Work

Now part of the reason my life went as well as it did was because I created my own business. At the time I worked at Digital I’m sure I would of have hit a glass ceiling if I had stayed in the corporate environment.  I only didn’t because it was my own business and it’s still my own business. But I would say to women, you know, what’s made me successful is always doing what I was passionate about and finding a way to work at something that I enjoyed and I think that can be true for anybody, not just women. I also think that if you don’t want to get outsourced to India become a plumber. But other than that, to get as much education as you feel you want and to just go for whatever you want. Just assume you’re going to be able to do well at it.

So, the most difficult transition, it took me maybe most of my adult life was to—even though I tell you this whole story about how I grew up in a family which truly encouraged me to be myself and had no sort of set idea of what as a woman I was allowed to do, and I went to college in the same type of environment—it was to learn to trust myself. And to not always question whether I was good enough at what I was doing. It took most of my life to figure that out. So that was the biggest learning curve I had to go through. A transition to being a mother was not actually that easy. I mean it’s hard to go from not having a kid to having a kid who is there 24 hours a day and depends on you. So that was a transition but it was okay. The transition to being married was not big once we had decided that we were just done. We knew we were going to be married so…not to say we always got along, but the commitment was such that it didn’t matter if we were fighting. It was, that was it we knew we were going to be together for the long haul.

Women, a lot of us deal with self-esteem issues just for a million reasons, and just gaining that confidence and who you are, what you are capable of doing. Know that you are capable of being anything you want to be. I mean that’s a message for everyone, but I think especially women. Because I think we get kind of pushed in certain directions. “Oh no, you need to stay home, and raise a family. Get married. Raise a family.” Or, “No you can only be a secretary.

Growing up I felt really limited actually in what we could do and in high school. Actually I wanted to take mechanical drawing and the school committee wouldn’t allow it. They said only boys take mechanical drawing, so they wouldn’t allow me to do that. So I went before the school committee and all and they would not allow me to take it. That was a boy’s—a man’s—or a boy’s course. And I really wanted to be a mechanical engineer. But all through my high school it was not accepted for a girl to do that. And I was really mad that I was a girl throughout my education cause boys had so many more opportunities. … Now, of course, I’m a realtor. And we own a lot of property and we manage a lot of property, so if I had it to do all over again, I would be either a plumber or an electrician. Absolutely. I love either one of these, especially electricity. That is fascinating to me…It takes time to know where your talents are and where your goals might be…but the Lord will guide you. If you know the Lord, the Lord will guide and direct you.

The church is a community of people who are in relationship with Christ. And so I live my life with them and I think that gives me a lot of balance. It certainly gives me a lot of hope most of the time.