Guest Post from Jenny Johnson:

When people would tell me “believing is half the battle” I used to roll my eyes. Why would just thinking a positive thought change my life? But after weathering some storms in life I now believe that thinking positively can and will change your life.

I grew up in a large family of 8 children in Utah. My first storm began when I was a freshman in high school. My father passed away of a malignant brain tumor. I was devastated. I had always thought that my Dad and I would conquer the world, but now I was alone. (Looking back, I can’t imagine how my Mom was able to hold it all together raising 8 kids on her own).

During those formative years I began a love of photography, ceramics and the creative process of art. I could see through others’ artwork similar feelings of pain and the joy I so desperately wanted. I was afraid to let anyone know about the intense pain I felt. I was able to hide my feelings from most of my friends, but I spent many years dealing with depression, seeing counselors, trying anti-depressants, etc… I struggled daily.

As time went on, I graduated from college with an art degree and married an amazing man (who somehow has had the patience to stick with me through life’s storms). I continued to have a deep blackness in me that I could never dispel and a belief that I was never “good enough.” I was never good enough to be a real artist, good enough to be a valued friend, wife, sister, etc… Whatever I did was never good enough. The perfectionist was in control and I could never live up to its standards. It was a constant struggle to just get out of bed and get through each day.

Shortly after getting married, I had another loss that nearly destroyed me. My brother, Spencer, who was 2 years younger than me, died in a hiking accident. He was 21 years old. It was two days of hell, searching for him in the mountains above Salt Lake City, only to have Search and Rescue find him dead. For 3 months I receded into my blackness. I couldn’t believe that God would take someone from me again. All I could see was what I didn’t have. I didn’t even appreciate that God had given me a great husband and life. Slowly I recovered and was able to move forward, thanks to my husband’s patience and unconditional love.

Still, I had ups and downs. I had terrible post-partum depression after my first child was born and started seeing counselors again, etc…. But the sense that I was “never enough” haunted me. I had so many dreams that I never pursued in fear that I would fail. I lived in fear. Fear of what horrible thing would happen next. Fear that I would fail. Fear that I wasn’t good enough to succeed.

I started working with an amazing psychologist who turned my life around. He helped me see and discover that I had been telling myself all these negative things in my head, over and over, all these years. And I had believed every word. After a great deal of work doing Cognitive Thought Therapy*, I learned to catch myself when I started to say these negative things, to break the habit of negative thinking. I was able to stop and not get sucked into the black spiral that so easily could consume me. I learned to see the misconceptions that I had about myself.

My world changed so dramatically. I still had the same husband, the same kids, house, life, but my world was so much better. I still had my ups and downs, but they were less often and less extreme. But, there was still one small thing; I was still living in fear. I consciously decided that I couldn’t live that way any more. I had to let go and live without that cloud over me.

This was put to the test a couple months later (in 2006), when my youngest brother, Drew, collapsed and died while jogging at age 23. His autopsy showed an undetected heart problem. We learned that it was genetic and may have been the cause of Spencer’s death, too.

When the news came I waited for the crash, for the blackness to swallow me up. I wondered if I would survive this a third time. Would my poor husband be able to hold our little family together? This time it was different. Yes, it was horrible and painful and I never want to go through it again, but I felt that I had arms wrapped around my heart, supporting me physically and emotionally. The crash didn’t come. I had found a strength that I didn’t previously know I had.

Living in fear didn’t stop the bad things from happening. Living in fear had made life’s challenges worse. I learned that no matter what life throws my way, I can overcome it. It may be hard, but I will survive.

It wasn’t much later that the idea for a new business was born (Cheeky & Swank). I had always dabbled in entrepreneurship, but never believed that I could ever really succeed at something. Failure was always looming. But this time, it’s different. I now believe that I can succeed, I am “good enough” to make something successful. It may take a lot of hard work and persistence, but I’ve learned that “believing is half the battle.”

Cheeky & Swank is a company that creates apparel, home and baby products that are fresh, modern and fun. We hand silkscreen our T-shirts with original artwork, and manufacture baby blankets, burp cloths, and bibs featuring magnetic clasps. I have a fantastic partner in Advent Creative, a design firm started by another brother. Together we make a great team.

I love that I can create new things. I can constantly find fabrics and artwork that speak to me, that express the beauty in life. I have found fulfillment in “creating” a company from the ground up. I have found that I enjoy the many different jobs that a new business owner must take on. Solving the many challenges are rewarding to me.

It’s not always easy, I’ve learned that I have to work hard at skills like time management, juggling family and work, and many other aspects, but this adventure has been more rewarding (and harder) than I ever dreamed.

Life isn’t perfect; I still struggle like everyone else. I still have to stop the negative thoughts from taking over and choose to replace them with positive thoughts. I know that I’ll be on anti-depressants for the rest of my life, but I’m okay with that. I know that whatever comes, I can make it through. I will not live in fear any more. I believe that I can succeed and that’s half the battle.

For more about Cheeky & Swank, visit us at www.cheekyandswank.com. To contact Jenny Johnson, email jenny@cheekyandswank.com

* Cognitive Therapy for Depression http://www.aafp.org/afp/20060101/83.html

Celebrity trainer Tammy Stokes sat down with Vicki Stern-Brown to answer a few questions about her busy and exciting life in the world of health and wellness, A-List Style!  Tammy has trained numerous celebs to prepare for film and television projects in addition to maintaining their super healthy (and sexy) California look, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh: John Travolta is one name we pulled out of Tammy.

You founded West Coast Workout, tell us how and why you started your business.

I missed the workouts I was accustomed to in Hollywood. I began traveling to LA to get my celebrity workout “fix.” I was in the fitness business but working for a large organization. I decided to leave the company and begin my own, bringing the best of Hollywood training to Atlanta. I opened my private boutique studio, West Coast Workout in June 2007.

 What ignited the inspiration for West Coast Workout?

I was unhappy with the training facilities in Atlanta. We needed something more than just another gym or fitness center. I wanted Hollywood training, a style of training more reliant on the body as its form of resistance. People are “hungry” for ideas on how to live healthier lives. We combine comprehensive training methods with lifestyle plans to inspire people to live their healthiest life.

Where is your company headquartered?

Sandy Springs, Georgia

Tell us how training a celebrity who is getting ready for a film is different from training a regular mom like me?

The motto of my studio is, “We bring the best of Hollywood training to Atlanta because we believe all our clients deserve to be treated like stars.” I train regular moms just like I train “A” list celebrities.

Share with us the guiding principles you follow that make your business successful.

To work harder for my clients than any other trainer in the city. I love what I do. I live by my own principles everyday and I am living proof, it works! I lead by example.

How do you balance owning a successful business and motherhood?

I rise before the sun and come home at the same time my 10 year old arrives off the school bus. I am there for my clientele, home for my children and have dinner on the table when my husband arrives from work. It is a busy life but a balanced one.

What is a typical day like for you?

4AM alarm “beep.” Clients every hour on the hour, 2 group classes of 20, last client I see is at 2:30PM and I am home for my son by 3PM. I answer client emails in the evening mostly about nutrition.

How did the name West Coast Workout come about?

The workouts that I do are inspired by my years of living, training and learning in Southern California.

What do you find the most rewarding part of your job?

I know I am influencing people to live a healthier life. That is my purpose on the planet other than being a mom and wife.

What is some of the best motherhood advice you’ve received?

Begin with your children from the start, developing healthy lifestyles. You are creating habits and you want those to permanently influence them in a positive way.

What is next for you?

A book and a video so West Coast Workouts can be experienced no matter where you live. I want the same for everyone—–health, love and happiness.

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Guest Post from Michelle Riddle

I was very much looking forward to this new TV show, “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom” on TLC. I was happy to see that there was finally going to be a show that addressed what so many moms are going through. What a HUGE disappointment the show was…where do I start?

I will start with the one positive thing…the comment the husband made about not being able to give is wife that “completeness”. This hits exactly on the issue that I think so many stay at home moms face. While I love my kids and am thankful for the time I get to spend with them, at the end of the day I need to feel like I did something for me. I need to spend a little time doing something that I am passionate about that makes me feel like a little more than a chef, house-cleaner, chauffeur, referee, etc,. That is what feeds my desire to someday go back to work.

I hate that the show is promoted as asking what a mother “gave up” to be a stay at home mom. All that kind of thinking does is bring up the dreaded “mommy wars”. I kind of feel like this has been a non issue lately, but am sure this show is once again stirring the pot. It brings us back to the discussion that moms who stay home gave up a chance for a successful career and set the feminists back a few years and working moms are not making the right decision in doing what is best for their family. Give me a break, that is just wrong. Women make the decisions that are right for them and their family and how dare the media continue to add fuel to this fire that one choice is “better” than the other. It is hard enough being a mom (working outside the home or not) we don’t need to constant media influences to make us second guess the decisions we make.

I know this is a TV show and it is for entertainment purposes, but TLC usually seems a bit more on track. The huge black “SLSM” van…like mom was off being a secret agent…well that was just plain silly. I admit it, I like reality shows. I find a show like The Real Housewives of Orange County very entertaining. The lifestyle of these moms is just so far from the reality of moms out there that it makes for very good entertainment. I don’t watch that show to learn anything that relates to my lifestyle, I watch it for fun. The Secret Life of A Soccer Mom was not exactly entertaining and did not teach me anything; all it did was make me angry.

Here is where I think the show really missed the mark. This mom was not living at her house for the week that she was working. She was not trying to get kids up, feeding them, dressing them, getting them out the door and then getting to work on time and then doing it all again in the evening. She was getting a full nights sleep, something she probably had not had in YEARS and knew the children were “safe” at home with their dad. That is not the reality of a working mom, is it?! Sure, that once again makes for good TV, but isn’t it more important to show what it is really like for a working mom.

And here was got my blood boiling the most about the show… I get that the show editing has to be done in a way to make it interesting to watch so will not even talk about the fact that she was forced to make the decision to go back to work in a few hours without having any discussions about salary, schedule, childcare, etc,. I have to believe that these conversations did happen, but would not make for good TV. But here is what could have almost redeemed the entire show for me. I would have liked to see the mom have a discussion with her employer about working part time. Couldn’t she be a successful fashion designer 3 days a week? I would have liked to see the show focus more on the idea that moms can have it all. Wouldn’t it be nice if the show worked with companies that do offer flexible schedules where the “job” of a mom is respected? Why continue with this idea that it has to be either or. Why do we have to make a choice?

Michelle runs SantaCruzMoms.com

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I was cleaning out some old papers and magazines today and came across an article I ripped out from Women’s Health in June contributed by Leslie Bennett, author of The Feminine Mistake and writer for Vanity Fair.

The excerpt was entitled “Letter to My Younger Self.”

Let me preface the rant I am about to go on by saying this:

• I haven’t read Leslie’s book, just the excerpt from the article referenced above and a bit of info about her online.

• I wholeheartedly agree that women (and men) should plan for the unexpected–both personally and financially—through financial planning, insurance policies, ongoing training, etc. etc. That is a book about finances – not about women selling out.

The fast facts that accompanied this excerpt:

• 5.6 million – Moms who stayed home with kids in 2006

• 4.4 million – Moms who stayed home in 1995
• 43% — Percentage of moms with graduate or high-honors bachelor’s degrees who have left the workforce

Some of Leslie Bennett’s core messages (some taken from her bio as well):

• Stay at home mothers are “misled by the fairy-tale version of life, in which Prince Charming comes along and takes care of you forever.”

• “What animates the most interesting person I know is the passion for their work and the lives their work has given them.”
• “The truth is, most women end up alone, one way or another.”
• “It’s meaningful careers, well-earned success, and enough financial security to ensure a broad range of options that sustain women through the rough patches of life.”
• “My career has given me more enduring gifts than my lovers ever did.”
• Stay at home moms are unwilling to look at the risks of staying home.
• She says that the stay at home moms she talks to insist that “bad things would never happen to them, only other people.”
• Full time mothers have an overcapacity for denial
• They demand that their choices be respected and attack those who question them.
• Magazines are afraid of offending the stay at home “mommies”; they didn’t want to wake the “cranky children”
• Stay at home moms are buffered from harsh realities and preserve their illusions about their choice

My Take:

Here are the juxtaposed messages between the stats bolded in bright red at the bottom of the article and the author’s message: – More women are choosing to stay home with their children than ten years ago – and Leslie Bennett is screaming from the big glass building at Vanity Fair, “Big Mistake Ladies!!!”

You are a day late and a thought short for this generation, Leslie. Your message might have fit for the hungry women’s libbers of the 70’s or the droves of women returning to work in the 80’s to go head-to-head with the boys. But the new generation of women and mothers in the workplace and at home have learned a thing or two from the women of yesteryear. We don’t want to fit in the box of whatever you think we should be. We’re perfectly content to navigate our own lives – thanks.

We’ve watched our parents and our grandparents hack it out and witnessed the impending results over time. So we want to make changes to make our lives work out a little better. The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Praise for the women who decided to leave corporate America for motherhood for a little more fulfillment AND praise for the women who decided to go back for a little more fulfillment or financial advancement. Praise for choices!

For those who left corporate America and those who want to leave right now: We don’t want to bank on failed marriages, late nights proving ourselves in the workplace and the over-riding sense of guilt wondering if we’ve failed our children AND ourselves. You no doubt find “GEN Y” and many of our “GEN X” counterparts entitled – because we want more control of our personal time than ever. Generally speaking, we place a higher value on family and the time we spend with them. And watch out boomers – apparently we’re poised to bring on a “GEN Y” baby boom that may rival that of the post-World War II population explosion. There could be a 17% population increase in the next 10 years. Say goodbye to the 2 kid average and hello to the impending new national average of 3 kids per household.

It’s not surprising that 43% of moms with graduate or high honors bachelor’s degrees have left the workplace. They are smart! They realize the workplace doesn’t provide enough flexibility, and they have the strength to say, this isn’t worthwhile for me anymore.” We can’t all write for Vanity Fair. You also fail to mention the fact that 40% of those women who leave the workplace start their own businesses. Why? Once again because they are smart and talented women with much to offer the world – and their children. We didn’t give it all up as the “giant feminine mistake” – we took back what was ours. The ability to have an identity with and without our children, and to be happy at what we are doing, and to contribute at many levels.

The fact that we continue to evolve is ignored. Bennet seems to think that today’s stay-at-home mom is living on Plumb street with cookies baking in the oven, a glint of emptiness in her mind, and happily cashing in daddy’s pay check. I wonder where she’s living?

Women today have more choices than ever. To have anything that is truly valuable there is a price to be exacted. There is a price exacted to stay home with your children, there is a price exacted to work full time, there is a price exacted to start your own business, there is a price for supporting your husband through medical school, there is a huge price to educate yourself and overcome obstacles as a single mother. At every level there are prices. Who is this woman to say which ones are worth it for which people.

I’ve already hopped on a soap box about how I think the Mommy Wars are a big lie that we inflict upon ourselves and how much I hate labels so if you’d like to continue to hear me rant on that level you can click here.

Here is the bottom line:

The feminine mistake is that we are led to believe that we belong in a box with limited decisions and paths set in stone. “Stay at home mom, working mom, etc. etc.” Thanks, Leslie Bennett and Women’s Health Magazine, for throwing us all in one jar and stepping back a few decades when women thought they had to choose one or the other!

The real feminine mistake would be following someone else’s advice rather than following your own path. It would be taking Leslie Bennett’s advice and listening to the people in the big glass buildings instead of the divine inspiration that we are all entitled to. Be who you are, love what you do, and pass that on to your children!

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Adapted from Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner—Afterword

I tuck my three children into their own beds, in their own rooms, every night. A few hours later Max, Morgan or Tallie usually make their way to my side of the mattress, each solemnly poking me to announce his or her arrival. The last thing I need is to have my sleep interrupted by kicks and squirms. But to be so close to my children, at the one time of day when they are too bleary to fight with each other, is priceless to me.

My husband is always on the far side of the bed, lying still as a corpse, hoping the children will not notice he is there.

In the dark of night (and many times during the day) it makes no difference whether I’m a working or stay-at-home mom. Like all mothers, I have undergone a spiritual metamorphosis as powerful as adolescence and menopause. The Velveteen Rabbit gets me every time with that paragraph about becoming Real. “Here she goes!” my son laughs as I start to sniff and tear up.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It takes a long, long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to toys that break easily, or who have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. When a child REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

This is the beautiful side of motherhood, whether one works or not.

Unfortunately motherhood is not always so pretty.

Talking with hundreds of women about the tension between working and stay-at-home mothers during the three years I worked on this book taught me quite a lot about myself and the struggles between moms today.

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First and most undeniable: the Mommy Wars are not really between different cliques of women over what kind of motherhood is superior. The real battles rage inside each mother’s head as she struggles to make peace with her choices.

Second: whether you work or not has no bearing on whether you are a good mom.

Period.

Is Dawn Drzal, author of “Guilty,” a better mom than her New York City neighbor Ann Sarnoff, COO of the WNBA, because Dawn gave up her career as an editor while Ann kept on working? Do Terri Minsky’s string of hit tv shows make her a better (or worse) mother than Inda Schaenen, the radical feminist stay-at-home mom? Each woman has high standards, impossible standards, for what kind of mother she strives to be. Our fanatical, soul-changing love for our children makes us all want to be the best mothers we can be. We have this much in common.

Third, I found that some women don’t experience tension between working and stay-at-home moms—or at least nothing they’d call a “war.” But even these moms agree that we all struggle to feel good about our own unique brand of motherhood.

An innocent desire, but one that makes us vulnerable. Politicians and the media exploit stereotyped images of “soccer moms” and “welfare moms,” because they know women want to be classified as “good” and “bad” on some level. Worst of all, this need to feel good makes us very, very critical of each other and ourselves.

Positive messages for mothers in 21st century American society are harder to find than swim diapers at Target in August. When was the last time you told another woman, “You’re a good mom”? How about the last newspaper or magazine article that said: relax, you’re not perfect but since you love your kid deeply, it’s all going to turn out okay in the long run? Even if you don’t breastfeed for at least six months, don’t devote 24 hours a day to developing your kid’s IQ, and occasionally down a glass of wine before 6 pm because the kids are driving you crazy.

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Love for our children, and the immense task of caring for them, burns up large portions of our pre-mom selves. Think of Leslie Lehr, Monica Buckley-Price and Catherine Clifford, who gave up work they cherished to stay home with their children. Some of us pay dearly with our careers, our bodies, our marriages, our relationships with friends, our closeness with our parents and siblings, our very selves. Then, after years spent diapering babies and fixing school lunches, we look up and find little to no sincere affirmation from our friends, our families, or greater society that we’ve done an admirable job rearing our children. The only moms who do feel genuinely proud are women with rock solid self-esteem in this area. All two of them. So how then can the rest of us feel like good moms?

When you want to feel good about yourself, and cannot despite repeated attempts, the next best thing is to feel better than others. Ask any seventh grade girl. Starting when I was 11 or 12, the goddesses in my life—older girls—trained me in the ancient art of comparing and ranking females endlessly on the traits that mattered then: fat in wrong places, hair color, breast size, butt shape, nose prominence, stomach flatness, appeal to the opposite sex, and so on. Most of this indoctrination took place in locker rooms, girls’ bathrooms, classrooms and hallways emptied of boys and teachers.

I’ve never been happy plying this trade. This competitiveness of the female tribe led me to a teenage bout with anorexia, endless hours wasted trying to get a 360° view of my butt in the mirror, and four years at Harvard proving that I was smart even if I’d failed in my quest to be physically perfect. It’s not the kind of interior monologue that makes one feel particularly fine about the fairer sex. But I’ve never been able to rid myself of this need to judge women, including—perhaps most of all—myself.

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When I became a mother, this ability to classify myself vis-à-vis other women slammed me headfirst into a stone-and-mortar wall. Who ranks as best mom? How can I win the potty-training round? The talking-first round? The I’d-do-anything-for-my-kids round? On my most insecure days, I’d trade my diamond stud earrings to know on an absolute and indisputable scale who is a better or worse mother than I am, to line up every mom in the world from best to worst, myself somewhere in the front-to-middle.

I want to know. I need to know. I will never know.

There’s no divining who’s best when it comes to motherhood. We are all completely unprepared for the job; our mothers lived in such a different world they seem as baffled by motherhood today as we are. We do the best we can with our decisions on work and family. As Beth Brophy wrote, we are all trying to convince ourselves we are good enough.

Whether to work or not after having kids is a profound choice; it splits women into two groups with publicly distinct theories about motherhood. Our internal monologue about whether we are good mothers morphs into an external catfight disparaging other mothers. We’re talking age old “us. vs. them” rivalries: the Capulets vs. the Montagues, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm…Working vs. Stay-at-Home moms.

Not coincidentally, all of these rivalries end badly.

* * *

When I lived in New York after college, I interviewed a female Freudian psychiatrist for an article on eating disorders. During the interview I asked why people came to see her. She paused to gather her thoughts.

“They come to change the past,” she told me.

Long after the article was published, I remembered her words.

It’s no coincidence that so many women in this book wrote about their mothers and their childhoods. As mothers, we all, to various extents, carry the baggage of our pasts; we all try to recreate the good facets of our childhoods and to compensate for the painful ones. The memory of what we did and did not receive as children shapes—some would say warps–our approach to motherhood. We try to give our children (and by proxy, to give ourselves) what we lacked as children. For some, it’s financial security, a nice house, an unending supply of beautiful clothes and toys. Others give guidance and boundaries, a focus on goals and achievement. Still others want to give laxity and permissiveness and unconditional love.

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What I most want to give my children is the one thing I didn’t have in a childhood filled with pets, books, barefoot summers in New Hampshire and a pony when I turned 13. I want to—I need to—give my children a happy mom. And for me, being happy means working.

Before tackling this book, I had no idea why some moms stayed home. I had no clue what they were doing there. I didn’t know if they were faking happiness or were truly content without work and a paycheck in their lives. And I had no inkling why I raged against them so bitterly at times. I know these women now—and I see that their decisions differ only slightly from my own.

I never hated other mothers. My anger came from years of competitiveness with other women, and my own internal agony of seeing, in stay-at-home moms, what I was missing at home when I was at work; and in ambitious working moms, the career sacrifices I was making by working part-time. It’s clear to me now that comparing myself to other moms is pointless. It’s also clear that other moms’ choices suit them and my choices are (mostly) right for me and my kids, which is not the same as perfect. But I’m not out to be perfect. I’m out to be better than perfect, as Anne Feld writes. I’m out to be happy. And that’s a personal quest no one but I can judge, fulfill, imitate or envy.

We all need other moms regardless of our personal decisions about working or staying home. That’s why I needed this book. The stories I pored over that you’ve read on these pages made me laugh, and cry, and regret a few things, and analyze—yet again—my decisions about how much of my life to devote to my work and my children and myself.

There are no easy answers. But I no longer feel alone in my struggle to balance work and family. There are millions of women in America keeping me company as I fight my internal mommy war, and very good company you are.

—Leslie

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