First move is ours: Ditch the guilt weighing you down.

by Jeanne Garbarino

On Monday, April 15th, two very profound things happened.

The first event was and is nothing less than harrowing and wretched. That afternoon, two bombs were detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. This senseless act robbed this earth of three lives, including an eight-year-old boy, and resulted in countless injuries, many severe. Word of this tragedy spread rapidly, resulting in a global outpouring of compassion.

The second event was much more isolated, affecting only a handful of people, including me. Just hours after the news from Boston started streaming in, I joined my colleagues at The Rockefeller University in a discussion about work-life balance led by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter, who was catapulted into the limelight after her famous (infamous?) Atlantic article “Why Women Can’t Have It All,” presented compelling and honest points about gender equity in the workplace, and the current devaluing of the caretaker role versus that of the breadwinner. While it was a minor point in her presentation, Slaughter said something that burned into my brain: One of the most common things people say on their deathbeds is that they wished they’d spent more time with their family, that they had worked less.

The juxtaposition of these two events in my personal space-time continuum has made me seriously reevaluate what the hell I am actually doing in my life. On one hand, I am a caregiver. I have two special and very Continue reading →