In my new book, “Be Fearless: Five Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose,” I open with a short reflection on the most powerful model of fearlessness in my life: my mom.
I was the youngest of four children being raised by my single mom, who, absent of a college degree and coming of age at a time when professional opportunities were significantly limited for women, worked tirelessly as a waitress to do what she could to provide for our family.
Lacking the benefit of child support, she often worked two shifts: lunch and dinner. While she would have preferred to work the day shift as a waitress and have her evenings free to be with us, there was never enough tip money to be made at lunch to pay the bills.
Typically, as I would come home from school, my mom was getting ready to go to work for the evening. As time went by and I entered middle school, my older siblings took on their own jobs after school. As my mother prepared to leave the house knowing I would be on my own for the evening, she would often look me in the eye and say, “Jeannie, since I can’t be here tonight, I need to count on you to do the right thing.”
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She didn’t elaborate on what exactly the “right thing” was that she was referring to, but she was calling me to a high place. No admonition or threats of what would happen if I made poor choices, and in many respects, this approach was much more powerful. I realize it built within me a certain independence and self-reliance that benefited me greatly through life, and I learned that the bond and closeness between a mom and child were not the result of the number of hours spent together. These were days before cell phones or email, yet I had an abiding sense that my mom was always there for me.
At this time, as I observed my mom working, raising kids and doing all that was needed to manage a household, I recall with great clarity a phrase that was popular at that time when referring to those who worked outside the home: “women who choose to work.” Even as kid I was somewhat mystified by this term, as in my working-class neighborhood most all of the women I knew who worked—most of them moms—didn’t see their work necessarily as a “a choice.”
There seemed to be little recognition of the fact that these women were making an extraordinary contribution to their households, and often to the community. The working women in my neighborhood included a nurse, a co-owner of the local A&W franchise and a professor at the local university. All of them were raising children at the same time. And, of course, just like my mom, all were taking on these paid roles in addition to many hours of duties on the home front that brought no monetary compensation.
When I later became a working mom myself, I developed a whole new appreciation for the fearlessness of many of these women, including my own mom. Each one of them found a way to dig deep and push past the fears or concerns of trying to make it all work out and what it meant to leave their children each day to perform the kind of roles communities rely upon to function.
As I fast forward the tape to more modern times, I see that same fearless spirit in working women today. Of course, the opportunities many working mothers have been able to pursue have changed dramatically, and boys and girls growing up now have many more role models who have fearlessly pushed forward in the workplace. We have a long way to go and much more work to be done to keep this movement moving forward, but we certainly have made progress since I was a little girl.









