Last weekend I attended a training session for volunteers for a local youth group. A wide cross-section of folks attended. One gentleman, a youth minister from a local church named Sal, spoke at length. Sal shared — as only you can share on folding chairs in the basement of a school on a Sunday morning — a story that I found surprisingly powerful. Continue reading…
Miracle waiting to happen?
This summer I remember sitting outside my neighbor’s house having coffee and waffles one morning and being totally struck by one of their visitors. She was a woman who was probably in her early- to mid-sixties visiting with her husband of roughly the same age. We’d been invited to join our neighbors and their guests for breakfast outside their cottage under a beautiful shade tree – in a pretty garden a few hundred feet from the sea. What could be nicer with a coffee in hand (ok, decaf) and someone else worrying about my children’s breakfast? Continue reading…
What’s your Agenda?
” I wasted a lot of time,” confided a long-time friend as she described the years that she had not worked outside the home. She and I were having a conversation about her decision to return to work. At the time she had three high school aged children. The dialogue stayed with me.
A recent conversation got me thinking about this ‘wasted time’ exchange. A friend was out and about with a visible kick to her step. Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #13: A Gift from the Sea
I happened upon a cool website yesterday: the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The piece that caught my eye was a story about a professor from UCSF who has started a web series called iBio; a series of free video lectures and vignettes by the world’s best biologists. There was one story that spoke to my Novofemina side. Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #12: Women in Career & Life Transitions
Do you remember the sock puppet commercial from the early 2000’s? I think it was for pets.com or some other internet start-up. A sock puppet with scraggly hair and button eyes would respond with the phrase, “the horror,” to many missives tossed at it. It was silly and cavalier and – most of the time – just perfect.
The sock puppet’s “horror” voice was in my ear in Continue reading…
Summer Book Review # 11: It Takes a Village
A rare evening of downtime last week inspired this week’s book choice. I hardly ever put on the tv but in doing so I happened upon the 2009 documentary “The Last Train Home” directed by Lixin Fan. This documentary follows a Chinese couple from Sichuan province as they travel almost 1,000 miles home to their native village for the 4 day New Year’s celebration; a trek made by almost 130 million migrant Chinese workers. The couple have made the journey for more than a decade to see their two children who are in the care of an aging grandmother. Aside from letters this will be their only contact with the children for the year.
At one point the mother’s total anguish is overwhelming Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #9: Working Identity
Driving yesterday I heard an NPR story on WCAI, the Cape & The Islands (CAI) radio. They broadcast a show entitled “The Moth” which features audio storybooks of everyday Americans. Their first story really gripped me: an autobiography by Aimee Mullins, a young women who lost both of her legs at birth and has used prosthetic limbs ever since.
Ms. Mullins told a truly amazing story about her life and her various opportunities to touch the lives of others. One was a little girl who also had an artificial limb. At the time Aimee first met her she had been struggling. Kind of ‘just’ getting along – setting no great expectations for herself while locked inside the world’s limited view of her capabilities. Aimee inspired her to re-frame her expectations for herself and for those around her.
At a chance meeting a year or two later Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #7: Steering by Starlight
I asked my eight year old for the name of the diagram that has two overlapping circles. She was hanging on some climbing structure in flip-flops and a bathing suit. I should have been alarmed. Instead I was trying to think of an interesting angle to use to tell you about this week’s book while my two children enjoyed a few moments of their own.
She quickly chirped “Venn diagram” while still scaling the loosely joined swinging steps. My read this week was really a Venn-test. Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #6: Off-Ramps and On-Ramps
In April I joined a dozen women from my Harvard Business School class for dinner at a Mexican food restaurant. Given that we graduated twenty years ago, we spent the 1st hour of dinner re-acquainting ourselves with one another. We quickly fell into formal – or not so formal – introductions. I was so surprised by how few of my peers were working in a full-time traditional career – 2 out of 12. A few more had worked a more traditional career path prior to having children but many had never worked a full-time career due to marriage, children, divorce, requirements of a spouse’s job, parental care, etc., etc. Most chose part-time work at some point. Only three of us, including yours truly, worked full-time after having children.
One woman described her vocational interests as “design & architecture.” It sounded exciting and creative but I remember being profoundly sad Continue reading…
Summer Book Review #4: Back on the Career Track
It’s funny how obscure comments stick in your mind ready to be instantly recalled with a connection – however remote that connection maybe. I remember standing in my pediatrician’s office when my daughter, who is turning eight next week, was about ten weeks old. I was talking with my newest friend, the nurse practitioner, who had seen us regularly over the past two months. We were talking about my upcoming return to work which by the way I was looking forward to. She made a pithy comment that jumped into my mind this week as I read, Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-home Moms Who Want to Return to Work, by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin. Bernie Lane, the nurse practitioner said, “a happy mother is a happy baby.” Truth be told I got more out of my conversation with Bernie than from my read of “Back on the Career Track.”
From my perspective Fishman Cohen and Steir Rabin attempted to achieve two objectives in this book: Continue reading…