Can we or can’t we have it all?

When I had my first baby, I had absolutely no idea about the concept of ‘having it all’. I just wanted to get that baby out and was happy about the fact that I would get paid maternity leave and have a job to return to. I was in my 20s, full of energy to conquer London, my career, motherhood, and marriage. Some of it worked out...

When I had my second, I was a little more informed, a little closer to my 30s, and had acquired real-life experience of what it takes to be a working parent, particularly a working mom. I knew it was hard, but I felt well-equipped.

By the time I had my third child, I was in my late 30s, a divorcee, in an exciting new relationship, and newly promoted to a senior HR job that stretched and challenged me A LOT.

I’m not sure when the lightbulb went off for me that being a working, career-focused mom really is a hard and sometimes impossible challenge. Maybe it was when I was so stressed that I developed a skin infection, leaving me with a scar on my face. Most likely, it was due to simultaneously handling a baby who just would not sleep and a complex global restructure—going from changing nappies at 3 am and having a little post-partum cry at 6 am to having conversations with a hundred people, telling them they had lost their jobs at 2 pm. Perhaps it was when I shouted at the older boys (again!) to get their shoes on and get in the car at 7 am. Or maybe it was when, for the fifth time that month, I missed a school email and didn’t look inside the school bag - and my child had to go to school with no Easter bonnet nor knew their lines for the school play. Or perhaps it was the general underlying feeling of failure following me like a shadow.

At one point, these moments of hardship and fog added up to a decision. As a full-time working mother of three, I made a conscious choice to become purposeful about how I parent and how I work, and set some serious boundaries—establishing new, and sometimes lower, expectations for myself (one of the harder things to do for me!). The lightbulb moment for me was realising that the definition of ‘having it all’ can be very much personalised. It will be different for different people. My ‘all’ is neither better nor worse than yours. It’s just different. If I know how I define it for myself, and I’m clear on the boundaries and expectations that come with it, I can actually have my own version of ‘having it all’. Grace, occasional video calls with my mom, and looking after my physical body have been my good friends along the way too.

My biggest learning over 15 years of being a parent is to give myself space to do what I need to do on that day. It won’t feel like I did ‘it all’ every single day. And that’s okay. But looking across the week, and sometimes a month if times have been really hard, helps keep an eye on how I’m tracking. It allows me to see if I’m above or under water, and to flex up or down and ask for help. It also means saying no and being okay with it.