In our latest Working Moms Podcast episode, we chat with Erika Weigle, a full-time mom and part-time marketing consultant (and valued member of the WMR Team) about her journey as a working mom. Tune in as she discusses the challenges and nuances of “balancing” motherhood and career, diving into some tricky topics along the way.
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1. Are you from Chattanooga? If not, what brought you here?
I’m not originally from Chattanooga, although I’ve lived here for all but a couple years since 2008. I grew up in the NW suburbs of Chicago, and went to school at Northern Illinois University. After graduation I got an internship here at UTC in collegiate athletics. I immediately fell in love with the city and made some great friends. I remember feeling so sad because I wanted to stay here but the nature of college athletics is a lot of moving around. I got lucky and ended up getting to stay here and advancing through my career for 5 years. When I met my now husband, who is from Florida, and things started getting serious I immediately started talking up Chattanooga in the hopes of living basically between both our families. My plan worked out!!! We’ve lived here together now since 2016.
2. Tell me a little bit about your time spent working in marketing and what you do for WMR.
I’ve been in marketing for almost 20 years now, and in so many exciting ways, shapes and forms! As I mentioned, I started off my career in college athletics. I did everything from on-field and on-court promotions and hosting, to event planning, game day production for crowds of 20,000+, worked in NFL stadiums and hosted tournaments across almost all sports. From there I actually took a crazy turn and spent some time in commercial real estate with a big company back in Chicago. When I came back to Chattanooga I took a really fun turn back into events and marketing for 2 downtown restaurants. But after having my first daughter I knew I didn’t want to go back to work full-time so I relied solely on working for myself as a marketing consultant - which I had already been doing for a couple years. That’s ultimately what brought me to my time with WMR. I’ve served in a variety of marketing roles with Working Moms including social media, event planning, strategic planning, creative and graphic design. Currently my role focuses on the WMR blog, graphic design and email campaigns. It’s really fun and, just like marketing, always evolving.
3. You have a unique point of view in the fact that you stay home full time but also work part time. What would you say are your biggest strengths when it comes to this “balance?”
First of all, the word “balance” gives off this image of like a perfectly even scale at all times, which I think is a near impossible fantasy. What I’ve grown to learn is, in reality, the scale can tip one way or another without toppling over. In real life, some days I feel like I crush being a mom and some days I crush my work to do list, but there is still stability in the “scale”. But also, it’s chaotic!
But to answer your question, I think my strengths are that I’m very organized and I’m really good at planning - my time, our family events, our day-to-day, etc. Being organized is super important to me because it helps me prioritize and be efficient. I’m the queen of lists! I love lists and I LOVE checking things off my lists. My mind works almost like a timeline puzzle that I fit everything into. I plan pretty far ahead, I see the big picture of an event that needs to happen or a work project that needs to be completed, or our meals for the week and everything that goes into that. I know what needs to get done, I make lists of all these things and as I check something off I can either focus in on the details of what is about to happen next or move on further down the timeline and add the next event. Pretty much I’m never not thinking of and planning for something lol. Remember, it’s chaos…. Beautiful chaos!
4. What would you say are your biggest challenges when it comes to working while raising a family simultaneously?
I thought about this question for a while because I feel like parenthood and raising a family is hard! There are tons of challenges. But currently, I would just say my biggest challenge is mom guilt. Just the pressure and expectations I put on myself. I feel like no matter what I do, I always feel guilty for something. I go to bed at night and I’m like I should have played with my kids more or gotten down on the floor with them more, I should have made a healthier dinner. I should have read more books. Everything I do, I do for them, but they don’t always see it that way. So I beat myself up over how they perceive what I am doing. Am I on my phone ordering groceries or getting something done for work quick … or to them, am I just paying attention to my phone and not them? Gosh, that just makes me feel terrible. So, it’s something I’m working on. It’s easier to look at the things you didn’t do enough of, but I’m trying to remind myself and focus on the things I did do for them that day.
5. Time to get a little personal. I want to talk about a difficult but necessary topic today: Talking to young children about death. Can you tell me a little bit about what you tell your kids when it comes to the death of a loved one?
Whew, you are hittin’ me hard aren’t you?! That really is a hard topic and I am no parenting expert by any stretch of the imagination. But what I have tried to do so far is, first, give my kids an age appropriate explanation for what happened to the person - ex: their body was really sick or they got a boo-boo on their brain, etc. Then there will obviously be questions. Most importantly to me, I try to answer their questions and talk about the situation that lead to death without lying. I just tell them the best answer I have (again age appropriate).
For us also, when we talk about the person no longer being here we say that their spirit is up in the clouds. I had an amazingly cute and meaningful experience a couple years ago with my oldest when our neighbor’s dog passed. We talked about him being in the clouds, after lots of other questions of course. But later that day it started to rain and she said “Oh! Chestnut is coming down from the cloud to say hi to us!” So we immediately caught some rain in a mason jar and gave it to our neighbor as a gift to remember him by. It was sweet and innocent and meaningful. I’ll never forget it.
6. What advice would you give to a brand new mother in the same position/stage of life that you were in about 5 years ago?
I would say, you don’t have to fit into a category as a parent. You don’t have to be a crunchy mom or a helicopter mom or a cry it out mom or a pacifier, mom or a formula mom or a breastfeeding mom.
Trust your gut and do what works best for you. Lean on others for ideas and guidance when you feel like you need it, but ultimately trust yourself. Parenting is hard, each stage is new and you have never done it before and your baby/kid has never done it before. I think with the internet and social media and influencers, there is so much information thrown at you about how you are supposed to do any given thing - using a paci or not, where they sleep, cry it out, don’t spoil the baby. It’s all ALOT! So focus on what works for you and makes you happy and ultimately trust yourself. I’ve learned to do that a little bit more the longer I’m a mom, but I wish I would have been able to a little more when I first became a mom.