Integrating Work and Parenthood: 5 Lessons From a Stay-at-home Mom Who Started a Nonprofit
There’s an ever-growing demographic among Catholic women: the mom who loves her kids and being home with them but who has gifts and talents to use beyond her home. To my surprise, I have hitched a ride in that boat, and though I’m no expert, I have learned a lot.
I was raised by a stay-at-home-mom, and I expected to do the same. But when I got married in the expensive D.C. area, I was working at a job I loved. By the time I found out I was expecting our first child, the thought of staying home after her birth had disappeared. Shortly after I returned to work, however, I realized I was not cut out to have both a career and a baby. Simply put, I lost my peace.
So, I was surprised when, after moving to be home full time, I found myself bored and unfulfilled, despite knowing I had made the right decision. I did what a lot of moms do in my position: I started a blog. It was cheap, easy, and something I could do on my own time. My original vision to share about motherhood, faith, and recipes that appeared above the backstory quickly morphed into talking about all things natural family planning (NFP) with honesty and humor. I shared real stories from real people and channeled all the skills and talents I had developed in the weird twists and turns of my past life. Most importantly, I was having a ball.
The gaps that needed to be filled in the fertility awareness conversation eventually became too big for my tiny blog to handle. I needed an infrastructure to be able to grow and to one day get paid. I reached out to my friend Mary Bruno of Taking Back the Terms with the pitch to start a nonprofit. She loved the idea, and we co-founded FAbM (pronounced “fam”) Base, the fertility awareness database where science and real life intersect. Now, a year after we incorporated, we have launched our website.
Through it all, being a stay-at-home-mom wasn’t a hindrance to my dreams but a necessary grounding—which is a lofty way of saying the lessons I’ve learned and am about to share constitute the worst business advice you will likely ever read. But, as Catholics, we define success a little differently. These lessons have helped me keep the yelling to a minimum, chase my dreams, and greet the end of most days with a happy sip of wine. If that sounds like your brand of vino, read on.
1. Honor the Order of Your Vocations
“When you bring order into your life your time will multiply, and then you will be able to give God more glory by working more in his service” (St. Josemaria Escriva).
As Catholics, we know that nothing is our own. Everything we have belongs to God, who gave it to us to steward. There is an order of priority to that stewardship: first ourselves and our families and then everything else. I have too often seen what happened when that order is flipped, and it was never good. The reason is simple: There is no greater contribution I can give to promote the peace of the world than a loving, holy marriage and secure, well-adjusted children, even if my nonprofit makes every fertility awareness-related problem disappear.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use our passions, gifts, and talents beyond the home. It just means we remember that if we fix all the problems in the world at the cost of creating problems at home, all of our work is diminished. All that we feel called to accomplish beyond the home should enrich us so that we can bring our best self back into our home life. As the saying goes, we should work to live, not live to work.
2. Embrace Your “Tempo of Life”
“Once I understood that my tempo of life is as valid as anyone else’s, I stopped feeling threatened by people who live differently. I could learn from them once I stopped being so defensive towards them. … I no longer see the way I like to live as a failure, even if I do get in over my head sometimes” (Jennifer Fulwiler, “Your Blue Flame”).
By every business pundit’s standards, I am a terrible businesswoman. I don’t work early in the morning and only on rare occasions after my kids go to bed. I don’t have an email list. I take days off when I feel emotionally or mentally overwhelmed. I pretty much break all the rules. But I’ve learned that embracing instead of fighting what works for me is the magic ingredient of remaining sane—and, therefore, successful.
My business runs on relationships and writing, and there’s all kinds of apps and options to connect and collaborate with colleagues and clients (thank you, COVID?). It’s easy to schedule everything around my and my family’s needs, which I do with gusto. This means that growth happens slowly, which perfectly suits both my business and my family. I may not be acing Business 101, but I found my tempo and work with it.
3. Remember Who Gave You This Work
“But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides” (Matthew 6:33).
If God asked me to quit FAbM Base tomorrow, I would say “yes.” I would be disappointed, confused, and worried about what people would think. But I’ve often walked away from or into things at God’s bidding that were weird or painful, and they always turned out wonderfully. My life and all that is in it is not mine but his, and that includes this work.
There is a tremendous freedom in this kind of detachment. It means my business’ growth, audience, and longevity aren’t my responsibility. All I’m responsible for is saying “yes” every day to everything God sends my way. It’s his job to figure out the rest. With this attitude, it becomes possible to let go of fears, worries, and anxieties that inevitably plague people who juggle a business and a home life. It’s not easy for those of us who are planners, dreamers, and “git’r’done”ers, because it’s an attitude of humility. If humility were easy, we’d be doing it already.
4. Say “Yes” to the Present
“God is the eternal present. Every moment, whatever it brings, is filled with God’s presence… We should learn to live in each moment as sufficient to itself for God is there; and if God is there, we lack nothing” (Father Jacques Phillipe, “Interior Freedom”).
I had the opportunity to work full time in D.C. as the assistant to the vice president of a major nonprofit, and I asked a colleague for advice on whether I should take it. She told me that it wasn’t a wise move, because it would set me on a career path that would be impossible to break out of. I was grateful for her insight, but I didn’t listen. I felt God calling me to say “yes,” so I took the job.
It turned into one of the greatest adventures of my life. My boss was intentional about helping me develop skills and talents I didn’t know I had, and I learned an incredible amount in five years. That experience became the training ground for my work with FAbM Base—something I could have never seen at the time.
Goals and plans are good, but we can be tempted to plan our present based solely on what we think it will mean for our future. This approach can hinder our ability to be flexible and receptive to God’s promptings and, in that sense, squash creativity. Developing an attitude where we simply say “yes” to what God asks right now, even when it seems odd or hard, is the best preparation for a future we can’t ever see.
5. Accept Your Limitations
“[H]e said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10).
When I first stayed home, I was so uncomfortable. I had to redefine myself in a world that looks down on women who “only” mind the home and kids. But that discomfort forced me to be creative in figuring out how to satisfy my need for stimulation that my darling baby girl couldn’t provide. Limitations are not inherently bad, and accepting them enables us to find the “yes” that exists because we first said “no.”
I should note that acceptance is the final stage of the process of grief. It means letting go of something good that you loved, wanted, or thought you should have or be. Acceptance can take a lot of forms when balancing business and family life. Sometimes, it will look like kissing a spurt of inspiration goodbye to read your children their favorite book. Other times, it will mean sitting down to a calm and cheerful dinner of frozen pizza instead of the roast you had planned. It can look like hiring a housekeeper to come once a month and a babysitter to come a few hours a week. It can look like setting your kids up with screen time independent play so you can focus on your dreams for a minute.
We may find that what we are grieving is an ideal we set based on unrealistic social or internal pressures that often prevent us from acknowledging what is good. Accepting our limits is the ultimate act of humility. We submit to the reality that saying “yes” to God doesn’t also mean we were made to do it all. We need help, which means we have to own our weakness. God, in his goodness, designed us this way. Reaching out for help from a spouse, friend, family member, and God himself is a beautiful opportunity to love and be loved, which is the purpose for which we were made.
Emily Frase is a south Louisiana native living in northern Virginia with her husband and two children. After receiving her bachelor's degree in architecture, she went on to work in the nonprofit world in D.C. for five years. She founded the blog totalwhine.com in 2018, where she shares her deep passion for living all aspects of the Catholic faith in a joyful and honest way, especially marriage, motherhood, NFP, and fertility awareness. She is the co-founder and president of the nonprofit organization FAbM Base, a new fertility awareness database. She has been featured in FemCatholic, Theology of Home, Vigil Magazine, Letters to Women podcast, and The St. Philip Institute.