The Best Part of This, Is This

It may not look like it, but there is an extremely serious business discussion taking place here. My long time client (who gave me permission to post this, of course) was relaying some pretty agonizing measures she has had to consider in order to avoid having to furlough her staff in the wake of the governor of Virginia's stay at home order. She, like may others, have been talking about how difficult it has been to run her company remotely while home schooling her children. The fact that I am grinning from ear to ear while she pours her heart out may seem highly inappropriate at first glance, but to me, this picture is the best part of what COVID-19 has done for our business landscape to date.

Before you start calling me tone deaf, let me explain. I facilitate confidential peer advisory boards for a living. In fact, there were other CEO clients on this call helping brainstorm ways to weather this COVID (shit show, er, I mean) storm. However, I cropped them out of the shot, mostly to maintain confidentiality, but also, because I wanted to take a moment to focus on the significance of this image. Watching Stacy's daughter calmly and quietly brush her mom's hair while CEO Stacy relayed this nightmare that she has been living as a business owner, made me know in my heart of hearts that everything was going to be OK. Why? Because Stacy is a working American parent and therefore, there is nothing (seriously, nothing) she can't do!

It is hard to believe that only four short months ago, I gasped out loud as I watched Abigail Spanberger pick up her 4 year old daughter as she gave her acceptance speech after winning Virginia's congressional seat. To this day, the picture of that moment brings tears to my eyes. In my entire career, I had never seen something that exemplified the ability of a working mother to accomplish absolutely anything she sets her mind to, without neglecting her children, or apologizing for their existence. (I tried to cite this image, but it was so widely published that I was unable to locate the original source). I still cannot exactly put it into words what this felt like to me but it was a moment I will never forget. That is, until last week, when I sat on a Zoom meeting with my amazing client and listened to her strategize ways to get her employees and her clients through this worldwide pandemic, while her child quietly waited for her mom to finish her work call.

Eventually, this too shall pass. But I can now picture a post COVID culture where we won't have to pretend like our kids don't exist during business hours. Maybe after this, we won't have to go back to a time where we felt the need to apologize for having to leave early to take our children to practice or to the doctor. For those of us stuck at home, maybe the best part of working in quarantine is that we have been able to demonstrate first hand that you can actually accomplish both things (work and kids) well, and at the same time. Working parents everywhere have always juggled both successfully, but they did so in secret, behind the scenes, as anything else was deemed to be unprofessional. That is one of the biggest reasons that I left my lucrative corporate career to become a small business owner, where I would work twice as many hours for half the pay, but I could do so on my own terms and around my families' ever changing schedules. That to me was worth giving up my work life as I knew it, and I hope that no one ever has to make that decision, to leave a career they love for children that they love more, again after this. So working parents of America, both the mothers and the fathers, you got this! Keep doing what you're doing. I will be here (with my kids in the next room), cheering you on.