“I’ve had to learn and give myself the grace to say there are times when I can be fully present as a mom and I need to focus on that. And there are times when I can accept help and am grateful for it,” explains Asher Fogle Paul, mother, journalist, and author of Without A Hitch. In today’s episode of The Momologist™, Asher discusses the shift from full-time journalist to full-time mother and the difficulties women face balancing their careers and motherhood against societal pressures. 

When Asher envisioned motherhood, she always anticipated being a full-time working mom. However, when her daughter was born, it became more difficult to balance her own needs, her marriage, her career, and the needs of her child. Asher tells listeners that motherhood required her to learn to let go and not compare herself to her peers because everyone’s measure of success looks different. She found that going freelance worked best for her in the end because it gave her time to continue writing and spend more time with her family. 

Tune into this week’s episode of The Momologist™ for a conversation about balancing your passions and motherhood. Join us as Asher teaches us to give ourselves the grace to go along with the ebbs and flows in creative life and family life. 

 

Quotes

• “I didn’t ever envision myself being a stay at home mom or not having creative aspirations. I always thought I would work full time. And then when my daughter was born…I enrolled her in a daycare around the corner from my office. We rode the subway every day together, which was like an extra hour of the day that we got to snuggle and hang out. That part of it was really great. I still loved my work, but, to be honest, it was really hard…I came to the point where I realized something had to give. At the end of the day, I felt like I wasn’t being the writer I wanted to be or the editor I wanted to be. I wasn’t being the mom that I wanted to be. I certainly wasn’t being the wife that I wanted to be. So we made the decision for me to go freelance. It was hard. It was a big identity shift that I didn’t really want at the time. I knew it needed to happen…but it was just like I don’t know what my identity looks like at this point.” (08:34-10:52)

• “It’s a position of privilege to even be able to make the decision to go freelance in that context. In hindsight, I’m grateful that we had that choice, but it was definitely a tough transition. I think it took me a long time to find my sea legs.” (11:08-11:25)

• “I felt like I didn’t have enough time with my daughter. I was a little bit miserable thinking about how much of the day I missed with her…this was pre-pandemic. The idea of working remote a couple days a week, which I broached to my workplace, they weren’t open to it. It just wasn’t an option.” (12:05-12:34)

• “This isn’t a knock on the companies that I worked for…but even in these female-dominated places there were very few people at my life stage. I knew mothers who had pushed through and made it to the other side and they had older kids in school all the time…there was definitely a little bit less grace for those ‘my daughter is sick’ or ‘she’s teething,’ ‘my mother in law can’t come in today and help.’ It just wasn’t a culture of allowances and none of my peers had kids yet.” (13:02-14:06)

• “The identity shift was huge. After I quit working, I got pregnant with my son pretty quickly after that. Writing definitely was on the back burner for a little while. It was a lot of giving myself grace. Promising myself, okay this is something that will be there. It was very hard watching people that were my peers get Senior Editorial jobs, and run publications, and write books and do all sorts of things while it felt like everyone was kind of leaving me behind. There was a process of having to let go a lot of comparing myself to other people…Everybody’s path looks different. Everybody’s career looks different. Everybody’s barometer for success looks different. There are