Every Wednesday for two years, I have figured it out.
Not solved it. Not mastered it. Figured. It. Out. Week by week, Wednesday by Wednesday — the day you are mine, the day I am yours, and somehow also the day I am still supposed to be running a company that operates in all 50 states.
When I started Balancing Life’s Issues — more than 30 years ago, out of my actual living room, with actual chaos around me — I made myself a promise. I was going to help build a world where people could be messier and still be effective. Still be productive. Still be professional. A world where the real stuff of life didn’t have to hide behind a closed office door.
And then last week, my phone rang while you were mid-meltdown over a cracker.
“What if they hear him in the background?”
Thirty years later. Founder. CEO. A company I built from nothing. And I still felt it — that little catch in my chest. That split-second calculation. Do I answer? Can I sound professional in five minutes when they’re asking for thirty?
Here’s what I want you to know, my love, when you’re old enough to read this: work/life balance was not solved. Not even close. We talked about it more. We built better language for it. We gave it a nicer name. But the workday is still the same length. The vacation schedule still feels like a negotiation. And somehow — somehow — the conversation feels like it’s gone backwards.
Because work/life balance was never just about childcare. It never was. It’s about paying the bills and going to the doctor and calling the friend you’ve been meaning to call for six weeks. It’s cleaning and cooking and shopping and volunteering and traveling and dreaming — yes, dreaming — about running another 10K that I am probably never going to do but I’m not ready to stop thinking about.
It is the full catastrophe of being a human being who also has a job.
And you, my Wednesday boy, are almost ready for full-day school. I can see it coming. Your world is getting bigger. My Wednesdays are going to change — again — and I will figure that out too.
But before they do, I want to put this in writing. For you. For me. For every person reading this who answered a client call from a parking lot or muted themselves on a Zoom while life happened loudly in the next room.
We did not fail at balance. Balance, as it was sold to us, was never real. What’s real is showing up — fully — for both.
This week’s call to action
Rethink your workday. Be fierce about getting the work done — and equally fierce about showing up for your life. Not one or the other. Both. That’s not balance. That’s wholeness. And it’s always been the point.
With love and a cracker in my pocket,
Wendy
Grandmother. CEO. Still figuring it out.
