#TalkingMotherhood Event 3: How to Enjoy Every Life Change by Knowing and Staying True to Your Principles『ライフステージの変化を楽しむ 「しなやかでブレない自分」になるために』
As a company, we believe in contributing to creating a society where motherhood is seen as an advantage - not a hindrance, setback or penalty. How do we do that? It is certainly easier said than done. In our event series #TalkingMotherhood in February, we raised awareness about the topic and empowered women to share their own experiences.
“...becoming a mother is an identity shift, and one of the most significant physical and psychological changes a woman will ever experience.” - Dr. Daniel Stern
Life Event: Identity Shift Through Motherhood
For most women, pregnancy and new motherhood can be described as happy times - but not all the time. Most of us also experience loneliness, worry, disappointment, guilt, being judged, frustration, competition, fear and even anger as we transition through motherhood. Though we know that through the experience of motherhood we become stronger, more compassionate and passionate, more loving and caring, and purposeful and motivated, the process can be arduous. As the psychiatrist Daniel Stern explained in his books “The Motherhood Constellation” and “The Birth of a Mother”, giving birth to a new identity can be as demanding as the actual birth of a baby.
Becoming a mother is one of the most remarkable life events in a woman’s life and according to Dr. Stern, one of the most significant identity shifts, physical and psychological changes a woman will ever experience.
While there can be many life events in a woman’s life, a simple google search for “major life stages for women” yields surprisingly bare results. While it is medically accurate to base women’s life changes based on their hormonal changes - generally divided into infancy, puberty, reproductive age (including pregnancy and delivery for most), climacteric period, and elderly years - there are other significant life events related to marriage, careers, pregnancy and motherhood, domestic and international relocation as a trailing spouse, etc., impact of which are not often well explored.
Life Event: Marriage and/vs. Career
While around 70% of women (and men) choose to marry, marriage can hurt women’s career. A 2013 study found that among female academics, women who were married took an average of 7.8 years to get promoted, while it took single women within just 6.7 years on average.
And there is the topic of “motherhood penalty” or the “mommy-track”. A Harvard Business School (HBS) study dug deep into the topic of gender gaps in business and other sectors by surveying a cohort of over 25,000 HBS graduates across Baby Boomers (born between 1945-64), Generation X (born between 1965-80), and Millennials (born between 1981-96). The study revealed that it is time to question the conventional wisdom about women’s careers such as a notion that most women decide to “opt-out” of their career once they have children (which was proven to be untrue in the study). The study findings were more nuanced. For example, where women’s career and life ultimately landed had a lot to do with their and their male-counterparts expectations where a large majority of men expected their partners to take primary responsibility for child care. Those expectations were met and exceeded. Half the women expected to take primary responsibility for raising children, and more than two-thirds of them actually did so.
“(the study)... found not just achievement and satisfaction gaps between men and women, but a real gap between what women expect as they look ahead to their careers and where they ultimately land.”
Life Event: Climbing the Corporate Ladder - Women’s Ambition and Motherhood
In 2016, the Atlantic published a series of essays called The Ambition Interviews. The series began as a project between two friends, Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace, who had attended Northwestern University in the early ’90s. What had happened, they wondered, to all of their brilliant, hard-working friends from their college days? Had life come together as they had hoped? They reached out to 37 other members of their sorority’s graduating class, and those conversations became the foundation of the essays. The series of seven essays explored every key topic that concerns major life events in women’s (or people’s) lives and their effect on their career.
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What Happens to Women's Ambitions in the Years After College
An introduction to The Ambition Interviews. -
Having It All—and Hating It
For so many women with kids, one question weighs on them: “How can I find a job that gives me growth, but I’m not pushed over the edge by it?” -
When Women Choose Children Over a Career
“I went to a job interview after my first daughter was born and cried the whole way home.” -
Rethinking What Success Looks Like
For women who left the workforce, their ambitions didn’t disappear so much as found a new target. -
How Much Ambition Can a Marriage Sustain?
Power couples are a rarity. Instead, many high achieving women have husbands who do their own opting out. -
Beyond Maternity Leave
For all the focus on parental leave as a barrier to women’s professional ascent, women’s real struggle with work-parenting balance grew—alongside their children—years after their maternity leave ended. -
The Sexism They Faced
One colleague’s constant refrain: “When are you going to have babies
The women of this study are not by any means a representative sample of America, and, in particular, the group was not racially diverse. Despite that, what makes this series interesting is not that it tells the story of women in America, but that it tells the story of a group of women who by all measures were in a position to rise to the highest echelons of any industry. Why some did—and why many didn’t—reveals much about what stands in the way of greater gender equality in the workplace today. For example, the marriage vs. ambition piece reveals the fact that power couples are a rarity but instead, many high-achieving women have husbands who do their own opting out or vice versa.
Life Change: Opting Out - The Trailing Spouse Syndrome
The “trailing spouse syndrome” is generally defined as the effect the relocation of one's spouse has on one's professional trajectory where the trailing spouse subordinates his or her own career in order to allow his or her partner to advance professionally. The term was coined in 1981 by The Wall Street Journal's Mary Bralove to convey how wives sacrifice their career plans. In 2020, more women are still putting their (male) partners’ careers first for the good of the family ultimately sacrificing potentially high-paying work for years to come. As seen in the HBS study above, this trend cannot be attributed to the “decisions” couples make alone for their families. Similar to the HBS study results, Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research study of dual-career academic couples in 2006 revealed alarming results where “68% of all male survey respondents report that they consider their own career more important than that of their partner. Less than one-third of women did so.
According to a recent survey done by InterNations, 84% percent of trailing spouses are women, and 72 percent of non-working spouses said they left a career when moving abroad.
In a place like Dubai, the expatriate life of a trailing spouse can be tough where she often experiences loneliness and loss of self worth often having left her identity tied to her previous career and now trying to develop a new one as a mom far away from her security of friends and family.
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Many moms in our #Miteramama community are navigating at times a delicate and fluid space of leaning into motherhood and at the same time pursuing their own ambitions. So we decided to explore this topic a bit more and recently hosted another exclusive women empowerment event in Dubai to explore how women can enjoy and take advantage of major life changes such as pursuing an international career, becoming a mother, deciding to pause one’s career and follow a spouse abroad, etc. and to live our best lives at any life stage. We decided to approach this topic from the perspective of the importance of discovering, knowing and staying true to our principal values. To help us with this exercise, we invited a Paris-based life coach Aki Goto Mellet as our special guest to help us discover what are and where our most important life values lie and what to do with them. Through our workshop, we aimed to help women realize in both meanings of the word: the power and potential of our lives as women. If you are still in doubt about women’s ambition, realizing their dreams, and commitment to having their best lives, read on as we highlight the stories of incredible women so aware and motivated to change the status quo.
Results from our Pre-Event Survey
[Diverse Group]
The audience was almost equally split into different age groups where 61.4% was below 40 years-old and the rest was above 40.
The percentage of mothers in the audience was almost 2/3 at 64.1%.
(*Nightingale Health Services provided free nanny services to those moms who brought kids to the event)
In terms of work, 46.2% of the attendees were working (35.9% full-time and 10.3% part-time) whereas 46.2% of them answered either staying at home (38.5%) or not working (7.7%).
[What Are Your Worries and/or Desires?]
In the pre-event survey, the respondents were asked to share whether they had any worries or concerns and/or desires in their daily lives and what maybe the motivation behind wanting to attend Mitera’s #TalkingMotherhood event. Here are some of their answers:
Concerns:
- My own career planning.
- I want to follow my husband’s career to different countries but I am worried about what my own future holds.
- My kids are grown and I have more time but I need to think about how I would use the free time.
- I want to start my own business but I am frustrated about the process.
- I have been looking for a life partner but I have not found one yet.
- I wish it were easier to find part-time work opportunities.
- I am searching for a better balance in life.
- I have been working in the same field for 13 years but looking for a change - maybe start a yoga studio or a curated retail shop.
- I am a full time mom but I would like to start working again. I think I would like the challenge of juggling a career and motherhood.
What I would like to get out of the workshop:
- I would like to take this opportunity to reevaluate my future
- How to improve my self-acceptance and self-worth and discover my core values.
- How to discover my core values and live my life staying true to them.
- How to balance the career and life needs of my spouse and those of my own.
- I would like to explore how I could find my life’s work based on my passion and interest.
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How to take advantage of the opportunity each life stage provides me with.
How to enjoy life without being married. - How to create the best life no matter where I am.
[The Dialogue]
For this event, Mitera welcomed as a guest, Aki Goto Mellet, a life-coach based in Paris and the founder of Project Paris with over a decade of experience helping mainly Japanese women in France, Europe, Japan and beyond. During the dialogue portion of the event preceding the workshop, Mitera’s founder and CEO, Yoko Shimada sought Aki’s professional perspectives on how to conduct a meaningful soul-searching exercise based on the questions from the audience submitted in the pre-event survey. Through the conversation, the message that came out loud and clear was that the most important exercise that one must do when she is faced with a major life change is to re-discover and re-evaluate her core values and adjust her life accordingly based on those core values.
The discussions between Aki and Yoko were based on 4 main questions that came from the audience. While Aki provided her perspective as a coach, Yoko chimed in by sharing her own experiences.
- How to balance my spouse’s career and needs with those of my own
- How to always stay positive and be proactive
- How to juggle/balance work and personal life, i.e., motherhood
- How does Aki maintain balance and positivity throughout her own life?
How to balance my spouse’s career and needs with my own
The first question was one of the more common ones seen in the pre-event survey and can be summarized like this.
“I followed my husband’s career to Dubai. It was our decision to do so and I agreed but I cannot help worry about how I should curve out my own career and life as a trailing spouse. How do I balance my own needs with those of my spouse?”
Aki’s advice for this question was for the couple to make sure that they take the time to discuss and agree on their common life goal(s) and their most important life values. “Try not to think of it as your partner’s needs vs. yours but rather focus on creating a common goal (or goals) and how each one of your needs can fit into the big vision as a couple/family”, Aki said.
To this, an audience member remarked it was refreshing to hear Aki’s perspective because she has always thought of her life as his life vs. her life and how to take turns as a couple. Her sentiment was echoed by many and they all said they plan on having a discussion with their partner at home.
Aki also provided some more insights into other questions from the audience.
Q: How do I always stay positive and be proactive?
A: To be positive and proactive in life is a good thing but trying to always maintain this state can be tiring and become a big pressure and a source of stress. You can strive to be in the neutral state of mind - neither negative nor positive - but ready anytime to take charge of the day!
Q: How do I juggle/balance work and personal life, i.e., motherhood?
A: Here the key concept is “priority”. When you think of balance, you tend to think of the 50:50 balance but that is very difficult to achieve and maintain. Instead, it is important to figure out and focus on your most important beliefs and tasks based on the concept of quality rather than quantity.
Q: How do Aki and Yoko maintain balance and positivity throughout their own lives?
A: Both Aki and Yoko curve out the time to reflect and go through the exercise of re-evaluating their core principles and readjust their goals and course of action. As they are both aware that staying true to their core principles does not happen without knowing what they are, they routinely examine themselves and make the necessary adjustments. Though they both work with a coach, this exercise of self-examination does not require a coach. It can simply be a night of openly talking about life over dinner with your spouse or taking the time to meditate alone.
“Knowing Yourself Is The Beginning of All Wisdom.” - Aristotle
[So What Are My Core Principles Anyway? - An Exploratory Workshop]
Values are a part of us. They highlight what we believe and stand for. They can present our unique, individual essence as people. When we know our core values, life becomes easier to navigate and we get greater fulfillment out of it. In reverse, when we do not know our values, we feel extremely uncomfortable and this discomfort can take many forms from anger to anxiety, confusion, bad habits and can even appear as childish behaviors.
Knowing your core values is often the first step to building a fulfilling life no matter which stage of life you are in.
So, we dedicated the workshop portion of the event to help our participants discover their core values through a series of exercises designed by Aki.
The first exercise was to pick, based on intuition, 5 words/concepts out of a big word list. The word list consisted of concepts like ‘leadership’, ‘creative’, ‘inquisitive’, ‘global’, ‘successful’, ‘spiritual’, ‘community’, etc., and the participants had 1 minutes to pick 5 that spoke to them.
The second exercise was to list anyone (could be a celebrity or someone who is no longer alive) who you admire and who may embody some if not all of the concepts/characteristics you picked in the first exercise.
Now with the third exercise, the participants were asked to list people they disliked and why. This exercise was meant to help them clarify some of the uncomfortable feelings or negative gut reactions they may have about someone and verbalize them by listing out their characteristics. This process helped the participants realize the values they do NOT want to associate with.
Then, based on the first three steps, the participants were asked to summarize and write out at least 5 concepts/characteristics that rang true to them as their core values.
The last and final step in this exercise was to think about what they can do in their lives consistently (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) that helps them get closer to living their lives based on their core values. Without making an exhaustive list, the participants were asked to come up with simple things that they can start doing immediately such as making the bed daily, calling family and friends instead of texting, updating resume, taking an online course to improve their skills, etc.
[Verbalizing Your Thoughts For Deeper Learning - Presentation and Sharing]
Verbalizing your thoughts helps you organize your thoughts (‘inputs’) and sharing your thoughts as ‘outputs’ with others through presentation yields even deeper learning through interaction like receiving feedback, being asked to be clearer in your words, hearing other’s point of view on your thoughts, etc., than just being a passive information receiver.
During the second part of the workshop, the audience was split into 4 groups each with a moderator. Each person was given a chance to share their own findings about their core values from the exercises earlier. At the end, one person from each group stood up and presented their work in front of the whole audience. Interestingly, we observed no shyness or reservation during the presentation. Unleashed from their normally reserved social existence (when it comes to their own wants and needs), the women came to the event motivated and passionately shared their inner-most thoughts about their core values and how they plan to improve their lives based on these values.
In the post-event questionnaire (where over 90% of the women said they were satisfied with the event content), many voiced that one of the highlights of the event was the chance to reflect and think deeply about what’s most important for them in their lives and also hear the thoughts from their fellow attendees.
We were happy that the workshop helped the participants to digest the ‘inputs’, i.e., information and advice from the earlier part of the event, into actionable ‘outputs’ such as their list of core values and daily action plan.
Where Do We Go From Here? - Post Event Remark
A simple google search for ‘women life events’ yields surprisingly negative results, many referring to words like ‘stress’, ‘stressful’, and ‘stressed’. We believe it does not have to be this way. As we go through life, many of us live through what we consider as major life events. Some are positive such as starting a career, advancing in our career, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth(s) while others are negative like illness and death of a parent, job loss, divorce, etc. At each stage, taking the time to make sure we know our core values and honoring them consistently helps us alleviate unnecessary stress and experience more fulfillment in life.
We at Mitera are consistently pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a woman and a mother in today’s society. We are examining what it means to be a modern mother today and how we can best support our moms through the journey to be the best selves so that they can be awesome moms, bosses, partners, and friends.
We are always awed by the passion, openness, willingness to show vulnerability and motivation of our participants. Armed with the information of their core values and the action plans, the women looked inspired, motivated and determined to translate their knowledge into actions. We could not be more proud of what they have accomplished during the event and cannot wait to continue to support them in their endeavors through mini-events, salons and online resources.
As our community of #MiteraWomen and #Miteramama expands, we will continue to plan high quality events live or virtual that push the boundaries of women/mom empowerment events.
Special thanks to Aki Mellet who traveled especially from Paris to Dubai to co-host the event as well as all the wonderful sponsors who supported the event including Akemi Hoshi Photography, Clarion School, Eggs and Soldiers, Fujiya, Kinokuniya Bookstore, Intersect by Lexus Restaurant, Kobeya, Nightingale Health Service, Prime Gourmet, and Wokyo Noodle House.
And of course, many thanks to the immensely talented and dedicated Mitera Mom-terns who live and breath Mitera's philosophy and without whom this event would not have been possible.
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Resources worth checking out:
Life Coach Aki Mellet:
Website
Podcast Check out the interview with Yoko!
Youtube
Articles worth checking out:
https://hbr.org/2014/12/rethink-what-you-know-about-high-achieving-women
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/identity-mental-health-issues-torment-trailing-spouses-190304220005403.html
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a19996984/marriage-damaged-careers/
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/conservation-of-ambition/507980/
What Happens to Women's Ambitions in the Years After College
Having It All—and Hating It
Rethinking What Success Looks Like
When Women Choose Children Over a Career
How Much Ambition Can a Marriage Sustain?
Beyond Maternity Leave
The Sexism They Faced
https://primewomen.com/health/wellness/women-life-changes-after-45/
List of Sponsors:
Akemi Hoshi Photography
Clarion School
Eggs and Soldiers
Fujiya Restaurant
Kinokuniya Bookstore
Intersect by Lexus Restaurant
Kobeya
Nightingale Health Service
Prime Gourmet
and Wokyo Noodle House.
Photo credits to all the event photos go to amazing Akemi Hoshi Photogaphy
