The Glass Ball Project

The mission of The Glass Ball Project is to investigate and seek to understand the challenges facing women who balance careers while raising children, in order to create empathetic and innovative solutions so that they can live to their full potential.

If you’ve landed on this page, I don’t need to extol the virtues of women in the workplace to you – but we need more of them, living their best lives. That’s where I’m hoping to come in. I know what you’re thinking – so before you close your browser – NO, I’m not selling anything.

By day, I turn employee and customer insights into action plans, and I love it. For the past year though, I’ve spent a lot of my waking time feeling seriously worried about my fellow working women, especially those who are juggling careers and childcare (like yours truly). I want to put my skills to use to do something to help working women of the future lead more supportive lives. I don’t know what that is yet - and that’s frustrating for an overachiever like me. Is it a platform? A community? Issue advocacy? I have decided that I’m not going to let that uncertainty stop me. This project represents the first step I’m taking towards creating solutions – to collect your stories and find their themes.

My ask: I want to know whatever you think is important to share. These could be your pandemic stories, the ordinary or extraordinary things you’ve achieved despite the circumstances, how you’ve stayed sane, how you’ve changed, or what you need to be different post-pandemic.

You’re still reading? I’m impressed. You better end up submitting a story!

A little more about my personal perspective, since you came this far. Not to be negative, but I think it took this pandemic for me to realize that women and society have been, for the most part, putting themselves last. That certainly was true in my case, and that led me to a great personal reckoning and a painful but (eventually) positive period of intense self-growth.

One thought that I can’t escape is that society has let us down. In my case, I had let myself down, too. Double whammy.

I needed a better relationship with myself and a more sustainable way of life. I also needed a village, and for many of us, there hasn’t been one. And when COVID hit, any town we had emptied out and the resources dried up. I can’t help feeling like we can’t leave ourselves open to that again, and we can’t go back to the way things were.

At work I’m always the one saying, “be the change you wish to see!” and like a total hypocrite, I’ve been griping to anyone who will listen about the situation working parents have found themselves in this past year. I have been waiting for someone to sweep in and help, but so far, I don’t see anyone on the horizon riding a white horse. Maybe I’m motivated to verify my personal experience, but I am also just ready to do something.

So, at the end of the day, what am I going to do with your stories and your feedback? The short answer is, I don’t know. But I promise to read every one with compassion. And look for trends. And trust the universe to tell me what to do next (yes I’m starting to believe in that stuff). Even if this exercise serves only to connect me with more women in the same boat, who want to connect with each other and join what Elise Joan calls the “High Vibe Tribe,” I would consider that a win. Because we need all of the support and solidarity we can get right now – and I don’t want to lose sight of that when this pandemic ends.