Excerpt from Making Work at Home Work:
One of the hardest decisions I ever made was to leave full-time employment outside the home in order to be more available to my children.
One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is to run a home-based business–also to be more available to my children.
If you too have experienced the challenges of successfully growing a business and a family under one roof, this book is for you.
The genesis of this book was rather simple. It began as my quest to more fully understand the dynamics of balancing work and family when they coexist under one roof.
I understand that balance is an issue most of today’s working mothers wrestle with. However, a large portion of working women leave home to make their living. What about those of us who have a short commute down the hallway? There’s a big difference between heading to an office each day – with the child care support system this necessitates – and doing your work with children underfoot or hovering in the background.
In my own search for practical guidance about working from home, I discovered that though it’s easy to find resources to help women decide what type of home-based business to start, it’s not as easy to find resources about sustaining both a home and a business after the start-up phase. This lack of information was what led me to write Making Work at Home Work.
If you’re like me, you’ve discovered that starting your business was the easy part. It’s keeping your business going while meeting your family commitments that’s difficult. Though I’ve been in business for myself for over a decade, there are still days when I wonder, Why am I doing this? It’s hard to be a wife, mother, and CEO – and to be equally good at all of these jobs, especially during a busy season of work. There have been many times when I thought it would be easier to let the business slide so that I could focus more fully on my family or conversely to check out temporarily on my family when the demands of business required more attention. But I believe that my home-based business is a perfect provision for me and my family. It allows me to do work I love, contribute to the family income, use the skills I have, and most importantly, have flexibility in my schedule, which is precious to me. |