by advicefrommarta | Mar 19, 2013 | Education, Family Life
Yesterday my children’s school was on “soft lock down.” There had been a home burglary in the area and the police requested the lock down as a precautionary measure.
I didn’t find out about it until the lock down was over, and I found out about the lock down and the reason for it at the same time, so, I was not worried. I was a little freaked out when I found out that the suspect had last been seen a block from my house, but not too concerned.
I was fine with the lock down. I was fine with my children telling me the difference between a “soft” and “hard” lock down. They were not afraid and I was not afraid.
Last night we got an email from my son’s teacher. She explained what had happened, and how the students had handled it. She said they discussed the differences between the lock downs, and various “what if” scenarios. Then, there was this line, “To be honest, the scariest thing for them was the possibility of being in the dark.”
Of all the things, that made me cry.
My son is in first grade. I can easily pick him up. He still fits perfectly on my lap when we read and I can “puzzle piece” him for a good cuddle. He explains complicated football plays to me and dreams of being a professional athlete. He is a little bit afraid of the dark.
He is the same age as the victims of Newtown. He is afraid of the dark, and they were afraid of the dark. Several months later, it is still too hard to think about. I think that for a long time, we will all be a little bit afraid of the dark.
by advicefrommarta | Mar 15, 2013 | Family Life, Money/Finances
I’ve read articles about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In that make me want to read it. I’ve also read articles that make me want to run away from it. One of the articles I read discussed the idea that women should not turn down career opportunities because they expected to get pregnant. Rather, they should accept opportunities and deal with the potential complications later.
I was thinking what horrible advice this was, that it was the exact opposite of what I did. When I got married I hoped to have kids quickly. I purposely switched careers to find something more flexible. I was feeling smug. Then, I remembered – I’m not a high powered executive. I’m not even a low powered executive. I’m not an executive of any sort, and actually, I don’t want to be.
I want to have meaningful work, that pays me decently and leaves me time to spend with my kids. I imagine there are plenty of women and men who feel the same way. I imagine if you swap “kids” for “family” or “life” there are plenty of single and childless people who feel the same way as well.
In a lot of the discussion of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg people are debating the wrong things. The question isn’t if women should still be able to become CEOs if they take maternity leave. The question isn’t even if parents should be able to reach the highest levels of work life if they take flex time or parental leave.
Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t. There are very few high powered jobs that can be done part time, or 100% from home, or can be achieved if you leave for a year every two years to have a baby. It’s not sexist or anti-feminist to say that people need to make choices about what’s most important to them. It’s sexist for employers (or society) to decide FOR a woman (or a man) that she will or should make certain choices. It’s sexist to deny people the right to make those choices for themselves.
We do not need more ways for women (or men) to have satisfying family lives and very high powered careers. There are relatively few men and women who will ever become CEOs. Worrying about how to get more of one gender or another in those ranks, doesn’t seem that important to me. Learning how to make life more comfortable or balanced for that cohort also doesn’t seem that important to me.
What we do need though is more ways for women and men to have lives that are satisfying both professionally and personally. We need more jobs available to men and women that pay a decent wage without requiring 50 plus hours a week of work.
We need more ways for men and women to do their mid-level and upper-mid-level and low-level jobs and still have time for their families. We need more low-level jobs that pay a decent wage.
Yes, any woman who wants to work 80 hours a week should have just as much a chance at becoming CEO as any man who wants to work 80 hours a week. But honestly, most of us don’t want to do that.
Where are the manifestos for the rest of us?
by advicefrommarta | Mar 1, 2013 | Family Life
This post is part of the Donna Day blogging event to raise money for St. Baldrick’s.
I have been thinking a lot about cancer lately. I’ve been thinking about two children I know and love, who are now both battling Leukemia. I’ve been thinking about a friend I recently became reacquainted with who is recovering from breast cancer. I’ve been thinking about a woman I do not know well, but whose ability to live in peace with herself and nature inspired me to completely change my life twelve years ago. She too was diagnosed with leukemia. Thanks to aggressive chemotherapy she survived, but now, in her thirties she is facing hip replacements and all sorts of other injustices. I’ve been thinking about my dear friends’ son, a boy who shares a name with my own son, a boy who recovered from Stage 4 Liver Cancer, and is now a teenager with severe hearing loss as a side effect of chemotherapy.
I’ve been thinking about cancer in a weird, philosophical way, too. Ronald Reagan first used the word “AIDS” in 1985. I was 15 or 16 and it seemed like for years we were all obsessed with AIDS and the dangers of AIDS. Perhaps it was more my group of friends than others. Perhaps we were right to be obsessed because we did begin to lose our friends in the 1990s. AIDS was an external threat, something that keeping to yourself and tamping down your desires could control. But now it seems that in my life at least, cancer has taken over as the threat. Cancer is harder because it is a threat that is part of us, perhaps living inside us as we type and read this. I feel like that difference must say something about the different eras, something about the way our world has changed, or I have aged.
But I’m not writing about cancer because I think you really want to hear my psycho/social/literary babbling. I’m writing because when I think about cancer I think about Donna, the daughter of friends of mine who died of a brain tumor at the age of four. Because of Donna I’ve learned a horrible truth about healthcare in this day and age. The more popular your disease, the more likely you are to survive it. If you have a “good cancer” like the children I know with ALL Leukemia there’s been a lot of research and so there are a lot of treatments. If you’re unlucky enough not just to have cancer, but to have a less popular form of cancer, you’re forced to fight for funding for research for it. You’re forced to have bake sales and lemonade stands and ask others to “vote” for your cancer in various contests. Because you know, your child’s life is really the same as raising money to go to band camp.
Even though they lost their own child, this is what my friends Sheila and Jeremy, Donna’s parents, do. Here is some of what I’ve learned from them:
- More US children will die from cancer than any other disease, or many other diseases combined;
- Before the age of 20, 1 in 300 boys and 1 in 333 girls will be diagnosed with cancer;
- worldwide, a child is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes;
- the cure rate for the most common form of pediatric cancer, ALL leukemia, is as high as 90%, but most other childhood cancers do not have that success rate. Brain tumors have a 50/50 cure rate, and some, like DIPG, are known to be fatal with no known treatment or cure;
- 73% of kids who survive their cancer will have chronic health problems as a result of their treatment and 42% will suffer severe or life-threatening conditions like secondary cancers.
Information regarding why childhood cancer is so poorly funded can be found here. What you read will shock you.
On March 30, 2013 Jeremy and Sheila, and their Not for Profit, Donna’s Good Things, will be hosting their second annual head shaving event to raise money for childhood cancer research. Last year’s event raised $79,000.
Cancer is terrifying. Some of us have the luxury of sitting around philosophizing about it, others do not. To donate to Donna’s Good Things St. Baldrick’s Event, to help fund research so that more children, even those with unpopular cancers have a fighting chance, follow this link to their team page.
