My family is currently working from home and practicing social isolation measures. We’ve been home from school and daycare and work since Thursday, March 12th. In this episode, I’ll walk through why we’re doing this, what the outbreak looks like, and what you can do to prepare.
It’s hard enough being a working mom—or a working parent—by the end of the day I’m usually hiding in an unmade bed somewhere, scarfing cookies while watching terribly trashy television like The Bachelor or The Voice and trying to find a quiet moment to myself. After 14 hours on non-stop duty from 5:00am until 7:30pm, my resilience and my willpower are depleted. But here’s why it’s important to not compare yourself to others around you as a new parent or a working mom.
I’ve been talking a lot with friends and community members about what to do to prepare, whether or not we should be worried, and how best to deal with the coming disruptions that will likely happen to our daily life across both family and business. I wanted to take the time to share what I would do and how I’m preparing for the next three to nine months, especially if you’re pregnant, giving birth, or a parent with small kids at home.
When it comes to online courses, it seems that we can learn anything these days through the power of the internet. But what courses should you take, and what do you do if you suffer buyer’s remorse? Here’s how I think about what to learn, when to invest in a course, and when to skip it. Also, my two cents on why it’s okay to only do a fraction of the course curriculum. If you learned what you came for, you got what you needed!
In the last episode, we looked at how to become a better listener, and my two favorite questions you can use to have better conversations. I want to dig deeper and share a workshop all about how deep listening can be healing.
If you can, bring a group of people together for a dinner or a virtual hangout to talk about the challenges facing working parents. Here are the ways we gather together in community at Startup Pregnant, plus ten conversation starters to use for your own deep-dive. Use them to gather people together. Have everyone share what comes up for them. Sometimes sharing your story is the shift you need to make the next month a whole lot better.