November 2022 
The cost of being the boss! How being a woman of power impacts you and your family.

This blog told from my perspective by my experiences. I share this to open up the dialogue around this cost so that those who have felt guilt can be healed. And so those who can use insight and hope, will find it.




Let’s settle this- success costs something. Your circumstances influence how much and how you will pay.


The cost of life. For the most part, my children were raised in a 2 parent household. I say for the most part because there were periods of me and Kenneth’s courtship and marriage that we weren’t together. But, for the most part we were.


So my boys had 2 parents. A mother and a father. Kenneth and I made well enough decisions that we were able to house our family in middle class neighborhoods. They attended some of the best schools.


But, due to many factors, both of us had to work in order to provide what Maslow, “ American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs” refers to as the first level of hierarchical needs- Physiological.


Both of us being out of the household for more than a third of the day, cost us something. The need for us to work opposite shifts to ensure coverage at home, costs us something. The highest, unrecoverable thing it costs us was time. Time with each other and time with our children.


Nothing replaces time . Not money. Not support from other people. Not gifts or electronics. Nothing! 


As a mother, I feel my time away had a significant impact on my children. As a father, Kenneth is responsible for leading our family. Providing for us and establishing our identity as a unit. But as a mother I am charged to nurture, comfort and teach. It’s extremely difficult to nurture when you’re not around. You miss things. You unintentionally create wounds. This is an experience I share with my children.


As a child, I too grew up in a pretty ok neighborhood. I too attended some of the best primary schools. I too had a mom and grandparents who worked outside of the home. 


By the age of 9 , I was a latchkey kid. Finding my way back and forth to school on my own. A private school that cost a pretty penny, which requires adults around me to work hard and long to chip in so I could go. 


That meant , they couldn’t be home to nurture and comfort me. That meant that like my kids, people missed things with me and unintentionally create wounds. Some wounds that would take me almost 40 years to identify. Wounds that caused me to have unhealthy responses in relationships. Both personal and professional. Two of these hidden wounds are called Rejection and Abandonment! 


When the thought of me being impacted by rejection and abandonment through my family of origin initially entered my mind and spirit I thought, that’s crazy. How was I ever rejected?

For goodness sake, before I had children, I was the only child, the only grandchild, the only niece. This was for almost 2 decades. People loved me! But, my mind and spirit quickly began to reveal to me, how being there for me and being there with me, we’re two different things. I began to think about how, although people weren’t available because they were working and providing for me, they still weren’t there. I began to explore how not having my dad in my life, then my mom leaving to join the Army so that should provide a better life for me, hurt me. 


Forever I had excitedly shared with people how my mom went off to join the army because she saw a better way to provide for me. I never really acknowledged the fact that was a little 9-year old girl, who had no dad and who mom left her too. Wow! Can you imagine the rejection that must have seeded inside my little heart. How the thought patterns of, everybody leaves and I have to be the one who takes care of me began to form? I’m sure you can, smarty pants. But, to the little girl and then ultimately woman with the lived experience, up until the point of this revelatory breakthrough, I was just living life. 


In our socioeconomic systems, Bossing up to take care of your family is required. But, it can cost. Your circumstances will dictate what and how much the cost will be….

Each paragraph written here and about 2 more are chapters of my newly conceived, unwritten book. I’d like to write it by my 50th birthday.


But for now, read the elements of the story and join me in the virtual conversation. The cost of being the Boss!