My Balancing Act: Never Perfect, Always a Work in Progress

On my first day back from my second maternity leave, my husband sent me a video of my two sons at home, wishing me good luck. Well, he coached my two-year-old to say good luck while my three-month-old baby blinked cutely. It brought tears to my eyes. It made me want to run home. Instead, I told myself I was going to kick butt at work that day and make it count.

I'm now in my second week back from maternity leave. Every day is relentless, exhilarating, exhausting. I'm hosting two television shows, moderating panels, networking at night, and preparing for international business trips. This while I’m still waking up twice a night to feed the baby, pumping twice a day, picking my first son up from preschool in time to make it home before my second son goes to bed, not to mention planning meals and making sure my cats don’t starve. (The plants already died, sadly.)

There are more working moms today than ever. How do they do it? I’m still trying to figure it out but each and every one of them is my hero.

In fact, being pregnant the second time was actually harder than the first. I waited even longer to tell my bosses and my team that I was expecting. I worried even more about missing out on opportunities. I took my full three months of leave but checked email incessantly, sometimes many times a day. I answered work phone calls. I wrote stories. I even came in for a few big interviews. This was my choice, but why did I do it? I asked myself that question every day. I scolded myself every time I logged on, yet there I was checking email again the next day.

Now that I’m back at work, there’s an ever-present sense of guilt that I’m not working hard enough, and that I’m not home long enough. I am lucky enough to work at a company with generous benefits and understanding colleagues, yet I worry about the statistics. Did you know women earn 4 percent less for every child they bear yet men earn 6 percent more? Or that fathers are more likely to be hired and perceived as more competent and stable than mothers? Or that women with kids are held to higher performance standards?

As I write this, my husband (who is incredibly present for myself and our kids) is headed to New York for a last-minute business trip. We had to scramble back-up child care. What about those people who can’t afford child care at all?

As hard as it is for me, I know it’s hard for my husband too. He has his own career, and his own ambitions; yet he wants to support mine and see our children. Men are spending three times as much time with their kids as dads did a generation ago. Yet studies show men who interrupt work for family reasons earn significantly less when they return. Men who take family leave are even perceived as unmasculine and less committed. That's right, there are conflicting trends and nobody wins.

That’s why men are part of this conversation too. On Thursday, it is my honor to speak at the Virgin Disruptors conference with some of the most successful women and men in our industry about the great work-family-life balancing act we all perform every day. I will join Virgin Founder Richard Branson, Facebook COO and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, Yahoo’s Chief Development Officer Jackie Reses, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh and Gallup CEO Jim Clifton for a conversation about well-being in the workplace — and at what cost.

We may not have all the answers but we are trying to get to a better place. I hope you guys watch the Virgin Disruptors live-stream on Thursday at 12 pm PT, send me your thoughts, and keep the conversation going.

I will also be sitting down with Sheryl Sandberg and Richard Branson for an exclusive interview. You can catch that discussion on Friday on Bloomberg Television in a Bloomberg West special, "Balancing Act," on Friday 8:30 p.m. ET/PT and streaming at Bloomberg.com/tv.