We are looking good!
The Mom Corps and its founder are getting profiled in an upcoming edition of Working Mother Magazine. . .yea! This is an enterprise to which we on the team are all committed, and the publicity will be a tremendous boon from a business standpoint!
Yesterday, the management team assembled for a photo shoot to accompany the article. The magazine arranged for a professional photographer and his crew to take photos at the Mom Corps headquarters. . .with children in tow!
So, here are 5 women, 5 kids, and a dog being posed around the office. . .at computers, sitting on desks, earnestly conversing with kids on our laps and in our arms. We are "perfectly" coiffed by the hair and make-up guy and posed in a "real-life" manner by the photographer and assistant (all men).
In between shots, we are all killing ourselves laughing at this representation of our working life as mothers and as Mom Corps executives. It makes good PR. . . we want good PR! And hopefully moms across the nation will read the article in the magazine and learn about the Mom Corps and become inspired to work with us as we launch this enterprise.
But personally, I hope that other moms don't believe this is how it really is for any of us on a working basis, day-to-day. The honest reality of being a mom--working or not!--is not glossy and well controlled. That's the myth, not the reality. Two generations after Betty Friedan, and despite the tremendous gains made, we are still finding our biggest challenges in working out the day-to-day work/life balance stuff. And sometimes, it's not pretty. . .sometimes we are at our wit's end. . .sometimes all the balls we are juggling come tumbling down. . .sometimes a deadline coincides with a nap time. . .sometimes we are covered in baby food. . .sometimes we think adopting attachment parenting principles was a big mistake because our toddlers are never going to completely wean. . .sometimes we think having a child in our 20's was way too soon. . .sometimes we think waiting until after 40 to have a child was insane. . .sometimes we think we are the only mother on the face of the earth who doesn't have it "together". . .sometimes we think we are every cliche of motherhood that exists.
And other times it becomes crystal clear that the biggest honor and privelege we will ever experience is the opportunity to nurture and mold another human being. And the heartbreaking intimacy, and heroism, and humanity of that undertaking are images not seen in the popular magazines.
Are we looking good! Oh, yeah. . .
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