Parenting

  • 2022 Holiday Booklist

    The Moms at Work Collective regularly brings together authors, thinkers, and people dedicated to making an impact. As a group we work on learning, changing and growing as leaders and changemakers.

    As a gift to a friend or yourself, a good book is a beautiful thing. This booklist is made up of books from some of our author guests and recommendations from our members and network. Check them out and join our community.

    Books To Inspire

    Still Hopeful

    Maude Barlow

    A lifetime of advocacy as a feminist and world’s leading water defender. Maude Barlow is an icon – this book is a gift.

    Buy Now

    Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think about Abortion

    Gabrielle Stanley Blair

    Abortion has always been labelled as a women’s issue – what happens when we reframe that?

    Buy Now

    Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons

    Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

    The authors take a comprehensive approach to teasing out what is different for women who lead. Real stories, great insight.

    Buy Now

    The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

    Anna Malaika Tubbs

    Mothers are powerful. Read the stories of how these mothers raised leaders and shaped a nation.

    Buy Now

    Books To Escape

    Black Sci-Fi Short Stories

    Temi Oh (Foreword), Tia Ross (Co-editor), Dr. Sandra M. Grayson (Introduction)

    This collection is powerful and showcases the world building skills of a set of authors who will change how you see earth and beyond.

    Buy Now

    Healing Through Words

    Rupi Kaur

    In her newest release – Canadian poet shares pieces of herself as she attempts to help heal us through words.

    Buy Now

    Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul

    Nikita Gill

    In this book, gone are the docile women and male saviors. Instead, lines blur between heroes and villains. You will meet fearless princesses, and an independent Gretel who can bring down monsters on her own.

    Buy Now

    Woman World

    Aminder Dhaliwal

    When a birth defect wipes out the planet’s entire population of men, Woman World rises out of society’s ashes. Dhaliwal’s infectiously funny graphic novel follows the rebuilding process.

    Buy Now

    Books To Grow

    Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

    Mikki Kendall

    In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women.

    Buy Now

    We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement

    Andi Zeisler

    What does it mean when social change becomes a brand identity? Feminism’s splashy arrival at the center of today’s media and pop-culture marketplace, after all, hasn’t offered solutions to the movement’s unfinished business. So what is next?

    Buy Now

    Laziness Does Not Exist

    Devon Price

    A conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” that examines the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.

    Buy Now

    Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

    Angela Garbes

    Part galvanizing manifesto, part poignant narrative, Essential Labor is a beautifully rendered reflection on care that reminds us of the irrefutable power and beauty of mothering.

    Buy Now

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  • What I want you to know as a working mom of kids with special needs.

    It is hard to listen to other people while they talk about their fantastic last-minute weekend away. Their weeklong all-inclusive vacation that will be so relaxing because they can bring their children to the kid’s club and have other people cook for them.

    It is hard because we are jealous. It is hard because that reality is so far away from our own.

    Our time away is always within 20 minutes of a hospital.

    We have an escape plan.

    In the first two years of motherhood and after almost 50 appointments I knew that I could not work full time or maybe even at all. There is no job that will let me miss 10 days a month and there is no job that would be worth me missing those appointments. Someone might be able to make my kids life better at an appointment. Maybe a new drug or a new treatment. I couldn’t miss that chance.

    It has been 7 years since I had a “real job” an office job with benefits and vacation pay and perks. I struggle with the fact that I make a lot less money than I would had I kept growing my career. It is something that I have never actually said out loud. By saying that maybe that makes me a bad mother.

    Like most parents of kids with frequent medical appointments, I had to make a choice and that choice was my kids. While I will never regret that decision EVER – it was not part of my career plan. No one talks about this in the baby books or in career planning or really ever…

    In a sense I am really lucky. I run a small business and I get to plan my days around appointments. No judgement when I have a sick kid. Time off during school holidays and PA days. But with no paid sick time, vacation pay or a break the promise of the luxury of self-employment feels like a lie.

    In Canada and around the world – so many women have taken time off work to be a caregiver. They have organized appointments, advocated for care, learned a new medical language. They have learned faster and under more stressful circumstances than anyone could ever imagine.

    My journey as mother of 3 kids who have each spent dozens (ok hundreds) of hours at our children’s hospital is far from over. I can walk each and every hallway backwards from immunology to pediatrics to xray to ultrasound and back. I can do it in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning and although I am so incredibly thankful that these hospitals exist I long for the day when I step out the door for the last time.

    As a career coach and the Founder of Moms at Work I am in the fortunate position to be able to say to so many of my clients who have had to care for parents, children and themselves – I see you. I REALLY see you and I want you to hear me when I say – this wasn’t the plan.

    This wasn’t the plan – but I am a different more empathetic person because of it.

    This wasn’t the plan – but I am proud of the person I have become.

    This wasn’t the plan – but I know how powerful, capable and fierce I am.

    This wasn’t the plan – but you are not alone.

    Maybe you will start your own business. Maybe you will just volunteer for a time.

    Maybe you will start something new.

    Maybe you will join our growing community of women who GET IT and want to help

    Moms at Work was not something easy to start. It was not fast – it was not a master plan.

    Your journey won’t be either – but you will do it.

    Because nothing that we do in this life that you are most proud of was easy.

    Not your children.

    Not your success.

    Not the things that took you hundreds of hours.

    I want you to know that Moms at Work is for all working moms. I made it like that for you. Because this wasn’t part of the plan but we are here to help when you are ready.

    Always,

    Allison Venditti – Mama bear to 3 cubs, Founder of Moms at Work, Career Coach, HR expert.

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  • The Morning Routine of One Regular Mom

    The other morning while trying to simultaneously — do the dishes, get the cat away from the pile of unfolded laundry and also check the morning news — this article popped up as “recommended for me”:

    The Morning Routines of 12 Women Leaders

    As I was in the midst of my own morning routine, I thought it would be interesting to compare. If, like me, you do not have the time to read the whole article — let me give you the highlight reel from a few different mothers, at least the ones Forbes picked.

    Their Morning Highlights:

    • Mom A: 4:45am Wake up and have a bowl of quinoa cereal. I do an hour or so of 3rd or 4th series Ashtanga yoga.
    • Mom B: 7:15–7:45am Make breakfast for family. When producing or directing, I rarely made it home in time to cook dinner, so I shifted the focus to breakfast. I make buttermilk pancakes, eggs in a frame, and for over a decade, we have Crepes Thursday. I make the batter the night before (so the flour absorbs the liquid) and then customize for each family member with fresh-toasted pecans, Nutella, marshmallows, and bananas.
    • Mom C: 5:44am My internal clock, without fail, always wakes me 60 seconds before iPhone alarm goes off.
    • Mom D: 6:30am Breakfast with husband

    Now to be fair there were a few — “ask kids to get shoes on…..ask kids to get shoes on again” pieces in here but overall, there was a lot of breathing, working out, reading several newspapers and making complicated breakfasts. I began to temporarily think that I was the odd woman out here. Was I just not able to pull it together? Was I a bad mom for not having “Crepes Thursday”?

    So, after I dropped my temper tantrum throwing 3 year old at daycare that morning I asked another mom — “did you do any yoga this morning?” she almost snorted her coffee out her nose. I felt a bit better.

    I went to work and after getting nothing done other than tidying off my desk, I went back to Google to look up more “morning routines” and it was more of the same. It still made me feel like shit. So, I thought — I will add my morning routine to the list to balance things out. When I make it to being one of the Top 12 women leaders — this is the story I will share.

    My Morning Routine

    • 6:45am: Alarm goes off. Curse the Gods that it has only been an hour since I had just been up with a weepy 3 year old who refused to go back to bed without a back rub and song at 4:45am
    • 6:50am: Still laying there. I am not meditating or breathing but deciding whether or not to weep due to lack of sleep.
    • 6:55am: Forced to get up. My 5 year old is on the toilet and I heard him tell his brother to pee in the bath if he can’t hold it.
    • 7:00–7:15am: Navigate 4 bodies in one bathroom as showers, teeth brushing, shaving and yelling all take place at the same time.
    • 7:15–7:30am: Get dressed, brush hair. Help kids get their clothes on and get downstairs. My 3 year old has a banana. I don’t even know where he got that.
    • 7:30am: Make breakfast. Your choices are fruit, cereal or yogurt or any combination of the three because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I like to offer a comfortable variety — I now call Continental Breakfast in order to compete with that woman’s Crepe Thursday.
    • 7:35am: Take naked 3 year old back upstairs — as he has somehow managed to undress himself.
    • 7:45am: Kids take 10 minutes to read books, play a quiet game or wrestle and break furniture. This is time I now have to spend changing my shirt. I thought I could get away with the yogurt stain but realized I have apple sauce all over my pants.
    • 7:55am: We start to get ready to leave for daycare and school
    • 8:15am: After successfully finding shoes for both kids, having them get their coats on by asking less than 25 times and with both school bags in hand I am feeling victorious. We are early! I look forward to a pleasant stroll and enjoying quality time with my kids.
    • 8:30am: Burst back through the front door. We were halfway to daycare when I realized I forgot both a lunch and permission form. Found both. But now we are required to jog to get to school on time.
    • 8:35am: Feel like I won the lottery when our neighbour asks if she can walk my oldest to school so I can head directly to daycare. YES! Thank you! MY NEIGHBOUR IS AWESOME!
    • 8:45am: Get to daycare and spend 10 minutes trying to get a pair of indoor shoes on a 3 year old who insists that he doesn’t like the way his shoe looks next to his other shoe.
    • 9:00am: Back home and ready to get to work. Spent an hour cleaning desk and then wrote a blog post instead of working on program development.

    Now I just have to sit and wait for Forbes to call. I am ready for my morning interview.

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