work life balance

Is Life About Being Happy?

I have been on and off the road all month, for lots of wonderful opportunities and experiences. I am grateful for each of them. But right this minute, I’m tired, and I miss my family. I had a conference in Washington DC over the weekend and first part of this week — and brought them [...]

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Anne-Marie Slaughter and the Trade-Off Ratio of Work Life Balance

Recently I was invited to apply for a CEO position for a very cool start-up targeting new mothers. I pondered over it for 24 hours, googled everything I could find on the company’s founder and backers, and thought long and hard about two key questions. Was something I could do (did I have the skills [...]

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When Big Girls Have Slumber Parties

Women sitting around a resort in the mountains bonding over blogs, twitter and motherhood at a social media conference can beg the question – is real business being done? Like any self-respecting corporate golf tournament, dollars and cents conversations are happening, deals are being struck and deep networking happening. It looks prettier and there’s way [...]

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Because Every Mother Counts, Every Day

It’s Not Enough Cards, flowers, the ubiquitous breakfast in bed… coming to a household near you this Sunday morning! It is a beautiful and important thing to celebrate mothers. But you know what’s coming next. It is not enough. It’s not enough to give mothers a Hallmark day once a year and denigrate, discriminate and [...]

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Focus and Edit

I have been quiet lately. Not my usual state of affairs! As the world turns in crazy, often horrific ways, and the intense spate of natural disasters coupled with another war have my mind and heart in overload, I have had to stop and think for a while. I have had to review the often [...]

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On One Life

I attended an achingly beautiful funeral last week. Tragic. Substantive. Stunning in its elegant reflections on one man’s ordinary, extraordinary life. It was one of those horribly unexpected deaths. No preparation. No goodbyes. Despite shock and sadness, I was left with a sense of just how much impact one life can have. How inspirational, how [...]

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Mother Power

“We are here.  Use our voices.” Katherine Stone, Post Partum Progress This post is about and for us all, even though it is titled for mothers. Inspired by my participation in the UN Foundation’s Digital Media Lounge last week in partnership with Mashable and the 92 St Y, it is a call to action for [...]

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Power, Platforms and the M-word

“Don’t get mad, get elected.” I spent three days last week with a couple of thousand bloggers, predominantly women, attending the BlogHer 2010 Conference in New York.  From the seemingly trite to the life altering, women who blog are reinventing media generation and consumption.  I spent a half day with The Whitehouse Project, a non-partisan [...]

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The “Happy” Mirage

Emily Orton is a teacher and mother of five children living in Manhattan.  She home-schools her eldest four and cares for special needs baby “Mermaid”. She also happens to be a talented writer and life observer. With the recent discussions on the happiness of women and the many theories as to why the data is or [...]

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