Episode 1 - My Story

Episode 1 Transcription

Hello, and welcome to episode one of Real Life with the Tina Twist

Today I’m going to talk about my story my development, and how I made it work as a working professional who is also a mom.

So a bit about me in case you missed the intro: I’m a healthcare executive, a wife to my best friend Dan, and a mother to three amazing kids

I also volunteer as a business mentor and masterclass speaker with an amazing organization called Race for Good

I am the sole breadwinner in my family, by design.

I’m proudly Canadian, and I currently happily live as an expat in Belgium

Since our relocation in early 2020 our family motto has been: The Graves family figures it out – We’ll talk a bit more about that today.

So today I’m going to tell you my story, and truthfully I’m leveraging some of the language from Simon Sinek’s work, both Start With Why, and The Infinite Game

So I’ll walk you through my “Why”, and my just cause or my North Star and then I’ll get quite practical with you about how my story might be relevant for you or how you can apply some of the things I’ve learned to your own life.

But before I begin, I want to add that while I’m sharing my story, I recognize there are a thousand different ways that I could have got here and that your story should, and will look unique to you – that’s the point.

We all own our stories, and we have the power to write them the way that we want to

So to understand my why I’ll tell you two short stories about myself.

The first one, I’m the youngest child of three, and I was raised by a single mother. My mom worked extremely hard to provide for us kids but she didn’t really enjoy her work.

And so, from a young age I knew that I wanted to show my kids that it was possible to be a professional businesswoman, to have a balanced family life, and enjoy my work.

So over time and after fifteen years of marriage and 18 years in my industry, we have figured this out.

The second story I want to tell you takes you back even further.

Shortly after graduating university I moved to Japan to teach English to middle school students.

So I packed my big huge backpack with my Canada flag sewn on the back and I flew to this wonderful country on the other side of the world – completely alone.

The minute I landed, I was illiterate; I couldn’t speak the language, I didn’t know how to make a phone call.

Yeah, people used actual telephones, like payphones back in the day, and I didn’t know what I was buying at the grocery store most of the time.

I had two days after my arrival to furnish my tiny little apartment, to buy a bicycle and find my way to the school for my first day.

All while not being able to read a single street sign or ask for directions. It was terrifying.

But I figured it out.

Little did I know at the time but this experience over the course of the three years I lived there was my first step in becoming a global citizen; something that is now a very important part of how I show up each and every day in my personal and my professional life.

So when we talk about our North Start at home or our Just Cause, our family’s is simple: it’s to raise global citizens of the future who believe that the impossible is possible – regardless of their gender.

So when we’re making big decisions at home, like hey should I apply for that job in Belgium, and that means we’ll move from Canada across the ocean, we always go back to this North Star or our just cause.

We live life the way we do so our kids see that dads can be stay at home parents as much as moms can, and moms can succeed in the corporate world as much as much as dads can, albeit with a lot of struggle and we’ll talk about that I’m sure throughout many episodes of this podcast.

This is really easy to say, right? It makes sense. I’m known as being a very pragmatic person it makes perfect sense. Parent’s can be moms and dads, moms and moms, dads and dads, however you want to make up your family it just makes sense right? It’s actually quite difficult to do particularly when society expects still that you’re living life a certain way.

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it because it absolutely is.

And for now, for us, we have figured this out.

I want to talk a little bit about making it look easy.

So before I lead you to think that this was easy, or you know difficult but in quotation marks and not really or without sacrifice or lead you to think that this has been a simple path we’ve followed I want to tell you one more story about our family.

So I’ll take you back a number of years to when one of our daughters was quite small.

She was just 3.

Over the course of a few weeks she had a series of grand mal or tonic clonic seizures

Now if you’re a parent and you have been exposed to this watching helplessly as your child convulses on the floor, it is an image that will last in your mind for probably the rest of your life.

It is completely terrifying.

And so if you are a parent that has experience this, I am giving you the largest virtual hug that I possibly could – I have been in your shoes.

So in the days leading up to our daughters diagnosis of epilepsy, we predicted the worst; as you would.

But we really, of course, hoped for the best.

We were very fortunate that the medicine our daughter was given stopped the seizures basically from the first day.

And she eventually outgrew her condition and she’s no longer medicated.

So why do I tell you this?

So this same year that our daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy was the same year my husband and I achieved Air Canada frequent flyer status for our flying solely related to work.

From the outside we were successful, career driven parents who also had a family and we were doing it all.

But the reality was we were never home together and we had a child with a chronic illness that weighed heavy on our minds most of our waking hours.

From the outside we were living life, the life that we should have been living but not the one we wanted for ourselves and not the one we pictured for ourselves as parents.

So that year we got very clear about our north star and our priorities.

And what that looked like for us was a decision to commit to my career, with my husband choosing to move to another role at work so that he could make himself more available for the family.

Yes it was a sacrifice, but it was a choice that we were both happy about.

And in short, we figured it out.

Now this huge family decision has afforded me the courage to leave a company I worked at for over 11 years to go to another one that offered me more development at the time, despite leaving a wonderful community of colleagues behind to do so.

It allowed me to feel good about moving our family from one province to another so that I could immerse myself in this new role.

This family decision also allowed us to somewhat easily relocate to Belgium so that I could continue to grow in my career while also exposing our kids to a different culture and the joy of going to a different country for lunch every weekend.

For now, the Graves family has figured this out.

And now for the so what.

What can you take away from this episode besides knowing a little bit about me and about my story.

How could this apply to any other working parent.

First, it’s about being clear about what you want and sometimes that starts with being open and honest with yourself.

So if you’re looking to advance in your career, be open and honest with yourself, your family, and your leadership about what you want to be when you grow up.

Even if this sounds super scary and has a lot of unknowns or isn’t perfectly mapped out for you, often it won’t be.

Be brave and put it out there.

The unknowns really do start to figure themselves out when you’re clear about what you want and you start talking about it with others.

Once you have an idea about what you want, right what’s that big scary goal as it’s sometimes referred to, then you can map out how you might get there.

So if you don’t know but you have observed someone in the role that you think you might want one day, ask for help.

Ask that person if they can share 30 minutes of their time with you so you can ask them questions about their role, and the steps they took to get there.

I have asked on a number of occasions and I have never been told no.

Remember that the people in these roles that maybe you’re looking up to or you’re aspiring to have one day, they’re human beings too. They’re real people, and they’ve grown and developed and achieved the roles they’re in now they didn’t wake up one day and just decide that they would be in that role and they were given it to them on a platter.

Once you know this how, then you get to decide if you actually want to take the necessary steps to get there or not.

You get to write your own story and you decide if it’s the path you want – just because you asked and you have the information doesn’t mean you’re now committed to follow that path.

It’s ok to decide that, you know what, perhaps this isn’t the role that you thought it was or the path to get there isn’t right for you, and to choose a different direction.

Again, this is your story and you get to write it.

I would love to hear all about your big scary goals or the story you would love to write but it’s really scary or you need some help or encouragement or some accountability to take those first steps.

Sharing it with someone gives it power.

Getting it out of your head, saying it out loud, putting it in writing; it gives it power and it starts the ball rolling.

If you want to share in private with me so it’s out of your head but not out in public you can always send me an email at tinagravespodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact me through our website at tinagraves.org.

Your goals and dreams will stay with me and won’t be made public unless you choose to do so.

In our next episode, we’re going to touch on the question I get asked often: how do you do it all?

I get asked this question every few months by different people. Usually mothers with very young children or women who aspire to have a family one day and also succeed in their careers.

My response is always simple: I don’t.

And in fact no one does.

So come back for episode two in a few weeks where we will dive into this topic in more detail.

Until next time, take care, stay safe, and live your life – with a twist.

Gear used in this episode:

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