Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - A Revolution for Women's Work and Ambition with Neha Ruch

00:00:01.000 Hello. You are listening to Under the Influence, and I'm Jo Piazza. I'm going to make some

00:00:07.840 bold statements today, and I think that's okay, because now is really a time for some

00:00:14.640 effing boldness, okay? Okay? We are at a cultural inflection point. A cultural inflection point

00:00:22.200 for women and for motherhood. You could even say that we might be on the cusp of a new

00:00:28.180 breed of mommy wars, pitting women who work inside the home against the women who work in 0.97

00:00:33.820 the corporate world. I hate this for us. I freaking hate it. And I hate it because now

00:00:41.180 is a time when we need to work together more than ever. We can use this time when there's so much

00:00:47.600 chaos in our world to create an entirely new way of thinking and a new way of working that will

00:00:54.340 benefit women, mothers, and all caregivers. The worlds of work and labor have been shaped by men

00:01:01.080 for way too long. We have to change that. We do. My guest today is actively working to change that.

00:01:10.060 Let me tell you a little bit about my friend Neha Roosh. She's been on the show before. She's the 0.84

00:01:15.080 creator of Mother Untitled. She's just freaking amazing. I'm going to give you a little bit about 1.00

00:01:19.680 her background, but she's going to dive into it. After 10 years of working in brand strategy

00:01:23.780 and receiving her MBA from Stanford of, you know, doing all the things, all the things that look real

00:01:28.880 good on paper. She decided to pause her career after the birth of her second child. And that's

00:01:35.200 when she encountered all of the completely crappy, outdated stereotypes that are associated with 0.88

00:01:40.680 being a stay-at-home mom. And so she wanted to fix it. She became determined to reshape how we look

00:01:48.180 at career pauses, and also how we talk about women's ambition just generally. She's truly

00:01:55.560 reshaping the narrative around stay-at-home motherhood and giving visibility to the gray

00:02:00.440 area where so many women find themselves during a pause from traditional work outside the home.

00:02:05.820 The Power Pause launches today. I'll be giving away copies on the sub stack

00:02:10.420 over the influence. If you're not already a subscriber, go over there, subscribe.

00:02:14.260 We're going to be giving away copies. This book is a real launching point for how we talk about

00:02:20.620 career pauses, about what it even means to be an ambitious woman today. And I'm just,

00:02:27.260 I'm so excited to have a conversation about it. The first of many, I hope.

00:02:37.940 Hello, lady. Hi. I love being with you. I'm going to say something right now.

00:02:44.260 And I don't think that this is a bold statement because I don't make bold statements.

00:02:48.600 I only make true statements.

00:02:50.660 Your ideas right now are on the verge of changing the world and changing the culture.

00:02:56.860 And I want everyone, everyone to think about them.

00:03:02.360 I'm so glad I'm having this call with you right now because you know how badly I need to hear that.

00:03:09.300 But I think that you're right, which is also a bold statement for a woman to make, to believe in that so much.

00:03:16.960 To believe in that.

00:03:17.900 To believe in that.

00:03:18.640 I know that to be true.

00:03:20.040 And I know our country needs this.

00:03:23.560 I know women need this right now.

00:03:26.540 I don't even know where to start with the book.

00:03:29.860 Your new book, The Power Pause, comes out today.

00:03:33.500 And I'm telling everyone, you gotta get this

00:03:36.860 because this is a subject that we need to be talking about more.

00:03:41.460 All of us need to be talking about it more.

00:03:43.560 And I've been having all the conversations with my friends

00:03:46.180 about what are we going to do during the Trump years?

00:03:48.780 What are women going to do?

00:03:49.980 And I'm like, no one's coming to save us. 0.59

00:03:51.960 This is it, friends.

00:03:53.020 We're saving ourselves.

00:03:54.300 And this is one of the ways that we're saving ourselves.

00:03:58.160 We have to have a paradigm shift in how we think about careers and ambition and motherhood and what that all looks like.

00:04:07.260 Because for so long, careers in corporate America have been shaped in the image of men. 0.58

00:04:14.120 Had women been building this from the very beginning, we would have realized that there's a few rungs missing in the corporate ladder. 0.92

00:04:23.600 because a lot of women do step out of the workforce when they become mothers and the

00:04:30.440 corporate world would have been built around that and your your experience you've you've told your

00:04:34.940 story on the show before but give us give us the quick recap of your professional story before we

00:04:40.500 dive into the concept of the power pause so when this journey started for me i just had my child

00:04:51.780 I had done all the traditional success metrics.

00:04:56.980 I'd clocked in a decade in brand marketing.

00:04:59.140 I'd gone to Stanford Business School.

00:05:00.700 I had on what on paper was my dream job.

00:05:03.540 And then I finally had him and I was thinking about fulfillment and learning and purpose.

00:05:11.740 And I decided I was finding more of that sense of curiosity with him than I was feeling in the workforce at the moment.

00:05:21.780 And I decided to initially downshift and then eventually pause my career. But even when I shifted into consulting to have more time with him and less stress in the home, I was gobsmacked by the shame and stigma that surrounded that choice.

00:05:37.520 And I came face to face with the stereotypes about the stay-at-home mother, which if you

00:05:44.420 poll the American population right now about who comes to mind, it was June Cleaver from

00:05:49.700 the 1960s.

00:05:50.700 That's the most common response.

00:05:52.260 Still.

00:05:52.920 Still.

00:05:53.680 Yeah.

00:05:53.780 It didn't match my reality. 0.72

00:05:55.200 It didn't match the reality of the women I was meeting.

00:05:58.280 And yet everywhere I looked, there was so much great content for the quote unquote working

00:06:03.000 mother.

00:06:03.400 But like the lean-in movement and like the girl boss era at that moment, it seemed to cast this undue shame on any ambitious woman needing or wanting to make a shift for a little while.

00:06:19.220 to make a shift for a little while yeah totally which when we talk about it like this it makes

00:06:25.720 so much sense but the stigmas around stay-at-home mothering are so real you know i i get dozens of

00:06:37.100 emails a week from women saying hey i love your show i love your content i'm a stay-at-home mom

00:06:44.160 and I know what you're saying about the Tradwives 0.98

00:06:46.840 and I know that I'm not one of them

00:06:49.180 and you don't mean me,

00:06:50.900 but I also don't know how to talk about myself

00:06:53.680 and what I do and how I'm still an ambitious person

00:06:58.100 and a productive person in the world.

00:07:00.440 Can you please do an episode on that?

00:07:02.200 And I've been telling them for the past few weeks,

00:07:03.660 I'm like, don't worry, we've got it.

00:07:04.760 It's coming up, it's coming up.

00:07:05.920 We'll do a whole series on it

00:07:08.160 and also you should pre-order this book, The Power Pod,

00:07:10.280 because what is ambition?

00:07:14.160 our ambition doesn't have to look like a man's either. And our ambition doesn't have to be

00:07:18.900 defined by our jobs. Well, no one's ambition does, male or female. The definition of ambition

00:07:25.680 is the determination to do things you care about. That's it. And the reality of life is we care

00:07:33.100 about a lot of different things. And women especially have to care about a lot of different 1.00

00:07:38.500 things. And so it's natural to need to shift our ambition over different seasons of our life. 1.00

00:07:47.600 And if we shift for a chapter our priorities away from the workforce, away from paid work,

00:07:56.320 and use this as a chapter to focus more on family and home life, you can still

00:08:04.740 grow and learn and consider this an ambitious chapter where you're moving yourself toward the

00:08:13.100 next version of yourself including professional life right and that's the real goal with the

00:08:19.580 work of the power pause is to consider this chapter where you are pausing or shifting your

00:08:25.300 paid work as the opposite of a death knell of your career and rather as an exploratory time

00:08:31.640 where you are still growing and learning and it's one chapter in the long game of work and family

00:08:37.740 because because it is a long game i mean we're we're we're on this planet for for quite some

00:08:45.060 time and the time we take away for kids be that you know a three months which i mean or or the

00:08:54.320 typical maternity leave, which is nothing, nothing, or a year or six years or 18 years.

00:09:03.940 When we come out of that, we have so many new skills. We have so much to contribute to the

00:09:11.100 world. And also, we've been working. You know, I say this all the time. Can we finally think of

00:09:17.160 the new word here? Because I hate the phrase stay-at-home mom. It's so dumb. No one is staying.

00:09:22.920 No one is staying anywhere. You're moving constantly. What else can we be calling this?

00:09:29.540 Well, there's an irony in trying to rebrand the phrase stay at home. Rebrand stay at home

00:09:34.500 motherhood in America because you still have to use the phrase because it is so embedded in our

00:09:38.600 vernacular, but it is so deeply flawed, right? It's both flawed from a sociolinguistics perspective

00:09:44.700 because stay at implies stagnancy and being shut in but it's also come with all of these tropes

00:09:53.100 left over from the 1970s which we can get into the history of but we are dangerously close to

00:09:58.460 reigniting them with the trad wife hashtag but you know these tropes that do not apply to the 0.97

00:10:04.980 reality of modern women who are much more uh shifting in in sort of a long continuum

00:10:13.320 of work and family and who are existing far more in the in-between, both doing this intensive

00:10:20.740 emotional and intellectual and leadership labor that goes into caring for children and building

00:10:29.680 communities in our day-to-day caregiving life, but more and more are finding ways because we

00:10:37.880 aren't shut off from society. We have technology, we have tools, we have online communities where

00:10:43.240 we are staying connected where we are staying creative where we're volunteering where we're

00:10:47.440 taking certification classes we have much more dynamic lives than can be expressed in a black

00:10:56.420 and white title like stay at home and so you know part of rebranding it is saying that you know one

00:11:05.020 in three working mothers are going to be stay at home mothers and considering our career pause in

00:11:09.960 the next two years. One and two are considering a downshift. Ninety percent of the stay-at-home

00:11:14.520 moms are planning to return to the workforce. It is much more fluid. And I think, you know, 1.00

00:11:20.300 part of it is infusing more dignity into it. And another part is abandoning it in entirety for

00:11:27.260 more fluid language. Agreed, agreed, agreed. And I think we just have to keep thinking about it.

00:11:32.920 We have to keep thinking about what we want to call it, because I've said this a few times 0.86

00:11:38.360 recently, I think that we're on the verge of a new version of the mommy wars that will take place 0.88

00:11:44.600 mostly on social media, that will alienate women from each other, that will pit women against each 0.51

00:11:51.800 other. We saw this in the 80s with the rise of the quote-unquote career mom. You know, it was 1.00

00:11:56.680 supposed to be the stay-at-home mom versus the career mom. And that narrative doesn't really,

00:12:03.040 really exist in real life, but I think a lot of people internalized it. And we're seeing it more

00:12:08.300 and more now as women are being pitted against each other. So I think talking about the pause

00:12:16.580 and talking about different stages of our life is a way to fight back against this new version

00:12:23.320 of the mommy wars that's coming out. Well, and I think what we all want, and this is where when

00:12:30.380 you say, it's on us to save ourselves, this is where we win. We stop subscribing to the division

00:12:38.720 between women, right? If you go back to the 1970s, where there was second wave feminism, 0.54

00:12:46.960 and we were proving our worth and capacity in the workforce. And so then we saw the 80s really

00:12:53.380 bring forth this, you know, Diane Keenan baby boom, working mother, power woman. And then we had

00:13:03.900 the, you know, woman left behind in the home seen as defending tradition. We saw this power chasm

00:13:13.140 that never needed to exist. The reality is many more of us were existing in between and shifting

00:13:19.620 in and out then and only more so now, which is why I like this idea of abandoning the black and

00:13:25.500 white titles at all. When we think about replacements for the word, I would rather say

00:13:30.100 ditch the word, ditch the title. You know, when you ask, what do you do? You don't say right now

00:13:36.000 I'm a stay at home mom or right now I'm a working mom. You talk about right now I'm focusing on

00:13:40.700 this. Right now I get to be with my kids. We'll see what comes next. Right now I'm getting ready

00:13:45.280 to launch a book. We'll see what comes next. You get to talk about right now and you get to hold

00:13:51.780 space for how this is an evolving journey. Right. And I think if we can abandon the polar opposites

00:13:59.860 and embrace that we are all in between and ever evolving and ever shifting, that's really

00:14:05.360 interesting. And then I think the other part is that when we saw the rise of the mommy wars,

00:14:10.560 where women were pitted against each other. The single thing that lit a match and blew that up 0.71

00:14:16.020 is that we started to dig our heels in on either side and say, well, I'm making this choice because

00:14:23.280 it's better for my children, or I'm making this choice because it models ambition for my children.

00:14:27.800 The reality, what we know in all of the data and research is that children can be equally secure

00:14:33.640 and equally ambitious in any environment and any configuration of work and family,

00:14:38.720 as long as they have a secure and loving and safe caregiver.

00:14:44.200 That's it.

00:14:44.840 And I think if we can start to own our choices

00:14:47.060 for what is right for us and our families in this moment

00:14:50.220 and recognize that it is all hard and it all warrants support

00:14:54.540 and that advocating for paid family leave

00:14:57.240 doesn't mean that we're not equally advocating

00:14:59.640 for supports in the home for caregivers in the home,

00:15:04.300 that all of this is about putting more choices on the table 0.98

00:15:07.480 so women can have more options available that they can make with less shame and less penalty

00:15:13.540 and more support. A hundred percent. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. Okay, we're going to take a very 1.00

00:15:19.460 quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk a little bit about all of the myths,

00:15:24.360 all of the myths about stay-at-home moms, about caregiving, that you do a really beautiful job

00:15:32.200 of dispelling of in your book. Thank you.

00:15:37.480 Okay, we're back.

00:15:46.880 I want to talk about all of the myths, all of the myths, and frankly, all of the lies that we've been told about time away from the traditional workforce.

00:15:53.600 You dig into all of this.

00:15:54.800 You did so much reporting.

00:15:56.100 You talked to so many women.

00:15:57.540 How many people did you talk to?

00:15:59.940 250 over the course of a long time.

00:16:02.760 I edited that down for the book.

00:16:05.200 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:05.700 I mean, it's a lot of human beings.

00:16:08.240 It's a lot of human beings in the world.

00:16:09.260 It was my favorite part because that's where you get the good stuff.

00:16:12.400 That's where you get the good stuff. 0.98

00:16:14.240 I haven't reported a book, a nonfiction book, in a long time because I will tell you that once you have kids, it's a lot easier to just make shit up. 0.95

00:16:24.440 Nonfiction, it really is. 0.91

00:16:25.660 It really is.

00:16:26.060 But it was the best part of writing How to Be Married was hearing people's stories.

00:16:32.320 I need to dive back into that.

00:16:33.980 Oh, it's it's it's you know, it's an oldie but a goodie. It's a Joe Piazza vintage is what it is. So talk to me about these myths, all of the myths that we've been told. And and let's let's just let's get rid of them. Let's break them down. Throw them in the toilet.

00:16:47.720 Well, the reason I organized the book with the myths is because as I was preparing for my pause and then sort of navigating the day-to-day and then seeing the other side and realizing it was unlocking a lot for me, I realized how many false beliefs I was coming face-to-face with in my own life and how hard it was to have to work through those.

00:17:11.020 And so the goal of the book was to follow the arc of preparing and navigating the day-to-day and then growing and learning during it without the struggle of having to learn those lessons the hard way.

00:17:25.500 And I want anyone going through it to take the learned experience from myself and the real women I got to speak to and the experts to be able to take a new narrative forth so they can walk through it with more confidence.

00:17:38.280 So I'll start with the first one, which is that if you are stepping into stay-at-home motherhood, you're giving up your ambition and you are going to become a traditional homemaker, right?

00:17:51.520 You and I have spoken about this at length, that this false idea of ambition has held women back from thinking that they can make room for anything else. 0.54

00:18:04.220 And this one sense of feminism, you know, everyone talks about feminine mystique as sort of the gospel of feminism. Well, Betty Friedan actually penned another book called Second Stage, where she acknowledges that one of the faults with that book was that it forgot the work of family. And so part of feminism.

00:18:28.300 I've never, I've never heard of this book.

00:18:30.100 Yeah.

00:18:30.700 Yep.

00:18:31.280 So, you know, when we start to realize that we are now coming up on another wave where

00:18:39.840 we have to make sense of new ways to make power and family work together and opportunities,

00:18:50.640 how do we make that all work together?

00:18:52.360 And I think that'll be the work of our generation.

00:18:54.480 and so i think that's that that the first and foundational myth that we have to dispel because

00:19:01.520 that lets us step into this with a sense of the long game and sense of self and and this is a

00:19:10.380 long game and i'm glad that you brought up feminism because we've seen so many attacks on

00:19:15.380 feminism. Feminism is flawed in a lot of ways, but it is up to us to rebuild what it can look

00:19:24.600 like and what we want it to look like. And it is not just being the girl boss who climbs the 1.00

00:19:32.420 corporate ladder. Corporations have not been kind to women or to mothers. It's about our choices.

00:19:38.500 And I will say we have seen, you know, a lot of the far right conservatives. And I don't think

00:19:44.040 that this is, I don't think any of this is partisan, but we've seen them reclaiming the

00:19:49.100 idea of femininity and also feminism and saying that traditional feminism failed. I think we can

00:19:56.160 say it was flawed and then build on it. It's all clay. They're not bricks. One of the things that

00:20:02.040 I really want to talk about is financial dependency in a relationship. When one person

00:20:08.280 steps away from paying work, they often feel like they have way less power in a relationship

00:20:16.180 because money often equals power. But also, I think it's really hard to construct a blueprint

00:20:24.440 for someone to be compensated for the work that they're doing in the home and what that looks

00:20:31.980 like and what is fair and what will set them up for success in the long term. And you give a really

00:20:39.960 strategic blueprint for how to do this, which is awesome because for a long time, I don't think

00:20:45.360 we've had any language for how to talk about this. No matter who is the caregiver in the family,

00:20:50.500 because I will tell you, we are struggling real hard right now because Nick is still trying to

00:20:56.780 figure out what his next job is and his next move is. And, you know, men transitioning into more

00:21:03.420 caregiving roles is tough. But then also he feels like he's not being a financial support for this

00:21:10.740 family. But we don't have the language to say what you're doing is labor. And one in five stay-at-home

00:21:18.240 parents are dads right now, which is interesting. And I hesitate to even say stay-at-home parents

00:21:22.680 because I think, again, for reasons we've described, it's a chapter, right? And there's

00:21:27.340 career, you know, they're on a career sabbatical for family life, whatever we want to call it.

00:21:31.160 That's what I like. I like that one. I mean, it's clunky, but it's better.

00:21:35.300 I usually use that advice for especially for, you know, formal settings. I, you know, in colloquial

00:21:41.000 sort of dialogue, I wouldn't use that. But I think that, you know, in terms of holding place

00:21:47.020 on a resume or LinkedIn, I think it works. But regardless, I think as we move into this place

00:21:51.780 where this is less gendered, right?

00:21:53.520 We are seeing males step into that role

00:21:56.780 because, by the way,

00:21:59.360 one in three parents in America

00:22:01.260 feel forced to pause

00:22:03.060 because of the cost of child care.

00:22:05.140 Because it's bananas, okay? 1.00

00:22:07.600 60% of women who pause in America today 1.00

00:22:11.780 pause because of financial considerations.

00:22:14.400 So I think one of the other myths

00:22:17.180 related to finances to dispel

00:22:20.200 is that it is a luxury to be at home because I think as soon as we associate one side with

00:22:27.140 luxury, we deem it less worthy of support. And instead, if we say it is a privilege to get to

00:22:35.180 choose, right, the privilege to invest in child care so both parents can work out of the home,

00:22:40.000 the privilege to choose for one parent to be at home and exist on one income, the privilege to

00:22:45.940 find some, you know, in between that works for your family. The privilege is to get to choose.

00:22:51.440 But just because it's a privilege to get to choose doesn't mean it doesn't deserve support

00:22:55.640 and doesn't mean it doesn't offer value and it doesn't mean the work is real. And so, you know,

00:23:02.100 there's a lot of wiring that goes into rewiring that goes into this, but I break it down into

00:23:08.000 practical scripts and dialogue because the real culture change has to start in our homes and then

00:23:13.680 bring, you know, ripples into our communities. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we do need

00:23:20.360 that kind of blueprint. We do need that language. We do need models to see other people doing this.

00:23:29.040 And yeah, exactly what you said about this being a luxury to stay at home.

00:23:33.020 I don't think about June Cleaver then. Then I think about Peggy Bundy and like bonbons, right?

00:23:39.680 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:23:40.580 And by the way, that's getting affirmed with the Real Housewives today.

00:23:44.540 And so we're actually stepping into this other, you know, scarier portrait that is like, you know, you have the sweatpants mom.

00:23:53.380 You have the yoga mom.

00:23:56.000 You have the craft Pinterest mom, the Real Housewives mom.

00:23:58.780 And the reality is all of these are portraits that just don't apply.

00:24:02.340 It's such a more multi-hyphenated modern collective of women that can't be pegged to any one stereotype.

00:24:11.940 And, you know, I think the idea that the work is a luxury is really at odds also with the number of women for whom this is a real need.

00:24:28.040 exactly exactly because a lot a lot of women do not have a choice and child care is so insanely

00:24:34.380 expensive especially when you have more than one child it gets bananas and so yeah there's there's

00:24:40.720 there's no choice about the fact that one parent has to stay home and frankly a lot of men don't

00:24:45.480 want to do it uh-huh uh-huh men it's an interesting dialogue around how men embrace

00:24:52.140 at-home parenthood. I had a wonderful interview and writer I spoke to who described she and her

00:25:00.040 husband traded off. So one was an at-home parent for a couple of years, and then she stepped into

00:25:06.240 at-home parenthood until the child aged into school. They had one child. And she describes

00:25:10.940 the difference with her husband, who sort of the societal expectation is that, you know, dads

00:25:19.320 aren't really there that much.

00:25:21.020 So the fact that he was even present,

00:25:22.700 he felt like he'd earned a gold star.

00:25:24.140 So he didn't need to overextend.

00:25:26.720 He could do that.

00:25:28.180 He could ask for help.

00:25:29.280 He could do sort of just the, you know,

00:25:32.920 the caregiving part in a relaxed way

00:25:37.460 where she was baking cookies and volunteering

00:25:39.500 and doing homemade crafts.

00:25:41.240 And she just fell.

00:25:43.320 She describes it as she needed a gold star

00:25:45.200 from this nebulous good parenting committee

00:25:47.580 because the expectations are higher.

00:25:50.660 So, you know, it's interesting

00:25:51.480 because men and women contend with different issues.

00:25:54.260 There are still applications from a finances perspective

00:25:57.100 and identity perspective

00:25:59.100 and certainly a return to work perspective.

00:26:01.400 But there are some parts of the day-to-days

00:26:03.340 that are unique to both.

00:26:06.700 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:26:08.420 All right, let's take one more quick break.

00:26:10.660 And when we get back,

00:26:12.320 I want to talk about that big thing

00:26:14.440 that discovering who you are without a job title okay we're back when you took your pause

00:26:31.040 did you feel like you lost part of your identity

00:26:33.880 I felt both things I felt aware that I was somehow counted out of many conversations I recall this

00:26:48.020 brunch where there were two other couples our babies were then babies and we're playing on

00:26:54.620 that foam play mat and I remember not being asked a single question and not out of maliciousness

00:27:03.880 but out of people feeling uncomfortable asking me about how I spent my time.

00:27:10.160 And so I was aware that I suddenly had lost my place in the ambitious New York

00:27:19.060 quote unquote society. And that was very uncomfortable because in a culture that

00:27:26.580 assigns a lot of value to those words, what do you do? I suddenly didn't have any answer besides

00:27:32.500 stay-at-home mother and that didn't fit for all the reasons we've talked about. But I did on the

00:27:39.160 flip side feel like I could use this time to discover a new version of myself. And that was

00:27:51.180 very exciting. And I think that is one of the sort of foundational shifts of recognizing that your

00:27:56.960 identity can actually be more expansive than what you do for work. And this can actually be

00:28:02.680 a huge growth opportunity if you allow yourself. And so, you know, with that, one of the things

00:28:10.220 that was really helpful to me, and it's why I architect the middle section around redefining

00:28:16.260 what success looks like for this stage in life, is I didn't want my success metrics and what I

00:28:21.800 shared about myself to now be, well, my kids' behavior and my kids eating this or my kids doing

00:28:26.560 match. I wanted to figure out, well, what, if I look back on this time, would make me feel proud

00:28:33.720 that I got to grow in? Because you do have, you know, you don't necessarily have more time than

00:28:38.620 the traditional work, but you have different time. You have pockets in the day. You're sort of get to

00:28:43.720 explore the city. And, you know, we were living in Manhattan at the time. And so, you know, we got

00:28:49.900 to, I got different time available to me. And what I describe in the book in that chapter

00:28:55.860 is allowing yourself to come up with unique goals, personal, professional, and family goals.

00:29:08.220 And in one way you can do that is to sort of fast forward three years and what would life look like?

00:29:14.660 And then it reveals to you, well, okay, say, I want to feel calmer than I want to have figured out my reactivity, right? Now I know that's something I can spend my time on during this stage of life, right? So maybe a small way of doing that is I'm going to build a five minute meditation practice every morning, or I'm going to listen to a podcast or read a book about anger and women every month, right?

00:29:40.660 I'm giving myself goals to dignify this stage of life and setting small ways to know that I am

00:29:46.340 still growing alongside my kids. And that included professional goals, right? Mother Untitled wouldn't

00:29:52.360 exist if I hadn't said to myself, you know, I've already parted with the ego of this, you know,

00:29:58.880 stepping into this career break that no one really understands. I might as well use this time to

00:30:02.880 explore something I've always wanted to do, which was always content and women. And so why not start

00:30:08.900 and Instagram and challenge myself to post, you know, three times a week or start a blog or a

00:30:15.860 newsletter. And, you know, for some women, it's I've always wanted to paint. I've always wanted

00:30:20.440 to volunteer, you know, figure out a little way to explore that thing you've always wanted to

00:30:26.880 explore. And then from a family goals, it doesn't mean like I'm going to raise the perfect children.

00:30:31.600 It's I wanted I you know, in three years, I hope I have a really silly household. And so maybe we're

00:30:37.320 going to have a dance party every single Monday. And looking back on that time, I know that those

00:30:43.640 were little small things that let me feel like I was discovering more about who I was

00:30:49.960 instead of letting go of who I was. I love that. And I think it's so

00:30:58.300 important because I don't think anyone's identity should necessarily be shaped by work.

00:31:03.640 I hate that for so long

00:31:05.680 it was the first question

00:31:06.780 anyone asked me

00:31:07.540 especially in San Francisco

00:31:08.540 and it was also

00:31:09.400 it wasn't just

00:31:10.480 what do you do

00:31:11.980 it's where do you do it

00:31:13.300 so when I would say

00:31:14.020 I worked at Yahoo

00:31:14.860 they're like that's sad

00:31:16.140 no

00:31:16.820 I don't know

00:31:18.040 it is

00:31:18.360 it is

00:31:18.720 it is the

00:31:19.360 the you know

00:31:20.160 sad

00:31:21.100 sad

00:31:21.800 cousin

00:31:22.900 of all of the big tech companies

00:31:24.780 God bless it

00:31:25.520 God bless it

00:31:26.040 but you're feeling very happy

00:31:26.840 and sweet about it too

00:31:28.060 you know

00:31:29.140 it was so sweet

00:31:30.060 and it's you know

00:31:30.820 being the Yahoo travel editor

00:31:32.020 sent me all over the world

00:31:33.640 And I met my husband.

00:31:34.860 So whatever.

00:31:36.220 Yuh, yuh, who?

00:31:38.900 But so I never ask that question.

00:31:41.760 I hate it when I get asked that question.

00:31:43.540 In fact, I was recently at an event and some youngster just looked at me and he was very socially awkward.

00:31:51.920 But he was like, what do you do?

00:31:54.040 And I was like, I don't know, nothing. 1.00

00:31:56.620 Just to fuck with him. 1.00

00:31:58.720 Just to fuck with that little shit. 1.00

00:32:00.460 uh what are your thoughts on including the power pause the caregiving pause on a resume on linkedin 1.00

00:32:11.620 so you know we touched on this idea of coming up with a headline i i give a lot of samples for it 0.98

00:32:18.620 in the book but i want women to choose a headline that speaks to who they are and audits the

00:32:28.320 accomplishments and the skills that they want to take with them, because those didn't evaporate.

00:32:33.060 If you are a travel editor, if you take a career pause, that doesn't disappear, right? Travel

00:32:39.360 editor, aspiring nonprofit, whatever, you know, you can, you can, aspiring women's author, right?

00:32:47.100 You can, you can speak to whatever you care about. And it is your story to own. In the actual job

00:32:55.720 area where you're listing your experience, I do think you can go one of two routes, whichever you

00:33:02.220 feel more confident. Some women, if they're still freelancing or consulting, they have every right 1.00

00:33:08.800 to make that their job experience at the time because that's what's relevant to the LinkedIn 1.00

00:33:13.460 community. They don't need to get into, well, I'm freelancing for 10 hours a week and I'm home and

00:33:19.220 then I'm taking care of. No one needs to know that in the same way that no one needs to know

00:33:24.420 that most men play fucking Scrabble for two hours on their computer while they sit at their desk. 0.99

00:33:28.640 And they're boxing. So if you are freelancing or consulting or working on a project or small 0.99

00:33:38.540 business, you have every right to give that the professional gravitas and space it deserves in

00:33:43.000 the professional community that is LinkedIn. This is not your personal diary. If you haven't arrived

00:33:50.900 at that phase of your next career or career evolution yet, you can also write career

00:33:57.020 sabbatical for caregiving, career sabbatical for family life, career sabbatical for relocation,

00:34:02.660 whatever that is. And then underneath, and this is the really important part,

00:34:09.740 include sub-bullets that are relevant to the field that you may want to return to.

00:34:15.900 And you can revisit those on an ongoing basis. But before you do that, what I want women to do is recognize that their skills before did not evaporate. So before they, you know, as they're resigning, update that LinkedIn to acknowledge all of the accomplishments because you will forget 10 years later or six years later.

00:34:36.400 So acknowledge that. Make those really specific. And then audit as you're going through the day-to-day, week-to-week, quarter-to-quarter. What is something I feel really proud of? And put them in a running list in your notes app or a Word document.

00:34:52.660 You know, maybe it's helped, you know, helped friend on startup business model, volunteered at local mom's demand chapter to organize dinner for local, local mothers.

00:35:09.100 Right. Keep track of those, because at the end of the year, those actually can connect backward and do two things.

00:35:16.560 One, you can pull the ones that feel really relevant.

00:35:19.700 If you're going into community organizing, then pull those out.

00:35:23.320 If you're going to stay in brand marketing, pull out the ones relevant to the fact that you advise your friend on her brand marketing strategy, right?

00:35:33.380 Pull those out because those dots do connect and help you then return to work with confidence with a really solid story about your nontraditional experience during your career sabbatical.

00:35:43.960 But they also, that running list, can also start to reveal to you what you care about and what you may be interested in doing next.

00:35:51.800 Because this does get to be a personal exploration where you are growing and exploring right alongside your kid.

00:35:58.740 Or kids.

00:36:00.300 Or kids.

00:36:01.020 Or, yeah, yeah, exactly. 0.64

00:36:03.320 Or even, honestly, we could take kids out of this too, your elderly parent that you have to take time off to take care of.

00:36:12.300 Right?

00:36:12.520 I mean, I think that we can apply the power pause to any kind of caregiving break that

00:36:19.180 we have to take, right?

00:36:20.660 Yes, very much so.

00:36:21.900 And we also, I think that's interesting you bring that up because I was asked earlier

00:36:27.500 today, is there a difference when an executive, you know, takes a career sabbatical for self

00:36:34.660 exploration, a male career executive, right, who's announced, versus a 32-year-old

00:36:42.520 who's taking a career break to raise her kids. Is there a difference? Is there a difference?

00:36:48.560 And the answer is yes. We as a culture diminish caregiving as work that can easily be outsourced,

00:36:56.960 that is minutiae, and that our brains go and die. What we know is that it's quite the opposite.

00:37:04.480 And we need to get to a place where we can not only assign value and say, yes, this is unpaid

00:37:09.840 labor. But we also recognize that this is brain-expanding work, that often child-rearing

00:37:16.520 today is incredibly complicated, right? We are educating ourselves as we raise these kids about

00:37:22.580 technology, about mental health, about learning diagnoses. We're advocating for these kids in

00:37:29.780 very complicated education and insurance systems. And so there's a lot of awe-inspiring behind-the-

00:37:35.620 scenes work that we need to be able to dignify so that we can look at that executive who's doing a

00:37:41.920 career sabbatical, you know, to go to Tahiti to, you know, figure out what comes next in the same

00:37:49.160 regard as a 32-year-old who is going to be learning a lot about herself as she raises her

00:37:55.000 couple kids. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love this. We're going to, you're going to change the world,

00:38:00.560 girl. I hope so. I think you are. I see it. And I see us as women coming together to get curious

00:38:09.400 about how we're spending our time, what we're working on. And you know what I think? I think

00:38:13.600 as we all transition back to work, you know, what I'm seeing is women are creating our own economy 1.00

00:38:20.320 where we're realizing all these companies with their return to work mandates just didn't get it. 0.99

00:38:24.780 So you're seeing a boom of women entrepreneurs, mother entrepreneurs, women freelancers and

00:38:30.580 consultants, and then they're hiring other mothers. Of course they are. Yeah. What can be done in the 0.95

00:38:36.180 fringe hours of family life? And by the way, we know that women returning from positives have an

00:38:41.700 enhanced perspective and enhanced efficiency and time management skills. We know all of this. And

00:38:47.260 so, you know, I think the next conversation you and I are going to be having is about how we all

00:38:53.260 went and created a new sub economy for work that actually it actually works it actually works

00:39:01.740 and that is all we have for today if you love this show please share it with a friend leave

00:39:09.480 us a rating on all of the rating places buy the power pause and follow mother untitled 0.77

00:39:15.040 let's change the fucking world guys it's up to us no one is coming to save us we're gonna do 0.93

00:39:21.720 this for ourselves, and we're going to do it together. Bye! 0.99

00:39:51.720 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - January 14, 2025

A Revolution for Women's Work and Ambition with Neha Ruch

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