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Illustration by Alex Siklos
When my husband died last year, my whole world blew apart. At 59 years old, he was diagnosed with young onset dementia and he chose to have a medically assisted death. I have been struggling not only with grief but also the overwhelming challenge of building a new life for myself and our children. I also need to find a way to run my book publishing company and continue to homeschool them because brick-and-mortar school didn’t work out for us. I often think of my situation as an extreme example of what working moms have to navigate all the time – what does it mean to have work-life balance under this set of life circumstances?
I’ve been forced to be creative and throw out all kinds of personal and social norms.
One particular area of this life change illustrates what that means for me: business travel.
Recently, I travelled to New York to attend a fundraiser for PEN America, an incredible organization that fights for freedom of speech – including tracking and fighting book bans and advocating for imprisoned journalists and other writers. The CEO of my company’s sales and distribution team was being honoured with an award at the gala, and my co-founder and I wanted to attend to support him and PEN.
When André was alive, this would be no big deal and I travelled regularly for work, leaving the kids with him so I could go meet authors and partners across North America. He made my professional growth possible.
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Until now, I haven’t had the emotional capacity or the energy to travel. And it felt impossible anyway: I couldn’t see how I could do a work trip without a co-parent to care for my kids.
And the truth is, I also can’t leave my kids. Now that I’m their only parent, their nervous systems and mine are extremely uncomfortable with our being separated. I’m afraid that something will happen to me and they’ll be orphaned.
Other widowed parents have told me they experience the same thing. One told me she put a moratorium on business travel for several years because her anxiety about leaving her kids was so strong.
But I love to travel. And meeting with authors and partners, and spending time with my coworkers on the road is important to my company’s growth and brings me great joy. I’ve missed out on many in-person events and book launches over the past year and a half, countless chances to make meaningful connections with people I care about and work closely with. That has been one unexpected element of my grief.
So when this opportunity came to fly to New York, I decided I was ready.
This time my kids came with me.
In between the work events, I went to the Museum of Ice Cream, the Nintendo Store, the Squid Game Experience, and all the things my two kids under 12 wanted to do. We did my business trip, together.
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While I was away a friend texted me: “That seems fun but also double work.”
But that wasn’t my experience. It wasn’t all easy. And yet bringing my kids meant I had to slow down. I couldn’t jam my days with meetings, as I might normally do on a work trip. In the end I only took a couple of key meetings plus the gala.
There’s something to be said for that type of imposed rest (and play!) on a work trip. The joy of seeing my kids experience New York for the first time and building memories as the trio we now are was worth any challenge.
The gala dinner was held underneath the Blue Whale hanging in the Museum of Natural History. Sitting at our table, at one point I wept with my business partner’s arms around me. I noticed some sympathetic glances in my direction. I’m sure our tablemates thought I was crying over the speeches (which were inspiring). But mostly those were tears of amazement for the enormous distance I’d come – to be at a place where this trip felt manageable; to be out doing something that used to be so normal; to be figuring out a new way for my kids and me, bit by bit.
I can’t go back to the way things were before but I’m figuring out a new way of being in the world. Nothing about it feels conventional. And despite the many constraints on my life, I’m finding there is tremendous freedom in it too.
Trena White lives in Roberts Creek, B.C.