SILENCE IS NOT AN OPTION

LET’S Learn to speak up with CARE.

It happened at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 30th, 2000. As always, I was at work. I called my mom to ask what time my dad's flight would arrive from Denmark. He was returning to NYC, where he was staying with me to continue his chemo treatment for bladder cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering. My mom had decided to stay behind in Denmark after having just gone through radiation for her third bout with breast cancer. Yes, you read that correctly—both my parents were battling cancer at the same time in two different countries.
That morning, she could barely speak. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she couldn't breathe and was on her way to the hospital. It all happened so fast. I told her to hurry. When the call came an hour later, notifying me that she had died in the ambulance at 11:05 a.m., I finished my work, told my team I'd be gone for a few days, and went home to prepare to tell my dad about her passing. 

I can still remember waiting for my dad to arrive at my apartment. It was the hardest day of my life. My mom had died only a few hours earlier, and with no time to process it, all I could think of was how I was going to tell my dad that she had died alone while he was on a plane.

No matter what I did, I couldn't fix the pain. No matter what I did, I couldn't ignore it either.

Had I known what I know now, I could have paused and taken time away from my fast-paced fashion executive job when my mom asked me to meet for lunch or go Christmas shopping with her. I would have taken time off to go back to Denmark and be with her during her treatment. I would have said no to being available 24/7 for business phone calls during dinner with my parents. I would have thanked my mom for ensuring my home was taken care of while I was at work, and the two of them awaited their next treatment cycle.

I would have.
I could have.
I should have.

I didn’t have good boundaries, I didn’t speak up when work took over my life, and I thought that if I just kept going, things would get better. Once I had done… then I could. 

SILENCE IS NOT A STRENGTH

One of the reasons I didn’t speak up was that I was afraid I would be perceived as “not strong enough” if I couldn’t keep up the pace. I didn’t ask for help because I saw myself as the one supporting others in doing their work. I just kept working harder, longer, and more, caring about my team but not myself. I thought it was how I would gain respect even though my position was executive VP and I should have been a role model for the team by speaking up and saying enough when the founders of the company expected 24/7 commitment. 

The promise of success was a lie. Not only was I working on the edge of burnout, living on coffee to stay awake, but I was also fired when I returned from the funeral. The official reason was that my job was no longer needed, though someone else was already there to take over with a slightly different title. The unofficial reason slipped in a meeting with one of the founders, where she told me they didn’t think I could take care of my dad and my job. 

Too many people think they have to choose between taking care of family members, be it children, aging parents, or a loved one. And yet, none of us live in a silo without others in our lives, but we don’t speak up to ask for help, do we? 

Things changed during the pandemic, and I was hoping we learned from it. None of us succeed alone, but I am concerned that the “back to work” message is too often understood as back to the old ways where we would sacrifice ourselves for work. Yet work is such an important part of our human happiness. At least when work works for us, where we see our humanity as the core of everything we are and do. 

CHANGE SPEAKS UP

The E in CARE is expression. To facilitate change, we must speak up and ask for what we need, but it’s not easy, which is why empathy is an essential value in a Culture of Care®. Speaking up when we are at the edge of exhaustion will sound like anger, resentment, and demand. Speaking up to ask for what we need to support and succeed in our human advantage to do good work will sound like CARE: confidence, agility, resilience, and equity. When self-care and well-being are the foundation of reaching our goals, we all thrive together. To make it happen means we all must realize that the goal isn’t to be stronger and withstand more but to be more aware, adaptable, and agile, working in direct relationship to what’s going on and taking that as information to reclaim the power of choice. 

rethink boundaries

I often hear people talk about boundaries as saying no to self when saying yes to others, which may be true however, we must rethink this perspective as the power of choice we have to reclaim. A yes’ and is needed. If we keep thinking we have to choose one or the other; if we keep thinking it’s either work or self; if we keep thinking it’s either others or ourselves, we are missing out on the complex, interconnected, and beautiful humanness inside every single one of us that is being expressed fully through our relationship with others and with work. 

Yes, having boundaries means knowing where you end and others begin. Knowing when you have pushed as far as you can and pushing further is no longer about growth but rather decline. Knowing when you need to pause to reclaim your energy, attention, and focus. Knowing when you stop caring and disengage from why you do what you do and why it matters. In order to change work, we each play a role. We each must learn what we need to support ourselves and ask for the support we need from others to not just keep going but rather keep growing. 

Speaking up doesn’t mean confrontation and conflict; rather, staying silent does. Speaking up is to CARE. 

You can only ask for what you need if you know what you need and why it matters. And of course, we don’t need the same thing all the time. This is why you can think of this as an interactive relationship with yourself that will change, grow, and adapt to different situations and evolve as you start using The Self-Care Mindset® to build better relationships with others too.

I suggest formulating your ask like this: “I need.... because.... so that I can....”

The Self-Care Mindset® is the link between how we think, engage, and act. I hope that we can all learn to communicate from a place of care by being aware and inclusive of our own needs, respecting each other, and speaking from a place of healthy boundaries that focus on how we build a Culture of Care® together.