21: Managing with the roles of being a daughter, daughter in law, mum and wife

TRANSCRIPT FOR EP21:
Welcome to Woman Leadership show. I'm Janet and in this episode, I will be sharing with you how I managed my time as the roles of being a daughter, daughter in law, mum and wife. As the only child, it is my great responsibility of taking care of my mum who was aging and having Parkinson condition before she passed on late last year. It has been very tough in the last 3 years to care for my mum, supporting the kids in their studies in primary 4, 6 and secondary 2 last year. At the same time handling work demands where I would have night and early morning calls to attend to and projects deadlines to complete. My mum stayed with my grandmother as she took care of her more than 20 years to look after her. With her condition, caregiver was hired to look after her and another one to lok after my grandmother. I would make time to visit my mum whenever I can to ensure the caregiver took good care of her and ensure all exercise and medication were well administered. As I could not be there as often as I want due to my other commitments, I would call and have chats with  her over the facetime. My parents in law were less demanding of my time as they understand that I am the only child, I have to work, took care of my late mum and manage 3 kids at the same time were not easy. They will come over to visit us as often as they can. As my kids are busy with extra lessons during weekends, their visits does helped to shorten our time to travel and also able to complete our errands during weekends. We would go over with the children whenever we can to visit them when we do not have so tight schedule during the weekends. I will make time to have regular separate time doing different activities such as shopping with my daughter, watching movies and playing badminton with my boys so I got to bond with them and got to give attention to them 1 to 1 so we can connect more . As I have limited help in their studies, I will look for resources  such as tuition lessons, assessment books and past year papers to support them in their studies , homework or weaker subjects. Even after we had kids, I made a point to have some personal time with my husband every Friday to watch movies and have dinner. We can share and talk about our work, plans and feelings. Now we don’t do it weekly but we would have a date at least once a month to have meals and movies or go over to Johor Bahru to celebrate special occasions.  This is the time where we can focus on each other without any other distractions about my kids, my late mum and work. When I used to facilitate Stephen Covey book 7 habits of highly effective people , habit 3 talked  about the big rocks. You schedule what are important and are your priorities so the small pebbles that come along the way will not take your time and distract you away from the important things in life. Family, Freedom, faith are my nig rocks in my life and I started to schedule my time around this.I hope that through my sharing, it draws inspiration and personal reflection for you. I believe every woman can be a leader in your own way.  I look forward to seeing you in my next episode where I will be sharing with you tips and ways to realize your full potential as a leader on Woman Leadership.