Working Mom's Gripe Session

We are excited to announce the launch of our new podcast, Mental Health Working Moms' Gripe Session. Gripe Session is a candid, funny, and compassionate space created by moms for moms. Our host is Sanford Behavioral Health CEO Tracy Rogers, LPC, LMHC, NCC. Significantly, Tracy is the mother of an 11-year-old boy who spent much of his early childhood in a 'couch crib' in the C-suite. (More on that in the podcast.)

Also featured in our first episode are Sanford Founder Rae Green, JD, LPC, CAADC; Senior Director Rebecca Wolfslau, LPC; and COO Katie Vokes. Their children range from toddlers to adults. Together, they bring not only professional expertise in mental health but also firsthand experience of what it means to love your child and love your leadership role.

The gals discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a working mom with a stressful job. Smart, outspoken, funny, and at times poignant, their conversation features head lice, missed milestones, bedtime tears, and a Rainbow Fish analogy. JOIN US monthly with host Tracy Rogers and a changing cast of Sanford Behavioral Health moms and special guests. Sponsored by Sanford Behavioral Health.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey everyone, I am uh Tracy Rogers, and I am the CEO and host of Sanford's new Moms of Sanford Gripe Session. This is a podcast where we spill the tea and make it real. I'm a therapist and a mom. And we are here to create a safe place where we can vent, we can laugh, and you know, just to support each other through the ups and downs of parenting. That's what this podcast is about. We wanted to get moms together to just discuss, you know, real real life situations and you know, just keeping it it it logical, right? And so throughout this podcast, we're gonna dive into some good, some bad, some pretty messy moments. Thanks so much for you know joining us and and tuning in to the first episode of Moms of Sanford Gripe Session. I'm Tracy Rogers, and I'm so glad you're here. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

I'm really curious, Tracy. How is your traveling up here? And also same for you, Rebecca, with leaving Kyler and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's always the same for me. It's like three days of prep or a week of prep. And um, and then like before I even get on the plane, it's text messages and questions and you know, just the functions of the house. I mean, it's hard. As much work to try and get away as it is. Yeah, it's like prepping for a vacation before a vacation, right? And I mean, I I love all sides of it. That's the hard part, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:51

I love all sides, but I was talking to a friend about that the other day because you, you know, I'm a single mom and so I'm prepping to come up here. I have to have child care for her. But then you have to remember things like get the trash cans to the side of the road because you're gone during trash day. And also the QR code for your kids' pickup needs to be in a Ziploc bag under the map in front of your door. And if you forget that, your childcare literally cannot pick up your child. And it's just that weight of like, if I miss one step and then I'm halfway across the country, what's what happens? It's that mental load.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Tuesday morning.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Worry about how she feels if that happens.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, Tuesday morning, I get a text, did you order my food from my 11-year-old? And it's like, yeah, it's covered until you got it. Thank you. I got it. Yeah, it's covered till Friday, but it's that check and balance, and you worry, like, oh my gosh, I forgot something. And then at the same time, what's the week look like? What do you have going on this week at work, right?

unknown 2:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Rebecca, you can't forget the food.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

He eats eight meals a day. Yeah. It's very important.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

What about you, Katie?

SPEAKER_04 3:01

Yeah, well, I just was thinking too, like, I want to like acknowledge that I'm I feel very grateful for obviously being a mother. Like, I know that there's privilege in that 100%. And I'm really grateful for my job. Um, so I I see all of that and I can be appreciative and grateful for all those things. And two things can be too try, two things can be true at the same time, because it's also really, really hard. And so, like, I just want to preface this conversation with that is like I see or I'm aware of like all of the great things that I have, but I think I want to be able to share with people that understand like how difficult it is, and how like just mentally draining and emotionally draining, like it's obviously worth it. Well, you think it's worth it, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah. So well, how old are how old are they now? Two and what? Um I mean uh five and three. Five and three. So yeah, so I know for me and Ray, even like I'm even with with Rebecca, I mean, Beckett's 11 now. So I've gone through this now twice, right? So I'm watching the two of you go through it. So I became a CEO and Beckett was two. And so I miss the two to six every birthday, right? In the guilt of that. So you got the mom guilt. You got mom. Mom guilt. And then you have the, well, this is my job. I've kind of sign this responsibility to my teens. And so um, I say, like, yeah, what you guys watching what you guys are going through now and some of the you know conversations that we've had in the gray year, you know.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, I think during my um active parenting years, um, when the kids were little, not only um there was a job, there was um my kids, but I also was a daughter, a granddaughter, and um, and a wife um with someone that had a pretty intense career. And so I remember thinking at the end of the day, there's just not enough of me to go around. There's just, you know, I'm how what parts can I give to everything and still be um doing a decent job at supporting? But a lot of that was um, you know, caretaking for a couple generations above and one below. So yeah, it was um, it was a it was a lesson in, you know, how much of me is there for each person, but also a big lesson for me was um learning to delegate. Do you guys have that? Like learning to delegate well.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I think it's not stressful. Maybe it's delegate, but I had to be okay with um not. I think being high achievers, like we are in the profession, you know, Rebecca, your role now. Um, I mean, all of our roles now is not feeling like a failure. I really felt like a failure, and this just happened. I'm still learning this like a month ago when I had to hire someone to cut my grass or you know, automate automate my dog food ordering, like the things to simplify. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Well, but those are things that someone else can do. They don't take your level of CEO talent. So those are the things where you can start peeling off, I think is what what I discovered.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Have you guys ever read The Rainbow Fish? No, yeah, where she has all the sparkly scales, and everyone keeps asking for a sparkly scale, and so you keep handing one over until all of a sudden she only has one sparkly scale left, and then someone asks her for it, and she's like, But that's like the thing that made me who I was, and now they're all gone, there's only one left. And sometimes being like a high achiever in certain positions, but also just working moms in general, like it feels like you're giving a scale away to everyone, and you don't know how to like keep your own pretty sparkly scale, or like even have, you know, for me, it's even like the breath at the end of the day to be Rebecca, um, or what that even means, because I'm giving so many parts of myself to whether it be work or, you know, in this group, I'm the single mom. And so I also want a partner at some point. And so, how do you make sure you're giving your scales away to the right people, places, the right, the right amount of time, like, and not giving them all away and losing yourself completely.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Well, that's a a great analogy with the scales and also um thinking about what does that scale look like? Like today, um, you know, my daughter's six and I'm gonna paint her nails. That's gonna be our event for the day, you know, so that there's something um to focus on that she will remember as well, so that it's not just being split in a million directions for the day, but you've got a scale that you're giving away, but it's one that you've planned and it's uh, you know, it's a memory, or making a cake. Or um, when my son was little, I would take this is in the old days when fax machines had those big rolls of paper, and I would take a big long roll of paper and tape it to the floor with, you know, crayons and markers and stuff. So when he got home, I could do the homework but make it fun. And, you know, so plant being planful about it helped. That helped a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, and Kitty, how do you um in your role, right, as a chief operating officer for how many years now? Like four years, four or five years, your kid's whole life.

SPEAKER_04 8:22

I was gonna say that, yeah. Sloan is the age the whole thing I mean, she was born in in 2020, and that's kind of when a lot of our growth started and took off. Um and yeah, I mean, just even like the phases of her life already and how it's matched my different phases in my career with Samford. Like, I feel like I've worked so hard for this career, and I love it so much, and I love our team so much. And I wouldn't, I'm so thankful that I have that job. And at the same time, like, of course, I love my children, and so there's always that pull on the inside. Like, I honest to full transparency, I'm jealous of you when you come up here to travel because you are able to give all of your focus to work, and you can like stay late or come in early and do all of those things. And there's a lot of days that I want to be able to do that. Um, or you know, I wish I could stay late. I some days I do stay late, and then there's always the guilt and whatever, but like to have an excuse, not to say like not go home, but like to give to be hopeful. Yeah, to give a hundred percent to one thing. I'm like, I I'm yeah, I wish I had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

I remember we were we've worked together the longest in this group, and you when you had Sloan, she um you were gone on maternity leave. So being on the other side of it and not having you there, and we were all like trying not to call or ask Katie Franklin, it was hard, like it was a big void of not having you there. But being, I mean, as a mom, I was myself in retrospect, I was like kind of worried, you know, about it.

SPEAKER_04 9:59

And so I um it was a balancing act. Yeah, quick, quick story about that. So I came back to work. So Sloan was my first um 2020. I came back to work and I was still trying to breastfeed. And we're in behavioral health and we're at residential care. And so things happen 24-7 all day, every day. And we were much smaller than we are now. Um, and so I would go and find a little office to close myself into. And you know how it is, like you gotta wait a second, you know, like so. Then like I would just start going and then my phone would ring and it would be like so-and-so wants to AMA, or you know, so so and so called instead, like, we need you. And I'm sitting there, like, you can't stop. I either stop pumping so that I feed my or I go deal with this issue, and then what's I would always be at home? I would always go deal with that issue and then my supply tanked, and then it you know, turns into all the other things, and it's fine, right? Like for I'm all formula, that's great too. But that was a like my first experience with like the working mom kind of thing, where I was like, oh, like this isn't gonna work. And I remember feeling so guilty.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Speaking of that, I had such a similar experience. I'm actually surprised we haven't talked about this at different points, but um, coming back to work. Well, one, first with maternity leave in general, like um I felt guilty not being at work, even though I'm with my newborn. And um, but then yes, coming back and breastfeeding, I remember there were times that I was um pumping and had my door closed, and then was on speakerphone with somebody on the other side of the door just to try to maintain stay productive. And no matter what you did, you ended up feeling like you were making the wrong move. And I think that continues as they get older too. I mean, Tracy, how often have we talked about it? Like, so this trip that I'm on right now, I so my parenting again is a little bit different. I share custody of my child, and so I only have her 50% of the time. And so 50% means everything, but I needed to come up here on Tuesday. My Tuesday night is a Kyler night, and so I have to make that decision, and it's incredibly hard, and you're pulled both ways, and you just are under the weight of like either decision. Actually, you don't win, and you end up just having to be okay with that and know that when I get back, she gets fun dinner, and she also cons me into a movie night. So she gets both. Tyler is a master negotiator. Um, and so you know, trying to give her a sparkle scale in, you know, some sort of way, because I did have to give up an extra night with her. But I think like it it really is hard to come to that conclusion of like no matter what I do, there might be someone that's upset or someone that gets impacted, whether it be work, my coworkers, or my child or my family that then has to pick up the pieces for me because I don't have, you know, of murder at home.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

The um thing that happened in our situation is at some point with two kids and a job and uh a husband who traveled all the time, and then of course, my other generations, I was helping caretakers, there was no balance. There was no balance to make. There was everything was getting shortchanged. And um, and we made the decision that I was gonna stay home. It made sense for me to stay home because David was in building a really exciting career that we were able to be a part of. And so we were able to blend our family life um with his career. We were very fortunate in that. But I do remember it was hard. I mean, I have a law degree and I thought that's what I was gonna do. And um, and when we made that decision, we said, you know, the the kids are the ones that are really probably paying the price. So, you know, put my career on hold. That was a tough decision. Now, the end of the story is after doing that and and really having a wonderful almost decade of that sort of family life traveling and having the kids and being home, I decided to go back to school. Because after that one, I was like, I don't know if I want to practice law. So I decided to go back to school while my kids were middle school and high school, and they were so excited. They like they got their own key, and you know, they come to school with me and they would study and the and so it was really it was really a positive thing then when I embarked on this chapter of life. But that was a tough one, you know, to figure out like there isn't gonna be a balance here.

SPEAKER_04 14:31

So there's a female CEO, um, and I can't remember if she was CEO of Yahoo. I'm I've got to figure that out, but she's interviewed and she talks about how the whole like balance thing is bullshit. There is no perfect balance, it's not gonna happen. At at any point in time, something's going to your point, gonna quote unquote suffer. And you just have to kids gonna eat.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Go McDonald's.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Your kids gonna eat McDonald's.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

People like Judge a lot of eat McDonald's.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

We finish in a car every single night. I mean, you guys know. I mean, when I'm home, um and Beckett's dad is away, like we have to eat. I do work, I have a little stand in my car, my laptop. I have internet for my car now because we still have to do the job, right? Um, I was gonna ask you, Ray, like if you had to give yourself advice of when you were working, what things would you change? Because I think now, like looking at, you know, Rebecca and Katie, I would tell my younger self a couple of things about raising, you know, Beckett and um work and the important part of all of it, really.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Some of the things I would change are um being less uh attached to my real estate, you know, my home and not worrying about all the little details and the things that seemed important at the time. And and so I I would I would I mean, you know, anybody can die with a clean house, right? You did you um but if you can relinquish that, then that that frees up a lot of time. So that would be the first one, I think. It's just not worrying about my my surroundings or the surroundings around the kids so much because mine's bedtime, but bedtime matters, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

And so it's it's true. So the number one thing that gets really yeah, and he he it's probably three, four years ago, well, maybe even more than that. He mommy, leave your cell phone downstairs because the light like you text and you email and you think at the time, right? Like running a pretty busy psychiatric hospital, it was 24 something. And so even to this day, he says, put every I mean, anytime I'm home, who's putting me to bed? You know, and he says, Leave your cell phone because of the light. Yeah, I'd say put your cell phones down. Now, you guys, I gotta admit, I didn't have that struggle.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah, we didn't have we didn't have that access technology, but technology now that would be tough. Yeah, I had how do you guys do that?

SPEAKER_04 17:01

I had a rough one um not that long ago, actually, where um I was trying to put someone to bed and we were just laying together, I don't know, reading a book, and I got a call, and it wasn't a call that I mean, no, I could have not answered, right? That's the that's the message. But um, I did answer and then I got going and trying to work from the problem. And yeah, exactly. And I keep and she's saying, Mom, get off the phone, get off the phone. Then she starts crying because she wants me off the phone. I don't want to leave her alone in the room. So I'm sitting there on the phone. She ended up falling asleep crying. And then I got off the phone and then I started crying. And it's just like, what is going on here? Like, it's though that bedtime's hard.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Yeah, bedtime is incredibly hard. Um, I have really tried to prioritize bedtime recently, and I just keep reminding myself that like she's six, like compared to the world, she's so incredibly little. Like this matters so much. But in relation to that, something that happened the other day, I was sitting on the couch and I was texting work stuff, but was like very engrossed in what I was doing. And Kyler was over by her Barbie house. And I would have missed this if like I'm glad I didn't, but it would have easily been missed. She's sitting in her chair, she's facing her Barbie house, she's playing, and she just says, I wish my mom would play with me right now. Didn't even like ask me outright, but it was like a just a moment of like these text messages or her. And again, it's like somebody's gonna suffer no matter what, work, my kid, but like just the impact me sitting on the couch, still in close proximity to her had, and for her to just, you know, say that to her little six-year-old self. Um, I don't know, they teach us like, and I know you all know this, like they teach us in those moments. And it was like one of those bedtime reminders to slow down because we only have so many moments with them. And at the same time, like it's so incredibly hard when we are in incredibly fast-paced careers that have to pivot just as quickly as our little six-year-old brains are pivoting, or however old our children are.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Well, I have a phone story, this pre-cell phone story. And I was on on, it was cordless, of course. I'm not going that far back. But anyway, it I was on the phone, and my daughter was about three or four. No, she's about five. And uh, and she was tapping me, tapping me, tapping me. And I kept giving the just a minute. And I was talking to a neurologist about, you know, he's on my advisory board. So it's not like I could just say, hey, anyway, um, she tapped me, tapped me. I kept doing the strong, you know, hold on a minute. Well, then she tapped me and she handed me a baggie. And I looked in the baggie and there were some bugs in the baggie. And I and she said, my head. So I gotta go.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Oh my baggy. So that, you know, I remember thinking, oh yeah, this call is more important, but she got the life on dog. She she had a little license. Oh my god, which is dramatic. That's that's right.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

So, but that but um the the story about my son is when he got to high school, and the high school in our community is about three blocks away. You know, it's an easy, easy walk. And for four years, I drove him every morning because that was the time I had him captive. I knew, you know, what his favorite song, a manic Monday on Mondays, and we play that, and we and it was, you know, five minutes. But you know, it meant a lot just to have that designated um moment. And I'm not a big time person, but he is mom at 723, and we need to leave at 724. And so anyway, that kept me on track too. But it was that was fun because we had that little bit of time.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

I've learned, I feel like the only so balance is such a myth. It really is. And I do think though, that there's a way to um, I guess, situate your days to have some balance. And so I think when I was really, really tied to like the eight to four, nine to five, I had nothing left to give. And I think some of that did have to do with being a single mom or not having a partner at home to tap in and out when needed. But now it's like, okay, so if I have to get her to the bus at nine, I'm gonna spend that morning with her because school kind of starts a little bit later, or we're gonna go down to the bus stop a little bit earlier so she can play with her friends. That's what she wants to do. Um, but then in the evening, like that might also mean that she's around when I do another 30 minutes to an hour of work for a different reason. And I just I have tried to, and I know that this is a privilege for me too. Speaking of privilege, because you know, you're on site and it's different. Um, but I've I feel like I have to, I have to. Rearrange my day in a certain way to give any semblance of like normalcy. Although I don't know that anyone in this room at this point knows that normalcy is. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

We're in the behavioral health. I guess are normal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

That is something comforting, though, that the four of us sitting here talking about this, the commonality we all understand. I mean, you understand every mother's stress, but we understand the type of stress that we're under in this particular um, you know, part of the work world, the behavioral health world, where you know, you're impacting lives, you're saving lives, and there's a lot of um emotional fuel that goes into that. And so having that commonality and talking about, we don't have to say that to somebody because we all sort of get it, you know. But yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 22:48

But our partners don't always, you know, if we have a partner, they don't always get the so my husband's a software engineer. So he spends his entire day on the computer and isn't talking to anybody. He works from home. Um, which again, I have the privilege that my husband's an involved partner and works from home. Um, but my job is very opposite. I'm talking to people constantly and it's fast-paced and all that. And it's so hard at the end of the day to even like try to explain what my day was like in comparison to him. And that can feel isolating at home. So it's like really, really helpful to have, you know, you guys in that sense. I agree.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

I was talking to my stepmom about this the other day because I had made a comment about um, you know, all day, every day we're making a ton of really hard decisions. And sometimes those hard decisions, and they've been incredibly sad at times, are like life or death decisions. And they're on, you know, it feels like at the time, especially that they're on your shoulders. And so then I get home to, you know, in my case, not having a partner, and then you have to make all the decisions. Well, I mean, I think everyone in this room, though, mom-wise, also has it also has the default parent too, right? So even if you have a partner, we're doing the dentist appointments, we're doing the doctor's appointments. Uh, you know, I'm in the back of my mind, Kyler has two cavities right now, and I'm like, when are we getting those filled? Because it has to be two different appointments, all the things. But I um I had made a comment to my mom that I felt like I didn't have help within my village right now. And, you know, she got a little upset about that. And she was like, I would drop anything to take Kyler anytime, which is true. She had Kyler last night. Um, but I think the the bigger piece was when I come home, well, when I sign off at night and I've made all these hard decisions in this fast-paced environment throughout the day, I'm alone with my kid, and then I still have to make every decision from there on. And sometimes it feels too hard to then call mom and say, like, hey, I need help right now in this moment, versus a planned out, can you babysit her in a week or two on a Tuesday night that I have to travel?

SPEAKER_02 25:04

It's always hard to reach out and ask for help when you need it. And usually by the time you ask for it, it's too late. You're already already in it. You had an interview um for your profile, and you said something brilliant about lending family life and work. And um, and you said you know you need, you know, you you integrate them so that your family appreciates and understands what you know what's going on in your world. But but you said a beautiful statement about being able to integrate both. And I know we're talking about, and I said it, you know, there's only so much of me in different segments to go around, but you had a whole nother perspective on it that was really beautiful. In fact, I don't know if I told you this, but I used it in a presentation that I gave.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Remember, it was really good. Our marron must have just been interviewing and I must have just been writing. You know, yeah. I mean, my son Beckett, like, he knows. I mean, and he, whenever we're driving to baseball, Teams is on, and oftentimes, just so you all know, he responds to you guys. Because I got to keep it. That's the only time he responds to me. If I'm on the phone and I'm like, hey, Beckett, he's like, I think it, you know, so he responds, so he does know, and he knows there's designated times, right? Like he now knows that when I'm on a camera, like he has to stay away. And I think, you know, they have had to walk on eggshells too, and they start to learn, you know, and I think um I don't remember exactly what I said in that way, but I think being exactly who we are at work, because sometimes we're not the same in my past life until now at Sanford. Like I've had to be somebody different in front because I came, you know, through behavioral health and different companies that I've, you know, been at, I've had to be a different person than I have at Sanford. And I think that's what's so great about us and the leadership roles that we're in, is like we get the mom. Absolutely. Yeah, I get when I call Katie and Teddy, you know, Teddy's screaming. Yeah, he's screaming in the background and he doesn't communicate. So what Teddy is saying, because I I had it, and at some point that screaming stopped. And I look back and I'm like, from two to four is my guilt phase. I mean, I was at Beckett's birthday party. I told somebody this story, I think this week actually. Um, and I'm at Beckett's two. I mean, he's two, like not even two. His birthday was like a week later. And the hospital called and the ACs were down because we had a storm. And it's about 10, 15 minutes, two o'clock in the afternoon. And I said, Beckett at the time, um, told his dad, I gotta go run to the hospital. I'll be back in 30 minutes. It took me five minutes to shut the AC down, turn it back on, and I'll be back. I didn't get home until two o'clock in the morning. Oh wow, yeah. I missed his birthday. And I honestly don't even know if he got cake. I'm not in any of the pictures, and I'm seeing that now. Right. And so integrating it is saying to work, like, hey, you know what? I'm I'll be there, but I'm gonna be there in like two hours, three hours, and not feel um guilty about it. Um, but integrating it to me means just be who you are as a mom. Like I think as moms, we don't have to have uh separate identities, you know, like for a long time. I think like for me, like my identity is not in being a CEO, it's not in being a mom, it's not being, you know, it's as a human being, who am I? And you know, I have a very strong spiritual background, so that's where my identity is at, because I can't be all of those things all the time, right? And being able to say to myself, you know what, today I did good.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I um when I uh found out I was having my daughter, and I had a friend who I was, I was, you know, I think in my late 20s, and this friend of mine was in her 50s, and she was a adolescent social worker. And I and I wasn't thinking I was gonna have a baby then. And and I said to her, I said, What advice do you have for me? And her res her answer, which I have used all of these decades, is children are resilient. She said, Children are resilient, and they yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

And they're unconditional.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

He reminds me. They're very, very unconditional because they don't. I I came to my dad, I actually had tears in my eyes because I was like, hey, you know, it was about traveling sometimes on Tuesdays. And I was like, I again, I only have her 50% of the time. That's one of my nights with her. And so these times that I do have to come up on Tuesdays are really hard for me. And he just looked at me and he said, Rebecca, children are resilient. It's okay, it gives you comfort to think about both. Um, but I think also being in a space that you well, I think it's twofold. Like being in a space where you can say, Hey, I'll do this thing, but two hours from now, because I do need to be at a birthday party, or, you know, for me, like I do need to take her to gymnastics or, you know, whatever else it might be, it's still being accountable to like your work, but maybe a couple hours later, or maybe you do end up working at 11 p.m. at night sometimes, but it meant going to gymnastics earlier in the day. Um, and I guess I always kind of thought that it meant that you had to work somewhere that you were able to say like no, which I do think is true. And being in that environment is really important. And I think we have this, that type of environment. But also I think like us as humans being able to just know that no matter where you are, sometimes you have to say, I have to do this later so that I can be with my kid.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

So I guess like, you know, as we start to like think about wrapping like this kind of discussion up a little bit, um, what would you give a either a new executive? Because listen, I was never planning to have kids. Like it was not in our cards. I mean, we got news that we were having infertility, and that's a whole nother podcast because there's a lot of women that have that. Um, but what would you say, like in terms of what would you give a a new executive or a new mom? You know, folks, because we have a couple of uh females on our leadership team, right? That, you know, like that haven't had kids yet, you know, just recently married. And so, you know, what would you guys say?

SPEAKER_04 31:22

I actually um was recently talking to a one of our admission specialists who just had a baby, and she just came back from her maternity leave and I was asking her how she was doing, and she was like, Yeah, it's hard. Um, and I just for me, I I say like it is hard, I validate it is really hard. And also, you're not alone. Like they're talking, talk to us, you know, talk to people, reach out. Um, so I mean, I think communicate and reach out to people and try to find your village, and that would be my advice.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So, like thinking about, I mean, there is some prep to this, right? Like us talking through some of this stuff. And I was just thinking about all of the epic fails, Ray, as a mom. You know, I asked Beckett the other day, I was like, Do you remember? And he's like, he didn't remember, thank God. Beck, I used to pick Beckett up from school. It was like daycare. So he started going to daycare at 16 weeks. Because I took a full 16 weeks off. And I was just telling this story the other day, and I asked him over the weekend, um, thinking about you know, us just having this discussion, and I would pick him up from school, and I would not want to stop at the facility, but then I'd be like, Oh, I got one more thing to do. And my plan ops director said to me, he said, just turn your couch around. And that became Beckett's crib. Oh, yeah. And so, and he ate uh mac and cheese, and I had a high chair. My office became like his home, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:54

And so I just asked maybe, like, can you think of any like, yeah, the bug story baggie in the bug? Um, yeah, I think that you, Tracy, are uh are so um sensitive about uh it we live in a day and age right now where we're gonna be hiring young women, newly educated women who are gonna be on this track of having a family and having children. And um, and you are um you have high expectations of the work, but you also have um that same under that that level of understanding for those working moms. And I think that makes all the difference in the world is when somebody who's working with you and feels like, okay, she's gonna get it if I if I have to be in well, it's because I I went through a period of like five or six years where I wasn't really my mind space was over here at a crying baby, but I couldn't focus.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Like there was so much guilt that I like like if I could have at the time I probably would have left the field. Yeah. Right. And figuring out you can have you can have things, you can have more than one purpose. Right. Yeah. Right. And those everybody I think but Ray, you have met Beckett, and he's a pretty adjusted kid. I mean, he he runs our life now. But you know, I think um getting him to understand that he can have a voice, but it's just the lost time. I would tell any mom. It goes fast. I tell Katie all the time. And I probably tell Wolfie this too. Like just be a mom and gotta be a mom. Because of the type of people that we are. I mean, we're great moms and we're great workers, and but you're gonna miss it. And at the end of the day, if God forbid anything happened or any of us left, we're gonna be replaced. You cannot be replaced as a mom.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

We can be replaced as strategic growth officer, COO, yeah, that's the one job, CEO, but you can never be replaced as a mom, right? I mean, when it happens and we pass on, like what are we instilling in our kids, right? And our and for me, I mean, I've been a CEO at other places and within a week you forgot, right? Moms, as moms, we aren't.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

One of the joys of being in the position that I've been in for the last few years as a as a mom who's raised her kids, um, but enjoying the stories that you bring out to work. Yeah, and it's so much fun to share that and feel like I know a little bit about your home life and your kids. And so, you know, we're we're privileged in that we have created, I think, that environment. Yeah. And um, and that's a that's a big yeah differentiator.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

I mean, Kyler came on site for yeah. So it's so great.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

That's the first time, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

We got I think she um gave all of us a little bit of a spark for a week or a little of that like kid innocence and it lightened everything up and everything felt instead of heavy, like almost like we could laugh and simple things.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Yeah, I guess that's the gift. Well, the gift is tired of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

I walked, yeah, I walked into Jacob's office that the other day, and I noticed what she wrote on the wall. It was I love you and stuff, and like we forget that human piece that just like even in the space we're sitting in now, like just being humans, right? I mean some redsheets and all that stuff. Like at the end of the day, like I always say, like, does it really matter? Yeah, we have to think about that. Like we're in and it does, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Business, it matters, but like staying in the space for a minute and saying, like, the human component of what's well and I I think when I first um started working, it was in the day where as a woman you had to, you know, we even had those little bow ties that we put on. So it was very much like uh we were in a man's world, and that's where you were competing and operating like. And and so I would say that this whole conversation is a huge evolution of blending, you know, that um all of those roles. And and you're right, the the one of mom is the one that will live on into eternity. So I remind you.