one's in the military.
Speaker 3: I need to understand how you guys met blind date.
Speaker 1: We were set up on a blind date, and I
Speaker 1: was working in military personnel policy at the time, so
Speaker 1: it didn't weird me out that he was in the Army.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was out by then, but he was
Speaker 1: in DC. Yeah, Yeah, we were in DC. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so much military community in DC anyway that you're like
Speaker 1: a little more in it. But I mean, even when
Speaker 1: I told my friends from the Upper West Side of
Speaker 1: Manhattan that my new boyfriend went to West Point and
Speaker 1: was served in the Army, They're like.
Speaker 3: Oh, is he Like, is he okay? Does he feel
Speaker 3: like TBI? And so it kills a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I was like, no, it's pretty normal. Did he watch Homeline?
Speaker 3: Did he watch online? No?
Speaker 1: I just I know, I think he just didn't find
Speaker 1: an interesting. He has a very high tolerance.
Speaker 3: Like Chef's watching Bear right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, he has a very high tolerance for travel I
Speaker 1: would consider unsafe. He has a very high tolerance for them.
Speaker 1: Like right before the Iran deal, he went on a
Speaker 1: vacation in Iran. He said it was the best job
Speaker 1: he ever took. But he's like he went to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for fun, like he was not deployed there.
Speaker 2: It's very high tolerance for that kind of travel.
Speaker 3: Where's he from? New Jersey? Oh, like all the adventurers are. Wow,
Speaker 3: the land of all the big adventurers. That is so
Speaker 3: fascinating to me. You know, Dan and I met and
Speaker 3: then our dating was transatlantic. Our dads connected us because
Speaker 3: they work together in the nineties. They connected us for work.
Speaker 3: This is biblical? Is it nearly? And our life was
Speaker 3: travel like, our dating was entirely travel. I think it
Speaker 3: expedites relationships. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Wait, so you go.
Speaker 3: Your dad's were set you guys up, but just for work.
Speaker 3: They set us have just for work. So Dan was
Speaker 3: in tech and I was a nondvertised I was on
Speaker 3: the digital side of advertising. They did not I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not Jewish, I converted, as you know, and they,
Speaker 3: yeah know, his parents most definitely did not want us
Speaker 3: to be together. Oh really that was a thing. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that was a thing.
Speaker 2: How have you managed that?
Speaker 3: Well, I converted, So I checked that box and then
Speaker 3: I did a lot of therapy because as you can imagine,
Speaker 3: I mean, per like what I just said about my upbringing,
Speaker 3: I had all sorts of belonging stuff. So then I
Speaker 3: like one from like not belonging in like Waspy town
Speaker 3: in Boston, Like now I don't belong in this like
Speaker 3: very Jewish family. So you know, I did a boatload
Speaker 3: of therapy. And in the end, I think time is everything.
Speaker 3: Timing is everything, right, Like everyone takes an adjustment period,
Speaker 3: like there was a learning curve of like wait, this
Speaker 3: isn't going to disrupt our entire life, like she's actually
Speaker 3: one of us in like other ways, And I was like, no, oh,
Speaker 3: my marriage isn't gonna implode if they don't approve of
Speaker 3: like every single thing I do, Like this isn't like
Speaker 3: this is this is safe? Yeah? Time time.
Speaker 1: Nah. This has been such a great conversation. We really
Speaker 1: covered a lot of ground. My favorite kind decorating. On
Speaker 1: the next podcast, please please, we'll just do a house
Speaker 1: tour perfect.
Speaker 2: I hear those are big on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I'm I'm still learning on video, so you
Speaker 3: can teach me.
Speaker 2: Well, we can bring house tours to podcasting.
Speaker 3: We're coming up with a lot of things for season ten,
Speaker 3: season ten, season eleven. It's gonna thank you so much
Speaker 3: for joining she pivots. Oh thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this candid convo episode of she Pivots.
Speaker 1: Check back in weekly for more conversations with inspiring women.
Speaker 1: To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
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Speaker 1: if you enjoy this episode to help authers learn about it.
Speaker 1: A special thank you to our partner Marie Claire and
Speaker 1: the team that made this episode possible.
Speaker 3: Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced
Speaker 1: by Emily eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from
Speaker 1: Nina Pollok, and research and planning for Christine Dickinson and
Speaker 1: Hannah Cousins.
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