How She Does It

How She Does It is a blog that shares my stories and inspiring stories of Latinas to help us balance our family, community, and career lives.

They say this kind of life balance is a fairy tale. I’d like to share how we are truly getting it done. To be clear, it’s not about perfection. Life balance isn’t about being perfect. It’s about learning how to give our attention to areas in our lives in various ways to keep steady.

In physics, balance is achieved through motion. For example, balancing on a unicycle uses three forces; gravity, constant force, and friction. Watch this short MIT video on balance by Jonathan Abbott (2012). Notice how one must be in constant motion even to attempt to remain in one place. Also, how one must move in an opposite direction in order to re-direct themselves. I’d like to think this is how life balance is achieved.

I’ve learned to balance my life, in a sense, like this physics concept of constant motion. At times when I’ve needed to re-direct myself, like my career path, I took a step back in order to move in the right direction. My way isn’t the only way. We each have ways that we’ve been able to balance our lives. Let’s learn from each other! Can you share some tips with us?

What can we learn from each other

• Family and friendships. Latinas are the heart of the family and value their friendships. We have a history of strong family ties which include long time friendships. We grow up claiming cousins who really were our school or neighborhood friends. Our kids grow up believing they have several tias and tios who really are our best friends. How do you find time to balance these relationships?
• Community and neighborhoods. Latinas are often the “Madrinas of the Neighborhood”. We’ve learned that our homes are open to family as well as friends. We’ll reach out to the neighbors and their kids when we have our parties. We are concerned with our kids’ friends and their families. Which ways help you balance this unspoken responsibility?
• Career accomplishments and aspirations. Latinas share important information, aka chisme, with each other. This includes career info! This is how we learn about job openings, trainings, and education opportunities. What kind of information do you value and how do you share it?

Share your story in 3 steps

• Get your thoughts down on paper or typed in a document without hesitation. Don’t worry about grammar. Just get your thoughts out. After you can use a program like Grammarly to check your writing. Post this to any social media or create a blog to beginning posting your stories.
• A picture is worth a thousand words. Share a photo with more description in the caption. Tell us who is in the photo, where it’s taken, what is happening, and why you took a photo of it. Use descriptive words. Give us a backstory.
• Most importantly, hit submit. Submit your story post to share with us. When I began this blog, I was so nervous. Although, many people asked how I was juggling life, I felt unqualified to actually share how I was doing it. But this is my life. It works for us. We can learn from you and your story.

Share your story with me

After sharing my stories, I became further inspired by other Latinas because I found more ways of how we are balancing our lives. We truly can learn from each other! If you’d like to share a story or tip on balancing your life, I’d be happy to share your story. Let’s learn from each other! Comment here or send me an email.