Joan Borysenko, PhD, has developed an international following for her healing dialogues. Joan is offering a very special workshop this November, Using The Healing Power of your mind. Please see p. 4 for details. The following excerpt is taken from Joan's newest book, Inner Peace for Busy Women: Balancing Work, Family, and Your Inner Life, (Hay House), available at your favorite bookstore.

As the Tide Turns
The youth of my children's generation grew up thinking about family and work in a way that many Baby Boomers like me did not. Working mothers are the majority now. When I was growing up, they were a relative rarity....

My mother and I had worldviews about as different as Mars and Venus. The cultural tide was turning—and very suddenly. A new world of career opportunities was blossoming for women of my generation. We could go to law school, medical school, business school, and graduate school in many disciplines. Teaching and nursing, wonderful careers that they are, were no longer the only professions open to us. It seemed possible to have it all—work in your chosen profession, have a family that you loved deeply and nurtured well, and possess a rich inner life that would give you solid bearings in an uncertain world.

My mother was uncomfortable with the changing times. It's a standing family joke that I was groomed to grow up and marry a doctor. That was a common measure of success for a woman of my background who was born in the 1940s. The independent life I wanted, which included being the professional instead of marrying one, felt alien and frightening to my mother. She had survived the Great Depression. She had mourned the death of Jews in the Holocaust. She had weathered two world wars, rabid anti-Semitism, serious illnesses in people dear to her, and timely and untimely deaths. Like most mothers, she wanted a better life for her daughter. That included being taken care of by a capable man so that I wouldn't have to work or worry about money....

Her constant refrain through my college years was: "You're too smart for your own good. Men don't like smart women. What do you mean, you want to be a scientist? What are you thinking? You're choosing much too hard a life. Marry a wealthy guy and wise up!"

Hers was the voice of social resistance to the new role of women, a wall constructed solidly from How Things Were for the Last Million Years or So. My generation had to scale that wall with pickaxes. If it was hard, as it was and still is, we were loath to admit that, inviting a withering chorus of We Told You So, A Woman's Place Is in the Home. Until quite recently, it was politically incorrect to mention that balancing work and family, while having any time left to nurture your spirit, was a tall order. Only now, when a second generation of women is scaling the wall, do we feel secure enough to stop for a minute and say, "Wow, this is a hard act to pull off. Sometimes we're tired, stressed out, and in danger of shutting down and losing our hearts. But if we share the truth of our lives, we can find a better way. Here's what we learned that can make it easier for you."

The waters where the tide turns are turbulent and powerful. And in the case of a cultural revolution as far-reaching as the role of women, we can't expect smooth waters in just a couple of generations. Women my age can't remember a time when we couldn't vote or use birth control. Perhaps our great-grandchildren's generation won't be able to remember the glass ceiling or "The Age of Greed and Speed," which is what one pithy writer dubbed these modern times.

Most married women have two full-time positions: their workday career, and then their night job where they care for the needs of their family. The fact that the average married working woman does three hours of housework a day, while her husband performs 17 minutes, is an eye-opener. The growing sense of outrage at being squeezed out of our own lives has unleashed an epidemic of divorce, which is leaving millions of heartbroken children to cope with the fallout. Women initiate two-thirds of the divorces in this country. As we've gone to work in record numbers and have achieved more financial independence than at any other time in history, we're able to leave relationships that are no longer nurturing.

Women want to coexist in workplaces that do more than tolerate us, and we expect to have marriages that are true partnerships. We want to be appreciated in a way that allows our unique strengths and intelligence to manifest as part of a greater whole. Women's relational, intuitive way of knowing and working, while different from that of most men, can be a wonderful complement to it. In the arena of family, we want choice without stigma. Whether we choose to remain single, or live in same-sex or heterosexual households, we deserve respect. We also want to be honored as single mothers and to have the opportunity to work in jobs with flexible hours that can help sustain our lifestyle.

Road Maps for the Journey
Women's wisdom has traditionally been passed down through story. In sharing these stories of our lives with one another, we leave road maps that detail both treasures and traps, paving the way for the generation that follows....

One morning when my sons Justin and Andrei were 20 and 16, we sat together at the kitchen table.... It was the end of an era. The talk we had that morning was among peers. Three adults were sharing their memories of a life together that had passed as quickly as an afternoon shower. Home from college for the weekend, Justin was thoughtful. His younger brother, Andrei, a sophomore in high school, hung on his every word. If there were ever two brothers who loved one another, this pair is the archetype. Even in my worst moments, I savor their bond and think that I must have done something right.

Their childhood was too hard, they say, as we sit sipping juice and coffee. As parents they would make different choices. Justin says that he knows I needed to work, not only because of economic necessity, but also for myself, to fulfill a creative urge and to try to make a positive difference in the world. He respects this, he says in a soft voice. He respects me.

At 20, the obligatory narcissism of childhood has passed. The scales have fallen from Justin's eyes, and he no longer sees me as a nipple he's been given to suck, but as a person like himself. This is new and thrilling. We are two now, not a mother-child unit. I've been born fresh and new for this young man. Through the brother-to-brother bond, Andrei, too, sees me through new eyes, at least for the moment. We declare a temporary truce in the stormy maelstrom of adolescence, that passage when he must pull away from his mother to become himself.

There's a stillness and peace in the kitchen. There's no blame here, only two boys and their mother sharing the truth of childhood's end. "Day care is too hard for kids," Justin says. "The day is too long, and you just yearn for your home, for your parents, for your pets, for a nap in your own bed. It's lonely, even though there are a lot of other kids there. I don't know anybody who didn't hate it...."