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3 Tips to Thrive During your Execumama Ride
Sure, my life has undergone some pretty significant changes since my college days. Back then, Warrior Woman might as well have been emblazoned across my forehead, because it was certainly embedded in my brain. After the freshman transition period, I took baby steps toward the woman I have become today. Through the BLESSING that is the Historically Black College and University (HBCU), I was nurtured in an environment of faculty who genuinely cared about me and my place in the world I would inherit post-matriculation. I was pushed past my self-imposed limits to a place where I began to fathom the responsibility I had to those who came before me. Through their sacrifices and tears, I inherited the duties of growth, perseverance, and ultimately the right to prosper. Undoing my pre-college years' training of what life should be, and etching out the particulars of what I wanted life to be, was a paradigm-shifting and empowering period for me, and I know I am among a crowd of many. Multitudes of Warrior Women have completed various rites of passage and are now working towards confidently pulling open their Neiman Marcus work blouses to display the "W" for Warrior, neatly stitched on their H&M tank tops. I am grateful for all of you, and I am grateful for our sorority; one that doesn't restrict us towearing a certain color or making a certain call. Instead it welcomes all of us, when we evolve from Woman-in-training, to Warrior Woman.
At the thirty-one year mile marker, less than ten years since undergrad, I am now benefiting from life's well-taught lessons. What's next? Some of us get married and have children (not necessarily in that order, and so what!), and some of us zero in on our careers and business ventures, leaving little room for “outside” relationships. As Saul Williams put it, I'm still too fly not to fly, so I might still hit up a party every once in a while, and I try to keep myself in the fashion "know" so I can still fight the good fashion fight. But how does Warrior Woman keep her SELF justly relevant in this equation, riddled with the wants and needs of others i.e. work and volunteer projects, bosses, husbands, boyfriends, children? Not unlike many of my sisters, I tend to want to mother the world, and feel that I should -- no must, make myself available to others because that's what my God and my grandmothers would want me to do. I often compare myself to the latter and think, "if they could wash, cook, clean, advise, raise their children's children, comb multiple kinky heads of hair AND impart life lessons via animated old Jamaican folk-tales to me and my 10,000 cousins, then who the heck am I to complain with only 2 children, a husband who actually helps around the house, and the fortune of being my own boss?" Well, we'll get to that shortly, because I'm getting over that particular tendency with each passing day, Honey!
Lately I can see the effects of the work/life changes through my weight gain, sleep deprivation, self-doubt, and that feeling of constantly treading water. So besides biweekly pedicures, a few stints at the gym, and the occasional girlfriend getaway (that takes far too long to plan, and even longer to actually execute), I'm often left wondering what to do to ensure that the life I've created is not chipping away little pieces of my internal self? The self that conducts occasional assessments to gauge whether the route I'm on is making me happy, or the self that takes over and drags me to my weekly African dance or yoga class when my mind is telling me that I'll be losing almost two hours of time if I"slack off" to do things that "ain't making me any money".
Once again, I know I am among a crowd of many, and these points are the roots of conversations that I have with myself more often than I'd like to admit. Not being one to concede without putting up a fight, I chatted and researched my way into a sense of hope. Hope that there are specific steps that an Execumama can take to keep her Warrior Woman tended to, and her "W" tank top washed, pressed and available for sudden display at any given moment.
CHOOSE YOUR LIPSTICKS WISELY.
I’m using lipstick is a code word for project, that is anything that you grant
