In the process of identifying new team members for our ever expanding team, I was asked a poignant question that made me pause a bit. Specifically the interviewee asked: How do I balance work and life obligations? I paused mainly because I thought I wasn’t the one being interviewed. I also paused because the question made me take a look at myself. We often ask during interviews what a potential candidate would bring or add to our team. Rarely are we asked ourselves, how do we even balance the said team with our life obligations.
My response: a little over 4 years ago, with the pandemic at its peak, my son and I abandoned everything to focus on ourselves. He gave up on homeschooling. I gave up on work. We both sat back and watched as egg crayons rolled down our hallway. I left him briefly to begin this blog which I created in a matter of minutes via WordPress. I didn’t know what I was doing initially. The intent was simply to ensure that our lives, our stories, were captured as part of the many every day experiences that the pandemic ushered at that time. Fast forward to last year, after navigating a pandemic as well as a series of success, my life seemed pretty stable but my work this time was in crisis. Staff made the decision to move on to other things even as so many new blessings were on the way. Eventually I also made the decision to leave a space that I had, for lack of a better term, outgrown. All this to say that every moment comes with a set of struggle that requires you to assess what is working or not working. At that point, not much was working well.
My children are still under 11 years of age and I have four of them. My husband is a Neuroendovascular surgeon and every single day is life and death for him. All of that weighs heavily on what we call life. We maybe having dinner as a family and a case may require his urgent attention and we have no choice but to understand as he rushes to the hospital. To request his attention is to be in a space between life and death, so the entire family understands. These are the many sides of me few people are aware of. That and the fact that work requires adjustment always. I tend to work with a very transient team. Many come across opportunities that require them to move on. I struggled with that a lot until I began the surrender experiment for myself last fall. It remains the best gift I have given to myself. That and what I do here almost everyday; write.
I do so often not for myself alone, but mainly to surrender to the powers that be. There are still so much I can’t control. Who stays or who leaves or who joins our teams again. Heaven knows I pray for alignment these days as people, are well people. But one thing for sure is I work to ensure balance with work and life. Not just for myself or with my family but in the way I surrender. To me that is the point of it all, how we navigate work or life. There are still so much of what we do that will always be out of our control. Whether we succeed or fail for example. Yet when we let it go. When we look at all sides of the issues and say to ourselves that we have tried our best, that then is how you foster a sense of balance. Things will be out of control always. It’s inevitable. Yet we surrender. We let it all go, like birds flying high to the skies, with our wings outstretched as we glide across the skies. Let it go….