Category: career

On Fire

Dr. Mama Esq.4 Comments

by Amanda Enayati

There is a pile here: two big boxes and three large envelopes. The boxes are stamped Penguin Random House and the envelopes are from Simon Schuster. The boxes contain my first book, due to be released in early March. The envelopes contain a book I contributed a chapter to, alongside a slew of well-known and bestselling authors.

They’ve been sitting in the corner for weeks now, unopened.

“Why won’t you open them?” My ten-year-old daughter has asked me more than once.

“I don’t know. I’m waiting for a sign,” I’ve said more than once.

Truth is, I’m terrified.

I spent so many years bum-rushing the gate that it never occurred to me to think through what would happen if it ever opened.

What if I made mistakes? What if it sucks? What if everyone hates my book? What if everyone hates me? What if what if what if what if …

I snatched my book, which is about stress and what it can teach us about how to live, from the jaws of time. I wrote it while taking care of two kids, dropping off, picking up, helping with homework, buying groceries, making dinner, washing dishes, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, working part-time at a consulting gig — and without hired help because, shit, that’s expensive and it’s either childcare or the kids’ music classes. I know most of you won’t bat an eyelash at any of this, because you’re doing exactly the same thing (and much more) yourselves.

So why don’t I feel like I’m enough? Why am I spending so much of what should be a glorious moment of triumph huddled in an imaginary corner, biting my nails, envisioning worst-case scenarios, fearing disaster? What if what if what if …

I suspect my stories. I do. I think we get these stories early on. They are handed to us by our parents, our families, our communities, our ancestors, our friends, our media. And we walk through our entire lives, sticking to these scripts. Often blindly. And if your stories are not good ones, if they don’t serve you, well …

At this point, I have a pretty good sense of my script. And in many ways I have managed to flip it. The past is just a story we tell ourselves. I have learned how to create better stories—great stories sometimes—stories that help me, that serve me. Being a child refugee from a revolution; living for years without a country or your immediate family; not fitting in; being called ugly over and over again because you’re too dark, too foreign; suffering from PTSD after 9/11; almost dying from cancer—in my new stories, all of these are strengths. They are superpowers. They make me special. They make me different. They make my book different than the scores written by the supremely privileged whose advice I just. can’t. relate. to.

But I also know that I have to remain conscious, in the moment, mindful, on guard, because the old stories, the toxic ones, are there, ready to kick me down and keep me there.

I think of how my kids move through the world sometimes. I marvel at them. How they own the moments; how they relish the joys and successes; how they examine the failures; how they don’t take any of it personally; how they keep a sense of humor about most things. I raised these two. I told them about the bad stories. Warned them not to believe the bullshit. To hand it back to where it came from and say: “No, thank you.” To write their own stories. I want so badly to be like my children.

The book, Seeking Serenity, comes out in two weeks. It’s time: the best of times, the worst of times. It’s now.

I am out there battling the dragons, quieting voices of defeat, countering them with new narratives. And I know I’m winning because these lands I find myself in are new. I have never ever seen them before.

Yesterday I had a companion. And as battle raged, she sang to me.

“She’s living in a world and it’s on fire,” she sang.

“She’s got both feet on the ground … She got her head in the clouds. And she’s not backing down.”

Yes, I replied, yes, Ms. Alicia Keys.

This girl is on fire, we sang together, she’s on fire. She is she is she is she is she is.

Today. Maybe today is the day I will open the boxes.

Amanda Enayati is a columnist, author and speaker whose essays about stress, happiness, creativity, technology and identity have appeared widely. Her book, Seeking Serenity, will be published in March 2015. You can find her on Facebook or Twitter.

New Blog: Dr. Mama Esq.

Dr. Mama Esq.Leave a comment

New Blog: Dr. Mama Esq.

10392312_10204426183079730_1887093800961163343_nI have a new blog: Dr. Mama Esq.!

I recently graduated from Stanford with a JD/PhD, and I know that my journey as a black mother and professional may be inspiring to others. Over there, I am sharing my experiences as a young black mother and wife with mental health issues and three kids in a top graduate program. If you love CocoaMamas, please subscribe to Dr. Mama Esq. This site will stay open, but posting will likely be quite light here while I focus on this new endeavor. But I will continue to share my thoughts on raising black children in a world that is often hostile to their very existence. It will just be on the other site 🙂

I hope to see many of you there.

 

she’s always in my head

Dr. Mama Esq.4 Comments

The mommy wars are battling in my head. They sound something like this:

he's not really choking her...lol

I can’t believe you chose to work this summer. You hardly get to see your children. I enjoy working. The two hours I spend with my kids in the morning are really great. It’s true that I don’t always get to see them before they go to bed…What kind of mother are you? You don’t get to see them go to bed, read them that story, even tell them you love them? That’s just a shame. Well, yes, it is sad that I don’t do that during the week, but by working, I’m bringing in much needed income so they can have other things…What is more needed than a mother’s love and time? Money can’t…Yes, but, they spend the majority of their time in preschool anyway, where they are very happy, happier, I think, than if they were sitting at home with me all day. And they are really well adjusted kids, who have tons of friends but still are attached to their parents. I think we have a great balance…Balance? You think it’s balanced to have other people – strangers really – raising your kids? Haven’t you noticed some of the bad habits they’ve picked up from these so-called friends? Well, yes, but…But nothing! You’ve abdicated the responsibility of raising your children to someone else, who isn’t necessarily doing a good job! And you didn’t have to – you chose to! Didn’t your son just ask the other night if you could come home earlier so you could read him a book before he goes to sleep? How did that make you feel?? Well, awful…

The lady in red has a lot to say.

When I decided I wanted to go from my PhD and JD and become an academic, it was for a myriad of reasons. Primarily it was for the lifestyle – the ability to do what I wanted as a career – study what I wanted, make my own life. It was also because I’m generally not a good employee. I don’t respect authority the way I “should,” I don’t like bureaucracy, I don’t kiss a$$, I don’t like small talk, I don’t do face time.

But I also knew that I wanted to work. Being a stay-at-home mom was never an option for me. From the perspective that I grew up with, a black woman who didn’t work was lazy, no matter how many kids she had or how much money her partner made. “Leave It To Beaver”‘s mom was not our reality; Claire Huxtable was. And furthermore, if you didn’t work as a black mother, then you thought you were “better than” the rest of us, with your nose turned up and all. Truth be told, it was not until I moved here, to this very wealthy suburb, that I even knew black mothers who didn’t work. I did not know any black mothers who had nannies or au pairs. And for me, even if the money was flowing copiously, as fascinating as they could be, being immersed in little people’s lives constantly is not engaging or enriching enough for me. And planning charity events would not be either.

This summer, I’m working a 9-to-5 to get a sense of what I might be missing by only going academic. And while I thought I would really not like it so much because of the bureaucracy, face time requirements, and other general BS, it’s really been the lack of time that I can spend with my kids that has really been the largest drawback.

And that’s a huge surprise to me.

At least in grad school, I’ve been a quasi-stay-at-home mom. Working around my class schedule, I can co-op at the preschool, pick my kids up from school in the middle of the day, be available to pick up a sick kid, skip class if I really need to. While I know being an academic is more structured than my life currently, I still see that lifestyle as much more flexible than being an associate at a law firm or working a 9-to-5.

But I’m still working. And hence the mommy wars are constantly going at it in my head.

The mommy wars are partly about privilege, and I think no woman can see the gift and the curse of working and having children more than a black woman. For me, being in this profession as a huge privilege, a privilege that feels uncomfortable. There are very few female law professors. There are even fewer black female law professors. And there are even fewer black female law professors with PhDs. I am (or will be) a rarity. And being rare, in academia sometimes, is a privilege. It’s hard to admit your privilege, especially when you understand the structure of opportunity in our society. Especially when you do not come from a historical place of privilege, and most of your family is not there with you. Yes, I’ve worked hard and yes, I’m bright, but I also had opportunities that had nothing to do with who I am but everything to do with where I happened to be, the chance of being born to certain parents and interacting with certain people who gave me a chance.

It seems that sometimes the meme of being Black in America is that we have to live the life that’s been handed to us. Especially for black women, especially for black mothers, not working a 9-to-5, or a 8-to-6, or a 7-to-7, as I remember my mom doing, is not an option. We, as black women, pride ourselves on working, pride ourselves on doing everything, pride ourselves on not being indulgent or lazy – sometimes taking that to mean that we should be at the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to taking care of needs. And at one point this was our only reality. We had no choice.

These messages taught me to believe that even if I wanted to not work, being able to live the life that I’ve fashioned for myself feels…wrong. That to decide to use my talents to make life a little easier on myself is somehow…lazy.  And being on the “side” of the mommy wars that favors being at home more than being at work, well, that just feels like being a traitor.

I didn’t write this because I have an answer. Five years into this mommy thing and thirty into this black woman thing, and I’m still just trying to ask the right questions.

I Believe The Children Are Our Future

Dr. Mama Esq.6 Comments

Teach them well and let them lead the way

Has education in this country ever properly served black children? Sadly, the answer is no. Never has the education system in the United States provide black children with a equal and adequate opportunity to learn and succeed in this country. But still, we fight.

Show them all the beauty they possess inside

This summer I am engaged in two projects of education reform, and I’ve never been more excited to change the world. Not the entire world, but my world. The world that I live in, a world in which very few numbers of black children are suffering in school districts that are failing them. A world into which my two little brown babies will enter, one this year. A world that does not value them. A world that does not believe they can learn. A world that considers them expendable.

Give them a sense of pride to make it easier

The first fight is in San Francisco Unified Public School’s special education department. EdTrust West gave them a “D” when it comes to educating low-income children and children of color. The achievement gap between white students and students of color in SF rank them near the bottom (144 out of 146) of California school districts for both low-income students and students of color. One large reason for that is their special education program. Like many large urban school districts, they enroll disproportionate numbers of black and Latino children in special education, and specifically enroll Black boys in a category of special education called “emotional disturbance” at a rate of 7 times that of other children. Special education in SF is generally an educational wasteland once one is placed in it; while children are supposed to be educated with their same-age peers in non-special ed classes as much as possible, in actuality they are segregated amongst themselves receiving a subpar education that does not challenge them and that leaves them unprepared to lead productive lives after graduation. My job this summer is to analyze their data to provide a solid, clear picture of where they are now and provide guidance as to where they need to focus their efforts to get better. I’m working through an awesome organization called Education Pioneers, which brings together grad students with extensive work experience prior to grad school to work on high impact projects in education reform.

Let the children’s laughter remind us how it used to be

My second fight is at home, right here in Palo Alto. While students of color do well compared to other students of color in the state, the achievement gaps are still huge. Part of the problem here has to do with the fact that 50% of black students in Palo Alto aren’t eligible to attend California’s state universities after graduating from high school. To get into a University of California or California State University, one has to have satisfied something called the “A-G” requirements in high school. Many high schools in California align their graduation requirements with these A-G requirements to make sure every graduate can go to one of these colleges. But not Palo Alto.

Why? Because many of the classes they offer are above what is required by A-G; to offer what would be required by A-G would be, according to some teachers, “dumbing down” of the curriculum. Students don’t take what is required to meet A-G because the classes are too hard. Parents put their kids in summer tutoring and afterschool tutoring just to be prepared for, and pass the class. If a parent cannot afford, or isn’t hip to the tutoring game, then a student will have a hard time even getting through the basic-classes-that-arent-really-basic. Instead of seeing alignment as an opportunity for equity, where a regular class can be added, and the steroids class can be made into a honors, so that there are classes are accessible to all students, the teachers are floating the thinly veiled racial rhetoric of lowering standards.

I decided long ago

Never to walk in any one’s shadow

So I am just all over education news, education articles, education blogs. Someone asked me, given my wild and crazy career path to where I am now, how I got to education as a passion. And the truth is, it wasn’t a passion really until I had children. I didn’t even like kids! But the funny thing is, as soon as I had my children, I started to feel like ALL children are my children. Rather than feeling selfish about securing educational benefits for my kids, I feel like I need to secure educational opportunity for all kids. My heart aches for every child. I never imagined I would feel this way.

If I fail, If I succeed

At least I lived as I believed

I started my SF job yesterday. An hour commute both ways. I collapsed in my bed last night. Tonight, after work, there is a Palo Alto school board meeting. I’ll be there. I’ll be there.

No matter what they take from me

They can’t take away my dignity

Because the greatest love of all is happening to me

The greastest love of all is inside of me

~ The Greatest Love of All, Micheal Masser and Linda Creed

Single Mommy Blues

carolynedgar8 Comments

It seems we mothers spend a lot of time – and ink – talking about how hard it is to be a mother.

Numerous books, parenting blogs and websites are devoted to the topic. On playgrounds and playdates, mothers huddle together and talk about how incredibly difficult this motherhood game really is.

And yet the voices of some of us mothers mostly remain unheard.

The point of this post is not to compare notes to see which moms have it worst. Mothering is hard. It’s hard whether you’re single or married, whether you’re successfully co-parenting with a cooperative ex, or doing it all by yourself, whether you have the help of a village or only the help you are able to pay for.

But I want to talk about the special hardships faced by single mothers who are doing it alone. Really alone. Without the help of a reliable spouse, co-parent, or a network of friends or family members who pitch in whenever possible.

For several years after my divorce, I sacrificed having a personal life for the sake of my kids. Weekends were consumed by soccer, gymnastics, baseball, softball, tennis, golf, ice skating – you name an activity, we probably tried it. Dating? Hah! I wasn’t ready. Focusing on the kids was a great way to avoid thinking about how badly I’d flubbed the whole “picking the right partner” thing.

I didn’t become SuperMom because I wanted to. I did it because I lacked an alternative. I live in New York City. My family is in Michigan. My ex-husband was – and is -absent and uninvolved.

I had the help I was willing to pay for. I paid full-time rates for part-time babysitters to ensure I had someone to pick the kids up from school and care for them on half-days and school holidays. The extra expense killed my budget, but my work schedule was too demanding to enable me to rely on afterschool programs.

Recently, I tried co-parenting with my ex-husband, an experiment that now seems short-lived. His last overnight visit with the kids was New Year’s weekend. He is too unreliable to keep a regular visiting schedule, and I don’t have the energy to deal with the litany of excuses.

Although single parenting would be tough even if I worked at home, my demanding executive job makes the juggling even more difficult. Plus, in addition to my day job, I do speaking enagements and lectures. I write, for this blog and others, on my own time.

I even finally started dating again.

The writing, the dating, the lecturing, and some occasional exercise are things I do for myself. But they take away from the time I spend with my kids. I can no longer devote every weekend to their activities. And I feel incredibly guilty about it.

For example: my son is a natural baseball talent. Yet I don’t have time to take him to a baseball coach to work on his skills. I don’t have time – or a good enough pitching/throwing arm – to take him to the park and help him work on his catching, fielding and hitting. I haven’t found time to have him try out for a travel team – and even if he did, I’m not sure I would be able to haul him around from game to game.

His father, who played baseball in high school, takes no interest in his son’s baseball development. I get angry about this sometimes, and then I realize being angry is futile.

Well-meaning friends tell me to stop beating up on myself. They tell me to focus on the fact that, all by myself, I have raised smart, independent thinkers who are thriving in some of New York City’s most competitive schools.

I do acknowledge my blessings. But still, I’m tired. So please forgive me for indulging in a bit of whining.

Mothering is hard for all mothers. It is especially hard for us single women who are parenting completely by ourselves. And because we’re so used to doing everything all by ourselves, we don’t ask for help easily. Or always know how to accept it graciously, without constantly thanking the person who agreed to step in for us. Or apologizing for being burdensome.

So if you know a single mom who parents by herself, maybe you can offer her a little help. If your kids are friends, maybe you can offer to pick her kid up from school and host a playdate at your house. Or you can invite her kid to a weekend playdate or sleepover. Let her be the last parent to pick up her child from the birthday party. Because whether she says it or not, she values every single moment she gets to spend by herself. But she may not feel she has the right to ask for that time.

And try not to get too annoyed when she keeps saying “thank you.”

Back In the Game

nazie2 Comments

My baby turned six yesterday. And though it was a day like any other, this particular birthday felt significant. When my daughter was born six years ago, I stopped working. I had always felt that the first five years in a child’s life are significant and wanted to be around for them, though it felt like such a luxury for us to try to live on one income alone.

 

And though I admitted it to no one, it was good timing in other ways. I had been working in a career I disliked for so long without really knowing how to shift direction into another industry I longed to be a part of. The baby provided a perfect excuse for me to step off that first roller coaster and reassess, though I assured myself and my husband that I would stay home for only one year only before I would start looking for another job.

 

A year and half later, my second baby was born and that stretched out my hiatus for another year and a half. And then we moved and then life happened in all its messy, dramatic glory. Six years later and my baby girl is preparing to enter first grade in a few months and my boy will turn five several months later. And I’m back at that same place I was six years ago, albeit with a few more gray hairs, and three or four more suitcases’ worth of life baggage.

 

I’m getting ready to step back into the race, though this time I have more clarity about what I want and maybe even more audacity. I’m intent on trying to connect to my purpose, to be of some sort of service to humanity, and to do what makes me happy. And though I’m doing it all for myself, a part of me knows how important it is for my children to have a mother who is fulfilled, productive and happy.

 

And if I fail … well, maybe it is equally important for my kids to see how important it is to reach for the stars, even if you can’t always touch them.

She Works Hard For The Money

Benee20 Comments

I am a working mom. I LOVE working. I LOVE being a mom. I have found a way to be successful at both in ways that allign with my own personal definitions of success.

There are many forums in which mothers from all over have the great Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) versus Work Out of Home Mom (WOHM) debate. SAHMs argue that WOHMs should not have had kids if they did not want to be around them and raise them full-time. WOHMs argue that they should not have to sacrifice having careers to be mothers or vice versa.  Some SAHMs can afford to stay home, as their partners earn enough income to cover all of their expense and luxuries. Some SAHMs are struggling to make ends meet, some even relying on government assistance. Some WOHMs work because they can’t afford not to, while others do it for the love of having a career and doing something stimulating and engaging. Then there are the minority WAHMs (Work at Home Moms), women who have managed to have both careers/jobs and be able to stay at home with their children full-time. They chime in, but those numbers are so much smaller than the other two groups.

I realized when my son was 5 months old that I am not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother, at least not in the capacity I was one.  His father and I discussed the idea of me staying home for the first year of his life and I said I’d try it. I don’t know if the Post Partum Depression had anything to do with it, our financial struggles going from two paychecks to one, or something else, but after about 3 months, I’d reached the “This shit is for the birds” point. By 5 months, I was so eager to get out of the house that when he came home, I’d be dressed and ready to rush out to do something, ANYTHING. I craved adult interaction, time away from my infant, and something else to do that made me feel like I was important and not just a waste of good air.

Because being a mom wasn’t important enough, right?

I loved my son, but I felt like my life was being wasted just sitting at home feeding, burping, and changing him. I didn’t go to school just to stay home and be someone’s mama, right? God, that sounds so horrible. What’s wrong with me?  My mother even, as she was sick and frail, said to me, “Are you going to waste all of that education sitting at home? If I had known you were going to end up like this, I would have saved my money”  (You see where I get it from lol)

It made me feel like I had more to do with my intelligence, skills, and capabilities. So I went back to work, finished my Master’s Degree, and have since been strongly building upon the career foundation I set pre-motherhood. I couldn’t be happier with that decision because: 1)I love what I do; 2) I love feeling useful; 3) I love feeling like I’m contributing to the overall improvement of society; 4) I love feeling influential and managerial; 5) I love the adult interaction; 6)I love having the time and space to be “Benee”, not simply “Mommy”.

How is it that some of us are perfectly content staying home with kids, taking care of the home, relying on our significant others for material resources, and some of us prefer to work hard at our educations, careers, networking, climbing ladders, etc?  What about the women who get the education, have great careers, and just walk away from it all to become SAHMs? How does a woman come to prefer one or the other? It is reliant upon how she was socialized and/or nurtured? Is it the influence of the examples set by the females in her life? Is it racial/ethnic/cultural? Socioeconomically-based? What is it?  I’d love for people to weigh in on this.

For me, every woman who has ever had any influence on my life and the decisions therein has been a working woman. Not necessarily a highly educated working woman, but a worker nonetheless. Also, I did not grow up with many positive examples of loving, enduring couples or have much exposure to families headed by a man.  Most families I knew were headed by women, with men in and out of the picture sparsely. The only long-married people I knew were in my grandparents’ generation and their happiness is always debatable. That’s another blog though…

So, here I am and I work. I’m not independently wealthy. I’m not interested in being dependent upon government assistance. I want to be a positive role model for my son and in my opinion, a strong work ethic is one of the most admirable qualities a person can have.  So, I go to work, earn my living, and strive to grow and climb higher in my field. I rely on myself financially, make my own financial decisions, and feel empowered by the ability to do so.

This is not to say that under the right circumstances, I would not redirect my focus towards caring for my home, my partner, and my children. I was willing to do it once, so I know I would be willing to do it again. I do feel, deep inside, the desire, need, and even obligation to take care of my family and home. What a paradox lol  But there is something in me that fears being 100% financially dependent upon a significant other. I’ve borne witness to TOO many horrible outcomes from these situations where the women are left destitute, alone, suffering/struggling with the children with barely the clothes on their backs because one day, their husbands decided they were done. I’d have too many stipulations and the man would probably be like “Nevermind. Go work!”

Some argue that means I do not trust my partner 100% and I would disagree; it is not so much about how I feel about my partner so much as how great my desire to always be able to care for and protect myself and my kids overshadows any emotions for or attachments to someone else. Then there is the need to have something just for me. I will not apologize for wanting something of my own.

So, I continue to work.

+++++++++

Check out: Mocha Moms

A Hot CocoaMama

Tanji11 Comments

I said I was going to do better. Since the new year I’ve been waking up my eyes with my favorite Lash Extract mascara and some black eyeliner. I found a new “formula” for my hair that includes Miss Jessie’s curly pudding, and Carol’s Daughter’s Hair Milk and Twi Leave-In Conditioner. It is, admittedly, the first time my natural hair hasn’t looked (as) dry since my Momma was doing my twists, lovingly and meticulously, with B&B.

I’ve been hot recently 🙂 I presented a paper at MLA in some cute black leggings, my favorite purple dress and the mandatory tweed blazer; my version of the academic staple was fitted, and had the cutest coordinated hues of purple, pink and white. I even rocked my purple snakeskin pumps just to shake the boys up a bit.

Truth is I’ve been back and forth lately about how to “dress the part.” I spent the last three years on my feet/game in D.C. public schools, where jeans and sneaks often get you in the mood. Comfortable and relaxed I approached my day, energized, organized and with my sleeves rolled up, getting dirty with the best of ‘em. I was never as fly as my artsy, fashionista students, male and female, or as “professional” as my suited up veteran colleagues, but my look got the job done.

Over the winter break, in anticipation of my first class as “Dr. Me,” I cashed in on a merchandise credit at Tiffany’s and bought “everyday jewelry,” because I’ve found that looking plain has its perks. I am often the younger teacher that gets “mistaken,” for the student at work. Furthermore, the Plain Jane mommy routine does numbers when you are trying to get medical professionals to class you as warm, caring, educated and motivated, and you really need them to stop stigmatizing you and give the expertise your children need. I know . . . crazy!

All that being said I wish I was still turning heads, particularly mine, and then my husband’s, in that order 🙂 I have this homegirl who has been putting me to shame for years!!!!! The other day I needed her bad, and she always comes through. My daughter was admitted to the hospital for “failure to thrive,” my two-year-old son was tearing up the place with “failure to stop cutting the f*%K up,” and my husband and I needed him gone! She came and rescued both of us on green stiletto pumps, in cute tight jeans, and with a full face of perfectly applied/neutral makeup. Her hair was in an upsweep, cause she knew she didn’t have that kind of time, but even the upsweep was still as eye-catching as the A-line on her trendy, grey coat.

She and I have talked about this!!! A few months ago, while driving cross-country, I confessed how boring and tired I think I look, and told her truthfully how I admired how absolutely flawless she always is, even though I have known for forever that it takes her waayyyy tooooooooo long in the bathroom. She told me, like a true friend, that I needed to take more time to care for myself, and that I was probably putting too much time into caring for my kids and my book project. She also told me what the hell she does for that long in the bathroom, and though the details are now fuzzy, it had something to do with exfoliating and pumice stones.

Often when I go to the barbershop to take years off my face with a razor blade eyebrow arch I tell my barber, Omar, and longtime friend, that I remember when I was cute. It’s normally couched in some conversation about how adorable his new wash girl is, or a tender quip at his receding hairline. He tells me that I’m still cute, which I know is to make me feel better, but thank God it works. I would love to feel that good all that time, and know that I really brought it on.