Making Music
Work-life balance? It's a myth.
This week I had a catch-up with one of my best friends from graduate school. We hadn’t talked on the phone for two years, but it felt like two days. I love relationships like that—the ones that time can’t touch.
In the decade since I first met Leslie, between us, we’ve earned two graduate degrees, obtained seven licenses to practice psychology, had babies, lost babies, moved ten times (twice internationally), and held our breaths while our husbands spent multiple years in the Middle East. Along the way, we discovered our life’s work and uncovered pieces of ourselves we never knew existed. What a gift it is to have someone walk beside you as you struggle, grow, and become. Through joy. In darkness and pain.
Over the course of our conversation, we caught up on motherhood, marriage, and work. We swapped stories about what it’s been like to be in the trenches of running companies while caring for our kids and supporting our husbands’ careers. We both came away from the conversation feeling seen and understood, grateful for a connection that allows us to appreciate unique dimensions of our lives in a way few others can.
Leslie and I are pictures of many of our millennial counterparts—individuals who have spent nearly two decades pushing hard to pursue personal and professional dreams simultaneously. We each built private practices from the ground up while growing our families. Now, she’s expanding her team and I’ve co-founded a startup. It’s been a heavy lift. Getting something big off of the ground from square one is a grind. We’re tired. At the same time, we’re floating on air. This? Now? It’s everything we wanted.
There’s a lot of talk about “work-life balance.” I’m not convinced it exists, at least never for too long. At best, most days, things seem precariously perched. Instead, we have to integrate. Align. Make hard calls. Trade-off. And we pray we won’t regret our choices some day.
Life right now…it’s jazz. There’s no perfect harmony—just a series of notes I string together as best I can. I improvise (a lot). Somedays, competing priorities create a dissonant ache deep in my heart. But even in the measures with discord, there’s beauty. This noise? I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s my sweet symphony.
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