Paying It Forward…
One of the reasons that I felt compelled to write this book is the fulfillment it gives me to pay it forward to other working parents who are trying to figure out how to manage the juggling act on a day-to-day basis.
I will never claim to have all of the answers for how to approach being a working parent… but I have spent the past twenty-one years focused on figuring out how to make all aspects of my life work to the best of my ability and enjoy life each day.
Over the years, many of my younger colleagues have asked me for guidance as they are thinking through the dynamics of the juggling act. I hope this book plays a part in helping the next generation of working parents reflect on how to juggle and live life to the fullest.
After graduating from Georgetown with a degree in Marketing, I decided to move to Chicago and join Leo Burnett (which is an advertising agency). This was a fun way to start my career in an amazing city. I worked hard (and very long hours) in those early years, but I learned a lot about working in an agency and about Marketing.
During these years, I was fortunate to work for a very special woman, Renetta McCann, at Leo Burnett. She was a working mom with two young children. She was one of the first women I was able to work with who was managing the juggling act. Renetta was a true inspiration to me and showed that it was possible to have a family and a successful career.
Then, I moved to Atlanta with my fiancé and joined The Coca-Cola Company in Global Marketing. This was the start of my globetrotting, which changed my life forever. I loved working with people from various cultures around the world. With each trip to another country and the special people that I had the opportunity to work with, I grew as a person and truly became a citizen of the world.
When I was thirty years old, I had Grace, and this is when my juggling act began. I was in a global role at The Coca-Cola Company and still doing significant international travel as part of my role (basically had a week-long international trip once a month). My husband traveled domestically each week, so we had a nanny who would stay with Grace during the weeks when both of us were gone.
My career continued to progress over the years, with more leadership responsibility. Along with the evolution in responsibilities, I continued thinking through how I was going to manage the juggling act and refine my working-mom operating model each year.
When Grace was seven years old, I went through a divorce, and this required me to evaluate all aspects of my juggling act. I needed to ensure that I could continue to do all that I was trying to do in both my personal life and my professional life…and I was committed to figuring it out.
When Grace was in eighth grade, I left The Coca-Cola Company and decided to join McKinsey & Company as a Partner. This required even more travel than I was doing before (on a weekly basis)…and further refinement of how I was managing the juggling act.
During Grace’s junior year in high school, I left McKinsey to join Google to lead Global Marketing Operations. This was during the pandemic, so I had the opportunity to work from home and have lots of quality time with Grace in her final two years at home. This time together was truly a gift.
This was also the first time that Grace had really seen me “work,” because I had always gone to an office (and did not work at home when I was with her). The silver lining of the pandemic is that Grace gained an appreciation for how invested I was in what I did each day…and how much I enjoyed my work.
Over the years of raising Grace, I constantly evaluated how I was doing in managing the juggling act…always keeping her as the priority…and took it on as a challenge to figure out how to make it all work. As I look back, I am proud of how I approached my juggling act…it was not easy, but it was definitely worth it.
This is my favorite quote, which I have displayed on my desk in my home office…it makes me smile each time I read it.
“The master in the art of living
makes little distinction between
her work and her play,
her labor and her leisure,
her mind and her body,
her education and her recreation,
her love and her religion.
She hardly knows which is which.
She simply pursues her vision of excellence
in whatever she does, leaving others
to decide whether she is working or playing.
To her, she is always doing both.”
~ James Michener
(Apologies to James Michener…
as I changed this quote from he/him to she/her)
After Grace graduated from high school, I decided to move from Atlanta to San Francisco. When I was working on the interior design for my new place, I was working with a designer to design a wall in the living room that would be a focal point.
As we were discussing the design elements of this wall, we considered adding a shelf running along the wall, and I wanted the shelf to be symmetrical on the wall. The designer said, “No, you should make it asymmetrical.” Well, for those of you who don’t know me… I am not really an asymmetrical type of girl, so I pushed back on this idea and said, “What am I going to do with that part of the shelf that is sticking out to the right?” The designer said, ‘You can put a sculpture there.”
I laughed and said with all that I had going on in terms of Grace graduating from high school, selling my house in Atlanta, moving my life across the country and buying/renovating/decorating this new place, and working full time, I really did not have time to figure out what type of sculpture would sit on this part of the shelf. This year was truly the biggest juggling act of my life.
So, over the months I started looking for sculptures online and could not find anything I liked. One day I had a moment of inspiration and asked the woman I was working with to source art for my new place if she knew a metal sculptor. She said she knew one guy, but he would not be open to working with my ideas. Then she said, “I think I actually know a sculptor in Malibu… and I think he would be willing to work with you.”
So, she connected me with Jon Krawczyk. During my first discussion with Jon, he said, “Sarah, I do not have an ego, so you can tell me exactly what you want to create in this sculpture.”
I told Jon that this was good to hear because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted this sculpture to look like, and I wanted it to be on the front cover of the next book I was planning to finish writing in my new place. We collaborated over a couple of months and worked through the details together (from a distance). The result of our collaboration is the sculpture that you see on the front of this book.
This sculpture reflects the Juggling Act quote that I shared on the homepage of this website… and the five balls we juggle in life… work, family, friends, health, and spirit. When I moved to San Francisco, I was planning on finishing this book (which I had started on years before) once I was settled into my new place in San Francisco.
The sculpture now lives in my living room (and sits on the asymmetrical shelf). It was inspiration, as I wrote this book in my living room… and it makes me smile each time that I look at it.
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sarah@saraharmstrong.com |
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For media inquiries, contact Mantra Public Relations at PR@thejugglingact.com |
For media inquiries, contact Mantra Public Relations at PR@thejugglingact.com
