"Just"
Can we be "just" one thing or another? Or should "just" be abolished from our vocabulary?
“I feel like I’m striving to rebel against the ‘just being a mom’ thing - but, at the end of the day, my brain only has so much space to contain multitudes.” - Me
“I hear you. I’m trying to figure out where I want the business to end and my life to begin in a way that is feasible, accomplishable, and joyful. I’m with the girls 24 hours a day and I’m being humbled at what that means for my pace and what I can do.” - Laura
I’ve had in-depth, lengthy conversations with a small circle of friends via voice notes over the past few months. It makes me nostalgic for the days of landline telephones when you’d leave long, rambling messages knowing that people would spend the time to hit play once they got back home to hear what you had to say. A brief sliver of time when we had someone’s undivided, rapt attention.
I find that it’s easier to tap and hold the red button within the text message bubble than type out what I want to say. I can spend one or two minutes sharing a stream of consciousness that makes sense and conveys more emotion and vulnerability than a flashing three-dot bubble in text messages ever can. Even deciding whether to keep the message or let it expire and vanish into the void is a delight to me**.
Laura and I have been going back and forth, trading voice messages in the margins of our days. Sometimes when we’re driving to the gym over pot-holed Midwestern roads. Sometimes with shrieking children in the background (in Brendan’s defense, he taught Evie how to sound like a pteranodon). For a week, we were trading insights on the current tension we felt in how to structure our time between our businesses, our individual ambitions, and our kids who are both at the stage where they simply need more of our limited attention.
Laura is the shining model of how a person can enthusiastically embrace the flow of ambiguity - something I have always admired and longed to put into practice. While I like to boast that I’m an open-minded person, I often have a fixed mindset when the stories in my head become personal.
Like the dichotomy of being “just a mom.” I shared with Laura that, in a conversation with a mom from Brendan’s class, I shared that I’m “just a mom” when asked how I’m raising two littles and building a business while consulting and writing a book.
Once the word “just” came out of my mouth, I cringed. I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t take it back. It belittled this mom’s experience by minimizing the conversation, and it trivialized my own internal stress at struggling to make it all work. Instead, I wanted to share how there’s nothing special about me that makes all this work possible. It’s a set of privileges that allows us to give me the space to build
and write the books. And even with childcare secured, a roof over our heads and a small audience platform that I’m growing, it still feels like we’re drowning most days.
“Maybe I should go back to being ‘just a mom’,” I shared, processing all of this as I sent a voice memo to Laura that evening.
“Just” is such a throwaway word in literature, and yet, it packs such a punch in everyday conversations.
Growing up, we were told we could be the U.S. President and mothers at the same time. The dreams of our ancestors were passed onto our broad elder millennial shoulders, calling on the gumption and grit of our Gen X upbringing. The fire was stoked with LEAN IN and somehow we ended up in our 40s with young kids, rising childcare costs, and a global pandemic to contend with. Not to mention that I’m leveraging endless scrolling on social media to compare my work, life and ambition with women in a similar spot with young kids, more generational wealth and bigger business budgets.
“Just” is not the word I want to use. It means that I’m relinquishing my agency to make solid decisions. It feels like a permanent state, instead of the fluid “this is a phase of our life” conversation that Dave and I often have. If I’m “just a mom,” then it feels like there’s no room for anything else.
“Just” is a word often reserved for excuses and dashed dreams. I want none of those for my life, so why did I characterize my business that way?
I’ll tell you why: it’s not possible to do it all. Balance is bullshit, and figuring out what works best for overly ambitious mothers like me is one that requires us to break the status quo and chart a new path - no matter who is telling you what the “status quo” is.
Laura’s response was kind, generous and caring (I mean, she is always those things, so I didn’t expect anything less). She and her husband are in the thick of reimagining one aspect of their business so that Laura can do what she wants to do: bring a truly unique travel experience by building a new model of blending luxury with local customs - all in a way that gives her the space to breathe and thier family the freedom to show their two young daughters all that our world has to offer.
Laura is “just a mom,” giving her daughters the world. I am “just a mom,” showing her kids how sharing their stories can profoundly impact many lives.
There’s no smallness about it. We’re “just” carving out a new story to know the best path for us to take and define our own success instead of what the world deems to be true.
** Friends, I promise that our voice notes will not become a topic for future Unscripted essays. This was shared with Laura’s permission.
Amy’s 3 Favorite Things
Friends, I’m doing something new. Instead of getting your list my definitive must see, must do, must read items, I’m sharing them in a new email on Sunday afternoons via the Unscripted Substack. Our Slow Jazz Sunday series will start this week - more to come!
Instead, I’ll share here about the one thing that would have surely been a favorite thing this week if I could stay awake for it: the surprise of seeing Aurora Borealis from Seattle. Alas, Dave and I are two overly tired parents of small children and couldn’t hang. That said, you should check out Tim Durkin’s footage of it.
I’m cheering you on this week. Where do you feel the confines of being “just” one thing or another? I’d love to know how you’re noticing and breaking free of it. Onward and upward!
oof, I SO hear you. ‘just a mom’ is a big topic, and I appreciate you articulating it here. so often when my business or my son is having a rough minute, my first instinct response is ‘maybe I should just - “ because it’s freaking hard to ‘do it all’. (luckily I have a wonderful cheerleader of a spouse - and also Laura! - to convince me I can do everything I’m trying to do). each of us is just a mom, just a human, just trying to live well and do something worthwhile, and as you said, there’s nothing small about it.