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Do you want the truth?
Welcome to Do You Want The Truth? where we dive deep into the real raw stories from parents in the trenches of parenthood.
Season 2 is brought to you by Sam Strom and Freelance Journalist Zara Hanawalt, along with guest co-hosts such as Jaime Fisher.
Season 1 is brought to you by Paige Connell & Sam Strom. They bring you candid conversations with parents who share their experiences of parenthood and what they wish they knew before having kids. You'll hear the real stories. The stories that are typically reserved for best friends. The stories with TMI. We believe in the power of truth telling because when someone asks, do you want the truth? We always say yes. Join us as we explore the highs and lows and everything in between so you can feel less alone on your journey.
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Do you want the truth?
The Truth About: Career Pauses with Neha Ruch
Neha Ruch—founder and author of The Power Pause, formerly known as Mother Untitled and recent guest on The Drew Barrymore Show—joins Sam and Zara to talk about one of the biggest third-rail topics in motherhood today: what happens when ambitious women choose to pause their careers.
They cover everything from postnups and financial planning to the emotional rollercoaster of second babies, postpartum anxiety, and why the “trad wife” narrative is a distraction from what really matters. Neha doesn’t sugarcoat anything—she reclaims stay-at-home motherhood as a powerful, intentional choice, not a fallback plan.
Whether you’re burnt out, balancing it all, or secretly wondering "Is it okay to shift my priorities?"—this conversation will meet you where you are.
In this episode, we talk about:
How Neha decided to pause her career
The myth of “giving up” your ambition when you pause your career
Practical advice for planning a career pause with your partner (think: postnups, budgets, shared goals)
Why modern feminism must include more than one path for women
How her second baby changed everything—including her views on help, guilt, and mental health
Raising kids in NYC vs. the suburbs
Why having a village isn't just nice—it's necessary
Her experience on The Drew Barrymore Show and the cultural shift happening around motherhood today
Resources & Links:
The Power Pause
Follow Neha on Instagram
Buy The Power Pause
Tovah Klein’s work on parenting psychology
Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com
Connect with Sam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Connect with Zara:
Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/
I became a stay-at-home mom in 2018. My days at home with my kids were some of the happiest of my life, but to the outside world, I felt like I was just a caricature. There were so many stereotypes about stay-at-home moms and I didn't feel represented by any of them and, honestly, as happy as I was in my days at home. I felt kind of alone, at least until I discovered today's guest, Neha Roosh, is the founder of the Power Pause, formerly known as Mother Untitled. She's also the author of the Power Pause how to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger Than Ever. Neha founded an incredible community full of ambitious women who are rewriting their own narratives around motherhood and work and finding a balance of the two that works for them. In today's conversation, Neha shares some of her incredible insights on the intersection of motherhood and work, and she also gets really candid about her own motherhood journey. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the first season we did with Paige and then now we're here with Zara, who has a lot. I have no knowledge in the parenting space other than I have a kid and it was really fucking hard for me and I was like this is not, is this normal? And as I talked to more moms I was like, oh, this is normal, but why is nobody talking about?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:Like let's talk about all these things. Like, let's talk about all these things. And I didn't have a village initially. I do now. So this was like how can we make this easier for other moms in particular? Because this is not what I expected and I know we all kind of are around. Well, zara's a little bit younger than us, but I'm 41. And so we all grew up and I know you reference it in your book in that lean in era, and so it's like a lot of deep programming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's like a really fascinating time for motherhood and I wonder if every generation has felt that way previously, where we're stepping into new norms, new expectations, new resources, new tensions. But I definitely feel like we are like kind of squarely in the millennial generation that is re-examining everything, like I don't think it's a coincidence that menopause is getting a rebrand right now, and next up is retirement and elder care, and it's like every milestone we arrive at, we're sort of looking at what we've inherited as being the norm and then saying like actually we want to do it a little bit differently.
Speaker 2:We're also the first generation who has access to social media, who's going through these stages and has less access to that. That like village I mean. I remember growing up and I was always dropped off at different people's houses. We were living with friends. It was just like a very fluid situation where now it feels a lot more contained to just your nuclear family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think the parenting expectations are much higher. I think Claire Kane Miller did a phenomenal podcast for the Daily on why we're operating in a time of intensive parenting, because oftentimes you hear that and you're like, oh, it's the parent's fault, but it's not. It's so many forces, from the economic structures to sort of the opportunities available to this generation which we're all trying to preserve for our kids, to social media, and there's so many different elements that have contributed to the fact that, like, our kids are just we were talking I was talking about it earlier today but where it's hard to line up schedules with other parents because these kids are all scheduled in a million different things. And I have a, my older one is nine, and I feel like when I was nine I was sort of in a myriad of things but I wasn't hyper specialized in like three practices a week for any given sport. But that's where we are now with. Like kids are groomed earlier and put on tracks and it just changes the whole paradigm in so many ways.
Speaker 2:It's also like I feel like desperation, like parents are working and most people many people, not most but what is it like? 58% have dual income households in America, or maybe it might be higher and so it's like you, you need a break, or you're like not out of work yet, and so then you schedule your kids for activities At least that's what it felt like for me when I was going through that Um, because it's like how can I get a break and not have to entertain them?
Speaker 3:Right, and or that's such a great point, and or build up our child's school day so it better aligns with our work day, which is like kind of you know what? Like would be an ideal scenario if the kid's school day is better aligned and school calendar is better aligned with our work rhythms. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they do align when you get to private school, right, but in public school they, I mean they can, they can align more Like there's fewer half days there. And. And they do align when you get to private school, right, but in public school they, I mean they can, they can align more Like there's fewer half days.
Speaker 2:There's fewer, at least when I was looking into schools um like there's 89 half days at our public school versus, I think, three at the private school, which is crazy because then it sets you up in it Interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And every Wednesday in our district it's a half day, either Wednesday or Friday, depending on which school you're in, and they start earlier and all of these things. So it's interesting, which I mean. Welcome to the pod, neha.
Speaker 1:So much to talk about. So many truths, so many things.
Speaker 2:And for those of you listening who don't know, neha, can you tell us a little bit about who you are?
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 3:So I am a mom, first and foremost on the Upper West Side, of two kids, a nine and six-year-old, and I have a dog named Coconut and a husband named Dan and we, sadly, are very committed to New York City and we're doing parenting in New York City, which is a special strain of reality, and I think one of the greatest joys of the last decade is I've really gotten to grow up alongside my kids, and I was previously a brand marketer, most recently running brand at a tech company called Zola, and then I had my first child, bodie, and I downshifted into part-time brand work and eventually decided that the brand I wanted to be working on was motherhood and specifically stay-at-home motherhood, and I started what was a small project, mother Untitled, which has obviously grown into a community of over 250,000 women, all of whom identify with this idea of ambitious women needing a place and choosing to pause or shift to make room for family life, but wanting to stay connected to confidence and a sense of possibility.
Speaker 3:And I recently published my first book along the same themes, called the Power Pause, which is really a reframing of American stay-at-home motherhoods really thinking about how, if you need or want to shift your attention or focus for a family you can actually grow alongside.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. And before we hopped on, here you were saying Zara actually contributed to the book as well.
Speaker 3:We did. I had the pleasure of interviewing over 150 women for the book, a combination of experts in a variety of fields, from psychotherapy to finances, and real mothers who live across the country, have made conscious decisions in their own careers and have also kind of lived the rewriting of the narrative, whether that be having to negotiate the finances in a more dignified way or having to figure out how to build their networks or ultimately repackage this experience of motherhood into their return.
Speaker 1:Before you had kids? Did you ever envision yourself in this type of work? Did you ever think that you would pause or reprioritize after having kids?
Speaker 3:I don't think I had given it that much thought. Candidly, I think no. Let me back up. I actually did.
Speaker 3:During business school, I took a class called Work and Family, which is sort of this. Like you know, it was this milestone class that you took your spring semester at Stanford, and I was taught by this professor named Myra Strober, who I also interviewed for the book, because she gave me a very bad grade on my final project, which was how are you going to make work and family work? And I talked about doing both. I talked about what I now call the gray area existing in this like bastard, between a stay at home and working mother, and I talked about specifically consulting and freelance work and the creator economy and how it would let me be able to determine whether I was going to dial up or dial down in anything in here. And I got like the equivalent of a C on it with like red lines being like what are you talking about? Which was just the moment we were living in. I was in business school at the lean in movement Sheryl Sandberg was like our neighbor in Palo Alto, you know, and and so it was like the rallying cry at graduation and it felt very antithetical.
Speaker 3:I had always loved content and writing. I'd always my career up until I had my son was in women's brand, and so there was sort of this like moment of I think when I had him it wasn't like, oh, I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, but it was a oh, I've really. I'm so happy to be in this moment with him and I want more time with him. But I also want more time to figure out who I'm going to be next. And I think it was a lot of self-trust that I could take all the work that I had done up until this point and discover new interests, and I did. I think I'd always wanted to dabble in content. I like started many a blog, like you know. I like thought I was Martha Stewart of the like millennial generation.
Speaker 2:I want to see some of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've thankfully shuttered all of those. They are nowhere to be found. You cannot find them, but I I think I'd always wanted to play with content and and something about leaning into family life. Also, let me lean into like, oh, there are these other avenues I want to play with. So, no, it wasn't a direct through line to like I'm going to pause and then I'm going to start this advocacy platform. Um, but it was a sort of acceptance and desire for things to be more fluid.
Speaker 1:Has that professor changed her stance since?
Speaker 3:Yeah, she actually. I mean, she's in that first chapter where she talks about how modern feminism had to evolve and we you know her work and she's, you know she's in her seventies or eighties now and when you can imagine that that wave of feminism she was sort of squarely in the 1970s like feminism, is proving our worth in the workforce and I think what she has since had to evolve to is no feminism has to accommodate and include a lot of different ways to make work work.
Speaker 3:What women need are more options, and so I think that is a mindset shift of feminism can't be just valued in what is your paycheck in any given year, and it has to be valued in well, how are women setting themselves up to thrive in the long game?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the cultural shift has really been kind of striking. I remember, before I was so, I had my kids at the end of 2018. And even before that, I was always pitching stories about stay at home motherhood and you know the challenges of working and mothering at the same time. And I remember in 2019, I pitched a story about there was an editor who was looking for unconventional takes on the idea of power and I pitched something about how, as a stay-at-home mom, I was finally feeling like I had figured out what I wanted and I felt like that was a power move and it didn't get any traction and I really think if I had pitched that a year and a half later, I think it would have sold 100%.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think a lot about when I started Mother Untitled it was 20 January, 10th 2017.
Speaker 3:And I think it's a great example of how things take a long time right and I'm so glad.
Speaker 3:First of all, I started it in a digital format, in part because the reality of building a platform while you're on a pause is that it can't be it has to be like you can't put in a ton of capital and with free resources like Instagram and Squarespace, it lets you do something in a small, measured way. And I um, the way I started it was really profiling different women, making room for family, to upend the archetype of the stay-at-home mother and say, wait a second, like she isn't shut in and she isn't like lacking in ambition or traditional, and she's actually quite dynamic and she's coming in with all of this experience, but she's actually exploring a lot of things alongside. And it was like a profile week and I remember because of that, it let me meet different women who were in the space and there were all these women talking about the working mother working mother working mother and there were all these books about the working mother and I wrote the outline for the Power Pause in 2018.
Speaker 3:And I am so glad I didn't and the reality of the book publishing world as everyone knows, is.
Speaker 3:It takes a lot and you need to be growing a platform basically while you're selling a book. And I had my second child in 2018 as well and there was no way I was going to be able to, so I put it on the shelf. And then 2019 happened and I was like, oh, I'll dial up now, which obviously didn't happen. 2020 happened and the world started to re-examine work and family and, luckily, my kids aged into school around 2021. So I could really dial up this work in a big way, but I wouldn't. And when I went and I took that same exact one pager and I gave it to my agent, took that same exact one pager and I gave it to my agent, even she said this would have never sold a year ago and I, you know, I think the world woke up to the fact that women need more options, that it's not sustainable.
Speaker 3:Taking care of like people you know you can no longer hide your family is so much like they was sort of in the zoom screen and people realize, oh, this takes work, like who's doing this work otherwise? And so, yeah, we. I think there was a real shift. I do think when I started, it was considered I definitely had a number of people be like but isn't this anti-feminist, a little bit Like you're propping up the state and still to this day, I think we run that risk with the rise of the trad wife right, even though I will remind everyone until the cows come home that that is a hashtag. That is a hashtag that represents a small number of women who realize they could garner views of their content that, by the way, they're making money off of. It's not representative of the majority of women, but it sort of again runs the risk of sort of associating time spent with family as defending tradition, which is obviously what we're trying to move away from, just so women don't carry that burden and shame.
Speaker 2:There's also. I mean, I had this when so I am on a power pause and working on this project with Zara. But I remember meeting my first stay at home mom friend and I was so concerned for her. I was still working and she's like I'm stay at home and I was like, do you have any protections in place for your financial future? And she's like, oh, we wrote this contract out and I was like, but is it legally binding? Cause she gave up her. You know she was going to go to medical school and do all these different things and life took her a different way.
Speaker 2:And I remember being so concerned for her and she wasn't on her bank accounts and you know she now is. But all of that I'm like, no, you have to protect yourself. At least get on the bank accounts, at least do all these things. And we're in California, so we are more protected in our state. But I remember being so scared of it and now that I'm like trying to like I just burned out, I just couldn't do it anymore and I had to take a step back for the health of my family and myself. Now I have a lot more compassion and but it is still like a gray area because it's how do you take a step back and still protect yourself financially. But I know a lot of people online are like don't take a step back because that puts your financial future at risk. So how did you and your husband have that conversation?
Speaker 3:I think the big piece is saying start with a conversation, don't assume that it will all work out, and without a plan in place, even if it is a financial no-brainer for your family.
Speaker 3:And I just want to say right now that one in three women on a career break actually feel forced. It was not a choice for them, they had to because of the cost of childcare. 60% of women on a career pause cite financial considerations in pausing. And I start there because I think for so long, stay-at-home motherhood quote unquote has been associated with luxury, and it's like a luxury to stay home. And when we associate one side with a luxury, we deem it less worthy of support and less full of value. And so I think what we need to do is start the conversation with if someone is pausing or shifting, it isn't a luxury, it's a privilege to get to choose. But that and that goes both ways, right. And so once we say, okay, if care work is actually has value, your partner and you are making this decision together, right. Which means that ideally, you're having a decision if one of you is making a career shift at least six months ahead of time, and that goes again, even if it's a financial no-brainer at all. You might try different budgeting strategies, right Like so. For you know, for some people it's a big budgeting issue and they may do. I talked to a couple who moved from the Bay area to Virginia beach because that was to them it was important to have one person at home and that allowed them to do that. For some people it's. You know, there was a couple in Denver who just cut the line item of travel for that year and what they said was so we're going to make this shift together because we together decided that this is important for our family, or this works better for our family, right?
Speaker 3:A number of reasons people pause is like number one, a very valid want to be with their kids. The second is less stress in the home, which impacts everyone. The third is the cost of childcare. So, all to say, this is like a joint decision that impacts everyone in the home. So it's not just the like mom over here saying I want to stay at home. And I think when you decide together, it immediately adopts this mindset, which I think is very important, of the interdependent household, meaning that if I am pausing my paid work, yes, I depend on the income that my partner is contributing. But my partner and this was definitely the case in our household because he was building a tech company at the time and it had to be like in San Francisco at the drop of a hat he depended on me being the sort of security blanket in the home, and having the conversations around planning allowed us to also talk about that piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 3:And had I not felt so clear and certain about that sort of mutual respect for the joint contributions in our household had that not been verbalized very clearly and also, by the way, talking about how might we budget for a little bit of help out of this joint household income? Because help is not just out of it, doesn't just help the mom right, having our cleaning lady once a week or having our babysitter two after that helped all of us Like that allowed all of us to function better in the home. So those conversations were important to have. But had they not gone the way I had wanted them to go, I would have A and we talk about this in the book not made a decision until we were both bought in. So brought in either financial planners or relationship therapists or free resources like available on our site or other sites to have a continue the conversation until there was more alignment.
Speaker 3:If there was still not alignment and or we still needed to make a pause because one of us was relocating or a child had a special need, I would say consider bringing in a post nuptial agreement, right?
Speaker 3:So if you do not have a prenup I think prenups come with a lot of stigma that you're betting against your marriage If you really think like a post-nuptial agreement, right, we enter contracts all the time with our employers that's it. It's a contract to help you feel a little safer, to know that you can like work on shoring up your marriage or work on adjusting in this new transition without having to worry, and it's a great way to just know that your interests are protected. I think another big piece of this is consider flexible work as an option to stay connected to your income. So it's not black and white, it's not full pause or nothing. If you're optimizing for less stress in the home or optimizing for more time with your kid, consider part-time work, contract work, consulting work, negotiating more remote work, because that way, if you're not feeling completely supported or safe or financially dignified in your dynamic, consider other options before you fully pause.
Speaker 2:It can also take a while to get there. I started contracting and consulting for years before I transitioned to a pause, so I think for our own brains too, it can be like so much of our worth is based around our paycheck, and I know you talk about this and so it can be really tough and I know Zara always knew that she wanted to stay home. Did you have any of those conversations before you got married, or what was that like for?
Speaker 3:No, no, interestingly, I think that that was one of the bigger challenges is my husband and I had to re-meet after parenting and you know, I think Isn't that weird.
Speaker 2:I think we all do it totally changes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he met me. I'd just gotten into Stanford business school. I was at the peak of my career, I you know. Um, there was a lot of focus on what my role was going to be outside of business school. We met and he fell in love with that drive and that ambition and it had not. There had been no flicker of there was going to be a different. I'll tell you when I started considering consulting to the point of that, you know that essay I'd written. I think we had sort of talked about consulting as something that would let me stay connected to my work on terms that made sense. So, as a reminder, I didn't fully pause until 2017, 2018.
Speaker 3:I was really in a part-time role. So as soon as I had my first son, I wanted more time with my child. The way that we sort of tested it was I initially downshifted into two days a week in my role. I had a phenomenal employer that let me, and that was actually a version of balance that I really enjoyed for that season and I think that that was also more sort of pallet. My husband could sort of wrap his head around that, but there was a lot of immediately when I sort of verbalized, I wanted to take my foot off the gas. I started hearing specifically from him Are you like, aren't you going to be bored all day? I heard from my mother-in-law, but like, aren't you giving up?
Speaker 3:And there was a lot of fear and it was always from the people, and I mean a lot of that set me onto this path, right, because if you hear it from your peers and I did like I heard from someone like but aren't you wasting a spot at business school? If you hear from people like that, you can sort of tune it out, but when it's your husband, there really was this education that we had to have together, and I think the part-time work was really a way in which for me to get comfortable myself, but both from the financial perspective that we were going to be able to navigate this shift, and for us to be able to get our footing in parenting and to see that wait a second, I am. I do really enjoy these days, like I. I actually find myself more stimulated and more curious than I've ever been, and that's not to say that one is better than the other, but it's to say that I had reached a plateau in my work professionally.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, I think that there's no coincidence that a lot of women pausing their paid work are at that point where they've clocked in about 10 to 15 years in their career, and so there is this moment of re-examination, and so I think there was that collision effect, but I think that learning how to weather criticism or critique or opinions becomes your superpower in parenting, because everyone's going to have something to say about everything, whether it's co-sleeping or cried out, combination feeding or breastfeeding, or you know. And working, not working, no help. Did you have a?
Speaker 2:C-section. Did you not A girl home birth everything?
Speaker 3:Once you realize that actually, like my mother-in-law saying, are you giving up? Was more actually a reflection of her own experience in her own decisions around motherhood, right, like it didn't actually have to do with her wanting, her thinking less of me and more of her percolating on her own experience. And my husband came also from a place of real concern because he had just never known me to be fulfilled outside of the workforce, and so that was for me to learn myself before I could convince him.
Speaker 1:I know you talk a lot about ambition. Did you ever question your own ambition when you decided to pause, or did you feel like other people questioned it? Or was it more this outside idea?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think both. And when I chose to downshift, I did not question. In fact, I sort of found myself feeling quite proud of myself, of like wait a second, like how amazing that I have preserved opportunities for myself and I can make room for family, right. When I fully paused and then I started to make room for like a small project alongside. You know, we also one of the other forces in this is we diminish women's work, right. So like anything that looks like a lifestyle blog or an Instagram we like write off as like this little. I think.
Speaker 3:In that moment I remember coming face to face with my own internal sense of is this enough? And I remember literally Googling. I just put the kids to bed and I was Googling definition of ambition and I came upon Merriam-Webster's definition, which was the determination to do things. Literally, that's all it says, no elaboration on what those things are. And I remember thinking, wow, what have I done today? What have I done?
Speaker 3:With great care and great determination, I figured out these new rhythms and routines in our family. I have negotiated a number of tantrums with a picky eater. I am doing some personal growth work to help move our marriage into a place that is even more solid and more connected when you think of it that way. We are going to have to do a great many things over the long game of life and if we are intentionally moving around our energy and focus to align with what is most necessary right now, and doing it with intention and care, that is ambitious.
Speaker 3:And I think the outward noise I was better able to manage because I was overthinking it for myself so much and coming up with the vocabulary around it so much that I could hold the external noise a little bit more lightly because I could stand in. I'm choosing this for myself, I'm choosing this, and what a privilege it is to choose it. But I had to work through that vocabulary for myself and that's a lot of what the power pause is is. It's a set of vocabulary. It's a set of vocabulary. It is literally like chapter by chapter, having overthought those circumstances so much in the middle of the night that I could walk through it with more confidence.
Speaker 3:It's always the middle of the night, man Always the middle of the night, always Put the kids down and you're like I should really go to sleep.
Speaker 2:And then you're like, oh, get inspired yeah.
Speaker 3:But to your question, I think we, I think external noise was definitely prevalent, and I saw it and I heard it and I met so many women like you and you all of us right who were dynamic and interesting, who had clocked in a decade in their career, who were like actually choosing to shift things around for family because they wanted to or needed to, but like we're excited about the idea of it, like it wasn't a disparaged woman. You know that wasn't looking forward, and yet they were all sort of on the receiving end of unwelcome commentary and it seeps in at different moments for different women. But I think every woman has that moment of wait, are they right? And for me it wasn't until I started. Ironically, I started the little blog alongside family life that I came face to face with. Is it big enough for the world to see me as ambitious?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I have always questioned my own ambition, even before having kids, because I think for much of my career I would look at the next step and think I don't know if I really want to do that. I don't know if I really want to manage people. I don't know if I really want to move into a part of my career where I'm dealing with the numbers more than I'm telling stories. And I think recently I came to this realization that so many of our cultural ideas about ambition are built around men white men and, I think, in many cases, men who have partners who are taking care of everything else at home so they can show up at the office with their battery fully charged, Right. I think it was just this idea that was so narrow and so exclusive and just never felt. I just never felt like I aligned with it.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that that speaks to this idea too. We're redefining it all on women's terms now, right, for so long we pretended to be not pretended in a bad way. To prove our capacity in the workforce, we took on the message that we have to be like men, right, we hear these stories of women training themselves not to cry. And only recently, I think, we're realizing wait a second, we have superpowers. Right, we actually are powerful because of our femininity, and we've only gotten to that place now because of the opportunities that have been paved by that wave. And I think now we're saying well, if we're finally wanting to claim that power can be found in femininity too, then maybe we can also redefine it all based on the realities of womanhood, like what make us unique, whether that's menopause, whether that's our menstrual cycle, whether that's like how can we make it all work better for us? Because nothing's around the realities of women, even our healthcare, right, yeah, and so there's-.
Speaker 2:Or tampons even they're tested with water, right, that's how they're made, like they. You know, like everything is not based around us, but it also is like kind of embracing masculine and the feminine, I think, because I feel like we've all tried to become masculine where it's like okay for us to be different, like it. I think embracing those differences is is great.
Speaker 3:But, then.
Speaker 2:So here's something. I don't know if either of you have felt this and I imagine you have, because I know you've each said that you're a feminist but as you're like, hey, I want to be at home, I think people should have this option, you know, why don't you stay home Like? I've talked to a few of my girlfriends about it, who are so stressed out that they're like having health problems, and they start being like are you, are you turning into a conservative? And I'm like no, a conservative, and I'm like no. And then when they do take the break, they're like oh my gosh, this is so much better. Or move into consulting, whatever Cause. You can actually make more money consulting oftentimes than in a full-time role. At least, that was my experience. Yeah, do you have either of you ever encountered that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think that one of the things I have to be really I've had to do this for long enough that you figure out the top track to respond and I do think that we have. That is probably the biggest thing I worry about. It has actually never come to like full fruition, but I'm always worried it's like an undercurrent right.
Speaker 3:That this work will be associated with some sort of agenda to get more women in the home. That is never, and so what I try and be very clear about is this it's this work and I say it right from the beginning of the book is never to say that pausing your career is the right choice. To say that pausing your career is the right choice, it's to say it's one choice that should be validated and respected and there's a way in which to actually be able to walk through it with more confidence and enjoyment and a sense of possibility. And what women need are more options to make work and family sustainable right, and those options should include flexible work. Those options should include remote work. Those options should include better childcare. So, if you continue your work in exactly the same capacity, right, and it should include pauses, being dignified and supported and seen for what they are, which is immense leadership training, so ultimately, women can transition back to the paid workforce.
Speaker 3:On the other side, this work is to actually allow women to be seen and respected for all they've accomplished and not counted out. That's what we want, and I think that the conservative agenda, or whatever agenda we want to be dissecting, I think, the sort of binary view that women stay home where they work is what we want to be dissecting. I think the sort of binary view that women stay home or they work is what we want to actually dismantle, because this idea that it is black and white is so antiquated. The reality is one in three women today who are currently working out of the home are going to pause their careers in the next two years. One and two are going to downshift their working hours and 90% of the women at home want to return. So actually, what we're just trying to do is make it all more fluid and open.
Speaker 3:And accessible yeah.
Speaker 1:Did either of you ever watch Desperate Housewives when it was?
Speaker 3:on TV. Yes, oh, my God, I loved it.
Speaker 1:Did you ever notice that the four main women all had periods where they were stay-at-home moms and all had periods where they were working outside the home?
Speaker 3:Wow, what a great observation. I did not, or at least I didn't Did Angoria too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what did she do?
Speaker 1:She has the closet, Gabrielle's closet thing where she's a stylist. I closet Gabrielle's closet thing where she's a stylist. I think that show did such an interesting job of depicting motherhood, and I watched it before I became a mom and then I re-watched it as a mom and it was just like a completely different show.
Speaker 2:I kind of want to re-watch that it's worth it yeah so I have a hard pivot here because I have some questions that are related to the power pause, but more about your journey into becoming a mother. What did kind of fertility, pregnancy, postpartum like? Was that journey hard, easy? I'm curious to learn more about all of it.
Speaker 3:They were just. You know, what was most fascinating was how different it was from one child to another.
Speaker 1:Oh, really yeah.
Speaker 3:So my first was very straightforward. I was lucky it was. The fertility journey was relatively straightforward. I had a lot of time, so I nurtured my body. I did yoga. I ate like warming foods and cooling foods, whatever I read. I went on Pinterest.
Speaker 2:I did all the things Like.
Speaker 3:Ayurvedic. Yeah, okay, yeah. And then I had him. I had very I. He was literally born on his due date at seven pounds. Everything was very like by the book and it was, and he was a good sleeper. All the things happened. I thought I was God's gift to her. I really did. I thought that I had done something magical. And then I had my second child and she just brought me to my knees. I mean I had. Jolietta's journey was different. I took, like I don't know, six months. It was fine. I had shingles during that pregnancy.
Speaker 2:I hear that's really painful.
Speaker 3:It was. It was horrific. I was not working out. There was no yoga involved. I was much heavier. Um how much? Weight did you gain With Bodhi? I gained like 26, 27 pounds.
Speaker 3:What? And with Bodhi, with Lila, I gained like 40 pounds. Yeah, it was different, it was, it was definitely different. And then she came and I had just I had a postpartum anxiety experience that I just didn't have with with Bodhi, you know, I think I was, I was really, I think sometimes like it amplifies the sort of behind the scenes thoughts that you were going to have anyways, and I just had a lot more worries, I had a lot more concern that I wasn't going to spend the way I channeled it was like how many minutes am I spending with Bodhi versus Lila? And that sort of like that guilt really wore me in and because of that I really didn't bring him help and so it became this convoluted mess, yeah, like piles on itself, yeah.
Speaker 3:But I think it was a learning. It was a learning about help and it was a learning that help is an investment. You know that there's that as much as I was dissecting the minutes and hours I was spending with my child, real presence is felt in the way you show up and how supported you are and that it was a really humbling lesson. I mean, everything with her was different. The sleep was different. I was like sleeping on her floor. I had thought I was some whiz at potty training with her. My mother-in-law came downstairs and was like you are losing, this is a power struggle and you are losing. And she, like potty, trained herself like way later, like way later, like in debris school. It was just a very different experience and I think it was such a lesson in. You can never judge parents because you never know the set of circumstances they are operating in and your circumstances will change from year to year, season to season and child to child.
Speaker 2:Yeah, temperament is a real thing. They come out exactly who they are.
Speaker 3:I'm still losing the power struggle.
Speaker 1:in case you wondered, my second born is like that too. I mean, my kids are twins, but there is still a first born and a second born and it's very clear, interesting how many minutes apart.
Speaker 2:Two Wow, are they different? Astrological rising signs or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I haven't looked into that. Actually they're both Sagittarius, so wish me luck. Yeah, but yeah. My second is she likes to argue.
Speaker 2:I have one, and that's how he is we get a boy and a girl, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think that's my. It's the gender too.
Speaker 2:Is the girl, the second Yep.
Speaker 3:Yep, she is.
Speaker 1:For me too, for both of you, she is fierce.
Speaker 3:I mean, I really want to be her when I grow up. So, like I say of this, I really look at her and I think the gumption, the gall, the like shit that she says sometimes is just amazing. It's like unfiltered and beautiful.
Speaker 2:How lucky are they, though, to have parents where you can do those things and say those things and not get put in a corner? I don't know how y'all were raised, but you know you can do those things, yeah, and then what did your village look like after you said you didn't really have help or didn't bring in help, but did you have unpaid help? I?
Speaker 3:had varying degrees of help. So when I was working part-time, so at six months, I went back to work part-time and I had a babysitter for those two days and she was phenomenal. She was this Welsh medical aid who was here and there was something about like being so trustworthy. I just trust if you can work with a child with cerebral palsy, you can handle an infant, and so it was such a special relationship. I don't think I've ever cried as hard as the day she moved, when and she sadly moved right when my younger one was um six months, so about to leave, about to be born.
Speaker 3:There was like some crossover there and then I did not have I, I, my mom, was around, my, I was sort of figuring it out, and then I brought in around the time when I cracked and I realized, wait a second. My daughter was six months old and my son was three and I had lost my temper on my poor little three-year-old and I realized like, wait a second, like this isn't worth it, like it's not me trying to figure out how to like split my time, like it's not working. And then I brought on a mother's helper for days a week and she lasted for a whole year until the pandemic, and after that my kids sort of aged into school, so we didn't have help, obviously for a couple of years, during that sort of sticky period, but my husband was able to wake up with the kids in the morning and I would get like an hour and a half to two hours in the morning and then we'd sort of figured it out between us and then our mother's helper came back like three afternoons a week, which is what we have now and that it's a different person, but she is still our like. We still have a wonderful babysitter who is a few afternoons a week, which worked, and I think one of the things that um that allowed us was this idea that I could, um, grow this business alongside kids.
Speaker 3:You know, I think that in the periods that we didn't have help or it was a heart rock, your transition, right, like the expectations on what I was able to do were lower and it was more about like how could I keep this small project going in the fringe hours of family, right, naps and nighttimes, and so for a couple of years maybe, like 2018 to through 2020 till 2021, it really like stagnated, like I was, you know, really just keeping the lights on.
Speaker 3:I was producing the like three posts and the Instagram posts, but it was really about lowering the expectations of what was possible if I didn't have as much help, and I think that that's important for everyone If you're not going to be able to invest in paid help, then lower the expectations, delegate as much as possible. That's really good advice. Yeah, and, by the way, the other thing I did when I didn't have even when I had the two day a week babysitter and I to get those naps and nighttimes. You have to let something give, like you can't be cooking a five course meal during that nap and like running a blog at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Cleaning the house and getting a workout in, my husband and I decided we would both clean the house when he got home from work. He wasn't going to come home to a perfect home and that we were going to rely on a lot of frozen foods and takeouts for a period of time. Like we lived on Dr Prager's for our kids, love them, and because it said Dr, I like assumed it was good, you know, so it was some hodgepodge of and I think that's like this whole around help Like I think we often think, well, it's like full-time nanny or nothing, and we definitely just reevaluate our needs every single year because they change. Even now, even if I'm going to pick up Lila on the Thursday, we still need a babysitter to take Bodhi to his reading tutor, right? That's interesting, this idea too, that if you have a babysitter, you're not doing anything from a parenting perspective, and sometimes people are still leaning on babysitters to just help them manage the day-to-day in a way that allows them to stay whole and healthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was working full-time, we had a gal come in every day for an hour a day. We paid her 25 bucks a day. She does this for a few of our friends and I was like, how are people doing this? This doesn't make sense. How are you keeping a clean home? Dual income Like this doesn't make any sense. And she picked up in the morning for an hour a day and it was transformative. We still have her two days a week now and it's so nice, because I am not the best at household domestic duties I'm still learning Cause you know I rejected that when I was younger, but it's truly transformative. And you think that it's only for really wealthy people. But a hundred bucks a week is not that much. You can sell things in your house and make a hundred dollars a week.
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting you say that One of the women I interviewed for the help chapter talked about for a while her husband wasn't on board with them getting paid help and what she did was she basically was like, for a period of time, I'm going to just I need this and it's more valuable to me than my therapy session, so I'm going to get five hours of babysitting instead of the $125 I'm paying for my therapy session. And over time her husband noticed wait a second, this help isn't just for you. I'm noticing that on those days there's less of an expectation, the burden is less. It's important in our relationship and it really helped shift the mindset. Now, I don't recommend moving away from mental health investments, but that is an interesting calculation, right?
Speaker 3:What can we back to? When you're mapping out the finances at the beginning of the year and you're hopefully doing some sort of money party or money planning? What can you do in terms of allocating different budgets to different things? And maybe one year, like I mentioned, from what was it? It was April 2019 until March 2020 when we had a four-day-a-week babysitter. We cut back on dining out, right, that was the shift, but it was what we did as a joint household To sort of recover from that shift and it depends on what mental health is too.
Speaker 2:Is having a clean house or not having to do stuff? How is that going to impact your mental health? So it sounds like she made a calculation and was like let's try it and let's take a chance and see how it goes. Glad it worked out for her.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, if you feel like you're at your absolute limit every single day, that's also not great for your mental health.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or your kids or your family dynamic or your marriage, right? Which is why I think so often we think childcare just comes out of the moms, it's just for the mom. But it's really not. And the thing that really helped me in the book was Tova Klein, who is a parenting psychologist, saying you know, your kids don't just need you all the time. They actually benefit from having other loving caregivers. And I think that that was something you know, when I was really struggling in that transition to two kids and I was sort of slicing my hours, I was so wound up in how much of me can I give them, when in reality I wish I'd just like reframed it to like how can we just surround these kids with great energy and love and how can we all grow and thrive? And that was a shift. Obviously it took me a little longer to get to, but a helpful one.
Speaker 1:Yeah and Neha, I think you and I probably have a little bit of a different perspective on it too, coming from immigrant parents where I don't know about you, but I grew up without any real extended family nearby and I'm an only child like we've talked about and I really do. I look at people who have a village and who have a lot of caregivers around and I really think that's wonderful for them. Yeah, Because I didn't have that growing up and I wished I had.
Speaker 3:Ironically and my mom always says that to me she was the biggest champion of health. She was the one who was like you need help because it'll let you enjoy motherhood, because she immigrated. They immigrated here when I was three and I think they were new to the country, they were getting their footing financially and so they didn't have access to sort of trusted caregivers. And so and I can also reflect and Zara, I think I've shared this with you that I still remember being seven years old, terrified Like what if something happened to my parents, because I didn't know who else would be available, and so, yeah, I you know.
Speaker 3:on the other side, I can really reflect on just how, what a gift it is to these kids to feel like they're held.
Speaker 2:I was the kid who did lose her parents at eight and I can, I can it long time ago, but thank you.
Speaker 2:But I my mom built a very strong network around. We lived with friends and we lived on a commune and like all of these different things, and I will tell you that saved me, I think, cause I was so held by other people and even now to this day like last year I think it was we went down and met all her best friends and you know, like all of these things, and so I I do think, from the perspective of the kids, it is so important to have other people that you can lean on and that they feel safe with. These are people who I mean and you get so many different perspectives. Like one of my mom's best friend wrote you know, eight chicken soup for the soul. I never would have known that until I went down and saw her friends last year and got to talk to her and like there's, there's just so many benefits.
Speaker 2:Not that everything has to be a transaction, but like you get to know, so many different people in so many different lives and have so much more like varied experience and input that it's really really nice for the kids too yeah. One last thing. I know we have we don't have a lot of time left but you you do live in New York city and that is a very different place to raise kids, and we've all seen it on TV the Upper East Side, and you know Gossip Girl and all these different things. How is it raising kids in New York?
Speaker 3:The Upper West Side is very different than the Upper East, so I know nothing.
Speaker 2:I'm in California, I don't know if you're saying that.
Speaker 3:You know I think the gift of New York City is that there's so much diversity. So you know we made a very conscious decision. I think it's kind of like everything right with work and family You're always choosing what matters the most and you can only optimize. You have to kind of pick the thing that matters and then optimize for it and actively choose it and know what you're letting go of. And as much as we would love the space that the suburbs affords and some of the ease right Like I don't know, getting in a car and driving somewhere, I think we made the active choice to optimize for diversity in the sense that my children are obviously half Indian, half Jewish.
Speaker 3:We never wanted or I never wanted, my kids to grow up feeling like they were the only ones of color and feeling like that was a bad thing, and that is how I grew up. And instead I wanted them in a place where they'll never have to think about like being. They just think that everyone's different and it's a beautiful thing and it's just the norm is to be different and it's celebrated, and I wanted that for them and so we chose that, knowing what we traded off on that for them. And so we chose that, knowing what we traded off on. And so you know, the other piece that we didn't bargain for but is a natural byproduct of living in the city is the economic diversity.
Speaker 3:So, yes, you see the, you know the Upper East Side gospel life, and you, more often than not, are walking by a number of people living very ordinary lives and also a lot of people who are unhoused, who are working through you know, real, real hardships, and your kids come face to face with that, and that is an ongoing conversation. And so you really, I think, you really I think that maturation is that the way you say it maturation of understanding, of sort of what real life looks like, comes very quickly for these kids. You know, the amazing thing is we took them to India a couple winters ago and they don't flinch at the sort of dirt and the grit of it. And I and I wonder sometimes if that's because, you know, new York's not that far of a cry from it sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went to India when I was young ashrams, communes, all those things, sai Baba and I remember it was so fun but it taught me so much. I think that's where I got a lot of like my understanding of you know. There are unhoused people and a lot of the world doesn't live like we do and I've been struggling trying to figure out how to teach my son about that because he is an only child. He's very spoiled. You ask him anytime if he wants siblings absolutely not Like um and how do you really instill that?
Speaker 2:Maybe I do need to take him to New York, or maybe even San Francisco?
Speaker 3:Cause when we drive through the city Isn't such a far cry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we, we walk around there and he's like, but if we have money can we just give it to them and then, it, you know, like it gets into, and he's like I have toys, you know, but he doesn't want to give them away, but so it's like, how do you teach them about these things? And, um, so maybe I'm going to have to take him to San Francisco more. So we always wrap up with two questions that we ask every guest. So, before we get into these, do you have anything else that you want to ask, neha? No, I think we can wrap up All right. So the first is what advice do you give, like if your best friend comes to?
Speaker 3:you and says I'm about to have a baby, what is the advice you would give her? Great question what support do you have lined up for those early weeks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. And then how to build that.
Speaker 3:Oh, and padsicles. My husband was so good about making padsicles. He would just like do you know what those are?
Speaker 2:Those are like the macarons From a baby he would then put the aloe.
Speaker 3:He was like. I would just remember him. My mom says it's her favorite memory is him lined up at the kitchen counter just making padsicles and putting them in the freezer. That's very sweet.
Speaker 2:We had C-sections, so we didn't have any need for that. That was more like can you help me get out of bed? And then the other questions are do you want to take this one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I know there's a lot of discourse right now. All the parents I know are in hell, if you will, but what is a part of motherhood that has brought you unexpected joy?
Speaker 3:I think there's just profound perspective on what's really important. Yeah, I think it just lets you hold the rest of life so lightly. You know, I think you wake up every day and you really take in the sort of great privilege to have kids who are, you know, in my case, healthy, and I think that that it just feels like everything else you can just being able to focus on. That becomes the filter for everything. You know, like that evening invitation out that you're like am I going to have? Is it going to impact my energy to show up tomorrow Like yes, or like, is it going to give me energy, Is it not going to give me energy? It just it makes these little decisions in your time just feel so much more simple. Yeah, I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, thank you so much for joining. This has been such a pleasure and thank you for writing your book and creating mother untitled, and everything that you're doing in this space, and thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:And thank you for calling it a career pause and not a career break.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I know you feel this way. Words matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
