I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know (34 page)

When your kids are small, you also have to be realistic. Before you go after a new job or a promotion, consider what support systems you have. Ask yourself whether the timing is really right for you. When I became editor in chief of
Working Woman
magazine, I was seven months pregnant with my second child. During the interview with the company CEO, a little voice in my head had whispered that I might be taking on more than I should, especially considering that my husband worked nights as a TV newscaster. A month after I started, I came down with pneumonia and pleurisy, in part, I think, from exhaustion. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t taken that job. I was still young, and other opportunities would have emerged if I’d stayed put for a while.

In other words, don’t bite off more than you can chew.

What about the notion of dropping out temporarily when your kids are small? Certainly many moms toy with this idea, if only briefly. It depends on your needs, your child’s needs, how many kids you have, and the kind of business you’re in. If you’re considering it, but wish you didn’t have to go there, ask yourself if there’s an alternative to dropping out altogether? Part of the reason Letena Lindsay started her own agency was to create a job that would allow her more time with her kids than a corporate job would.

And here’s an interesting insight I heard from Marisa Thalberg, the founder of ExecutiveMoms.com: “Sometimes women tell me that they don’t think it’s worth it for them to continue working because they barely break even once they pay the sitter and their commuting costs. But if you love your job and you’re still even a little bit ahead financially, I believe it’s worth it. Because when you try to return to the workforce years later, you may not regain the ground you lost.”

On the Home Front

One of the smartest things I did as a working mom was to be a sponge around other moms and learn everything I could from them. With the exception of the names of Saturday-night babysitters, they will share all sorts of good info with you and also the strategies that have worked for them. Even consider doing a weekly or biweekly coffee session with other moms where you just swap ideas.

A great piece of advice I heard from a mother pal of mine involved how late to keep up my new baby. I hated the fact that I had so little time with him in the evenings. “Babies don’t have to go to bed at seven or eight o’clock, you know,” she said. “
You
choose the bedtime.” So I did. Until my kids were in school, I kept them up to nine thirty most nights and they took the longest naps in recorded history.

It goes without saying that a good partner can play a vital role in how you pull it all off. Sometimes guys don’t do as much as we need them to because we don’t ask the right way (see “Men, Love, and Success”) or we inadvertently box them out. When I was the editor of
Child
, I learned about a phenomenon women engage in called “gatekeeping.” We’re so overwhelmed with baby love and wanting everything done just right for our newborn that we don’t let our partner in or we constantly critique the way he does things. Then, when we’re finally ready to ask for his help, the damage has been done. Let him in. Then bite your lip if you don’t like how he does things. I remember the first time I went out to run errands on a Saturday afternoon and left my husband with our baby, who was about six months old at the time. “Do
not
,” I told my husband, “let him fall asleep—or he won’t take his regular nap later.” When I returned later, I found the baby sitting up in his high chair, wide-eyed and happy. But his face was crusted with hardened cereal. My husband explained that while Hunter was finishing his cereal, he’d started to nod off, so my husband had playfully let the hair dryer blow on him. I clamped my lips together as hard as I could.

One of the most hectic times you have to deal with as a working mom is when you first walk in the door or pick up your child from day care. Your child is clamoring for your attention or for you to just
be
with him. You want to give that attention, but you probably feel you’d be better able to if you could quickly brush your teeth, leaf through the mail, and throw something into the microwave. But kids don’t get the concept. “At moments like this, I think it pays to be a ‘just-in-time’ mother,” says former
Working Mother
editor in chief Judsen Culbreth. “Put your agenda temporarily aside. Be mindful and in the moment with your child. Those ten minutes on the swing set
now
can save you hours of whining repair later.”

Two other things that help during busy workweeks: systems and rituals.

By systems I mean certain procedures or routines that solve problems. Years ago a friend of mine worked as a nanny for two Oxford dons who were rarely home in the evenings. The kids—a young boy and a girl—had a big lunch each day and then teatime treats, so for supper my friend was instructed to take a wide selection of leftovers from the fridge and put them on the table for the kids to pick from. That meant a lot of taking out and putting back, so my friend told the kids that from now on, three things would be “featured” for supper each night. One night the mother happened to dash through the kitchen and noticed the pared-down fare on the table. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “I’m sure we have leftover ham. And deviled eggs, as well.” “But, Mummy,” the little boy told her, “they’re not being featured tonight.”

I love that story because it highlights how much kids not only adapt to systems but also find them reassuring (as long as they’re not horribly rigid). Systems can be everything from “Stories are read after teeth are brushed” to “Mittens always go in the wicker box by the door.”

Rituals are kind of like systems, but they’re far more fun. Around the time I had my first child, I read a profile of a woman who had been one of the first female powerhouses on Wall Street. The reporter had interviewed her adult children, who said that despite their mother’s demanding job, they’d been very happy growing up. They had always had dinner together as a family, and weekends had been sacred. That made me think about my own working parents and how much regular rituals had played a wonderful part in our life.

Kim Kardashian told me that when she was little, her family followed a nightly ritual called “peak and pit.” At dinnertime, they’d go around the table with each person describing the peak moment of his or her day and then the one moment at which the person felt in the pits. I wish I’d known that one years ago. Rituals are an absolutely delicious part of family life.

Speaking of parents, there’s one other thing my mom did that totally influenced me. She was the school librarian, and she sometimes had me come in and decorate the display windows of the library. I loved doing that so much. So from the time my kids were small, I tried to engage them in my work. For instance, I had them make lists of what celebrities should be on the cover of whatever magazine I was editing. I showed them cover shots and had them pick their favorite ones.

And here’s the funny thing: not only did they like doing these tasks but their judgment was also really good, because as kids, they relied totally on their gut instincts!

One last point. Despite how helpful other mommies often are, you’re bound to come across a few who aren’t. Sometimes, for instance, they can be horribly braggy not only about their kids but also about the perfect life they have set up. Unsolicited comments that begin with the words “We always . . .” or “In our house . . .” should be ignored.

They can also be judgmental, particularly if you work and they don’t. A terrific Hollywood agent I know told me that the parents’ group at her child’s private school recently gave out awards and the one she received was for “World’s Fastest Drop-off.” Pretty damn bitchy, right? But remember, you can’t worry about being liked on this front either.

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Discover Rotisserie Chicken and Other Ways to Keep Life Simple
 
}

W
hen I decided to introduce a food column in
Cosmo
, Katie Lee, the author of the terrific cookbook
The Comfort Table
, seemed to me to be the perfect person to do it, and she agreed. Instantly it became clear that she was a dream to work with, and I loved the recipes she created. They were always delicious but also incredibly easy.

As I got to know Katie, I would sometimes ask her advice about food to serve my family. I know that fast food—pizzas, Subway sandwiches, Chinese food, whatever—can be a real lifesaver for a working mom, but I was never a huge fan of takeout. Sitting down to a good meal was one of the few rituals I could squeeze into my life, and I thought, as long as I’m doing it, I want to do it well. The only problem: I sometimes made myself a little nuts pulling it all together.

One of the best tips Katie Lee gave me was to make rotisserie chicken a part of my repertoire. Have you ever had one of those things? They’re the chickens you see roasting on spits in furnace-size ovens behind the deli counter of most supermarkets. (Try to get beyond the fact that the chickens appear to be in a medieval torture chamber or the ninth circle of Hell.) Once I tried one, I realized that they were flavorful and moist and all you have to do is add a green salad and a baguette to make a simple but hearty weeknight meal. If you want fancier fare, you can roast carrots, potatoes, and onions in a pan in the oven with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and scatter the roasted veggies around the chicken on a platter.

I started having rotisserie chicken regularly. It made dinner
soooo
easy. The chickens also forced me to think about the whole notion of simplicity and how I probably needed more of it in my cooking and home life. I realized that in my quest to serve good food and make entertaining friends and family a priority, I probably guaranteed that things were more complicated than they had to be. When I had friends for dinner, I’d always find myself adding another dish late in the game or coming up with something
extra
to do.

One night in particular jumps out in my memory. I was having friends over for an August barbecue, and I’d planned to serve grilled chicken with corn on the cob and a plate of tomatoes from the farmers’ market. But that afternoon I started thinking I needed more. I’d seen a recipe in the
New York Times
for a salad made of tomatoes and peaches, so I decided to go for it. I spent at least a half hour peeling peaches, and when I served them with the tomatoes it was a big soupy mess. The tomatoes alone, with some great olive oil and basil leaves scattered on top, would have been so much better.

Around the time Katie introduced me to the pluses of rotisserie chicken, I took a trip to Greece with my family. One of my favorite experiences on the trip was eating in the wonderful tavernas that were everywhere. We’d sit outside at a wooden table under trees that created patterns of dappled light. The food was simple but wonderful: grilled meat or fish, good bread, and of course Greek salad made with cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and feta cheese. No complicated sauces or layers.

On the flight back I decided I needed to bring taverna style into my cooking. Rotisserie chicken was one way, but there were others if I kept reminding myself to simplify, to get rid of the peaches layer. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the taverna approach could be applied to life in general. Say no to “complicated sauces” and extra steps. Ask yourself, “Do I really need it?” “Will anyone notice if I don’t do it?”

I really liked this line from one of the blogs of Executive Moms founder Marisa Thalberg (she’s also a beauty industry executive): “Relished stolen coffees and many fabulous dinners with fabulous friends. . . .Cooked at almost none of them.”

Maybe she and her friends just picked up a few rotisserie chickens!

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Take Your Own Sweet Time
 
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W
hen you’re in a demanding career, one of the things you are often in search of is time for yourself. You crave the opportunity to disconnect and relax, and if that time includes a spa treatment involving hot stones and scented oil, all the better. This is especially true when you have young kids. Your hours after work and on weekends are pretty much devoted to them, which means there’s rarely even a spare moment just for you.

When my kids were young, I felt frayed around the edges from having so little time to myself. I used to fantasize about having a day to do my own thing or even going away for a whole weekend with my husband—but I knew it was impossible. My sitter didn’t work weekends, and there were no relatives close by to stay with the kids. Plus because I worked, I believed that weekends needed to remain sacred days just for my kids.

It was only later that I came to see that though big blocks of time to yourself are incredibly satisfying, you don’t need that to feel rejuvenated. Small pockets of time here and there can do wonders if you use them correctly. A writer friend of mine pointed this out to me, and as I began to experiment, I saw how right she was. I’d put too much stock into the concept of a whole day or weekend for myself and had failed to see the value in an hour alone.

I talked about this recently over lunch with Maryam Banikarim, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Gannett (the media company that publishes
USA Today
), and she said that she not only agreed with the concept but also had a name for it: sweet time. “The reality,” she said, “is that you can’t just wait for large chunks of time to come your way. Life is busy—really busy—and we’re perpetually having to multitask.”

So think small. Look for the hour—or even thirty minutes—you can make pleasurable and all yours.

“We talk ourselves out of our restorative moments because we think it has to be a full, weeklong getaway,” says Letena Lindsay, the head of L2 Public Relations and one of my favorite former colleagues. “But it could be years before that happens.”

Sweet time possibilities: your morning shower (use it to enjoy a fragrant body wash rather than fretting about the day ahead), lunchtime (take a walk rather than eating at your desk), the drive home from work (listen to an audiobook), the moment your kids go down for a nap on the weekends (read a book and
then
focus on chores). Banikarim finds airplanes to be one of those rare places where she can still have uninterrupted alone time. “I love to use the trip to read or to watch a movie,” she says.