You Gotta Love Michelle

Being back at work this week has reminded me why I like work and why I hate work all at the same time. I love being around smart, talented people and learning new things everyday. Oh, and that paycheck's kinda nice too. Yet I hate getting ready for work, battling traffic, work-related stress, battling traffic all over again to get home and then arriving home exhausted and spent and yet still having to jump right into my primary job of being mommy.

When it comes to the struggles of working moms, Michelle Obama says it best.


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I love it when she says she's losing her mind trying to do it all. I know I certainly am.

Speaking of working moms, all of the major women's/moms organizations -- Momsrising, 9 to 5 Association of Working Women, National Partnership for Women and Families and the National
Organization For Women -- are gearing up for action. Congress is set to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act this week in the House and next week in the Senate. Both are critical to ensuring equal pay for women and for making sure that those that suffer from pay discrimination can take action against their employer. Take a minute, click here to read more about it and click here to send your congressman a note to urge them to vote for these important bills.

You Gotta Love Michelle

It's Up to Us

It continues to strike me that the only way things are ever going to get better for us moms (work-life balance, paid maternity leave, affordable childcare, etc.), and for families in general, is if we take matters into our own hands. Rather than write a whole new post about this, I thought I'd point you to a very old one I wrote more than a year ago.

Go read this. And then while you're at it, you might as well read this. And then make sure you sign up for your email alerts from momsrising.org or the National Organization for Women, 9 to 5 or some other fabulous organization.

I know it's crazy to ask the busiest people on the planet to put "Change the World" on their never-ending to-do list. But someone's got to do it. And, as usual, it's going to have to be us.

It's Up to Us

One Step Forward and Another One Back

When I first started this blog, I imagined creating wonderfully insightful and thought-leading posts about work-life balance issues. Turns out after spending most of my time thinking about how to cure cancer at my day job and trying to be the best mommy I can be the rest of the time, the brilliance just doesn't seem to flow like I thought it would.

But I have been a faithful email activist, keeping up with my action alerts from Momsrising.org, 9 to 5 and the National Organization of Women. I was thrilled to learn a few weeks ago that thanks to some heavy duty lobbying from Momsrising and several other organizations, New Jersey became the third state to pass a law that provides paid leave for workers to care for a sick family member or to bond with a newly born or adopted child. Three down, 47 more to go...I can't wait for this fight to come to Georgia. If you haven't signed up to receive action alerts from at least one of these organizations, you gotta go do it. Go ahead. Do it now. I'll wait till you get back.

At the same time, I was sickened to read that this past week, our federal government let families down yet again when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved cutting a proposed eight weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees to only four weeks. The logic completely escapes me. Our government finally has a chance to prove it's not back-assward by providing American families some much needed support and it can't seem to get it together enough to support its own employees. Talent attrition alone should more than pay for this program, but apparently Committee Republicans argued that supporting this program in a spiraling economy sends a message that our lawmakers are out of touch with American citizens. So instead, they sent the message that they're out of touch with the needs of their own employees. I suppose four weeks is better than nothing, but it's hard to get excited about a program equivalent of holding out a life preserver only to pull it back and yell, "Psyche!"

Clearly the fight for family-friendly work policies is just beginning. Although I won't be leading this fight any time soon, thankfully others are on the forefront. I just stumbled across Washington Post's blog on work-life balance and they offer a super cool widget, now nestled in the sidebar of Up With Moms, so I can offer great work-life balance content even when I'm sidetracked by devotions in soccer or being (NOT) a Top Momma. Or you can read actual thought leaders like MojoMom, who like me is convinced that fixing our corporate infrastructure to support families is the next wave of feminism. Like our predecessors who fought to make it acceptable for women to achieve in the workplace, it's now up to us to make the workplace acceptable for us moms and our dads. Whether you're a thought leader or just a garden variety email activist, New Jersey is proof of the power of moms.

One Step Forward and Another One Back

(No) Time to Activate

Turns out that its alot harder to rid the world of cancer (my day job) AND right the wrongs of corporate America for us moms (oh yeah, AND do that mommy job) than I thought.

Yesterday I got an email from Momsrising.org asking for volunteers to coordinate a meeting with one of our GA Senators to encourage them to pass the Fair Pay Restoration Act. This Act reverses a recent Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear that now gives employees a mere 180 days from the time a pay rate is set to discover heinous and unfair pay discrepancies based on gender, race or other discriminatory factors and to file a claim to right the wrong.

Man, I would have LOVED to have coordinated that meeting. I can just imagine strolling into that Senator's office all fired up, channeling my best Julia Sugarbaker (remember "Designing Women"? Love that show!!!):

"Senator So and So, we're here representing Momsrising.org, Mothers and More and the thousands of hard-working employees here in the state of Georgia who have a high likelihood of experiencing pay discrimination. We are asking that you vote to pass the Fair Pay Restoration Act when it comes up in the Senate. Now we don't know what our distinguished Supreme Court justices were smoking when they ruled on Ledbetter vs. Goodyear, but surely you can see the folly in allowing only 180 days from the time pay is set to file any kind of pay discrimination claim. Because unless you happen to be psychic or lucky enough to stumble upon a pile of your co-workers' pay stubs, there is no way in hell you could discover and prove potentially discriminatory pay practices in that short of a time period!"

Ok, I probably wouldn't say that. But Julia would. Unfortunately, when I looked at my calendar to see when I could hold such a meeting, it was already jam-packed with cancer-fighting meetings. And since I'm actually being paid with money that people have donated from their hard-earned paychecks to fight cancer and not the working mommy issues, I decided I'd better stick to my original schedule.

So, my working mommy issue fighting will have to be limited to signing this Momsrising.org online petition and writing a letter to my Senators ("Dear Backwoods Senator..." Just kidding. I wouldn't write that either) in my off hours for now. I encourage everyone reading this (all 11 of you) to visit Momsrising.org (haven't joined yet...what are you waiting for?) and get involved. They are looking for people in all 50 states to coordinate meetings with their Senators, sign their petition and to express their support of the issue.

Time to activate!

(No) Time to Activate