Balancing Work & Life – No Small Challenge

Recently, I was at a conference on stress management and over-heard two women (baby boomers) talking about the difficulty they were having dealing with their aging mothers. In one case, the mother lived alone. In the other, the mother lived with her daughter and her  family.

Both women talked about their guilt and feeling of not knowing what to do. Their mothers both had some sort of dementia resulting in expressions of anger, depression and just plan misery. Nothing seemed to help their mothers. And the daughters felt alone in trying to determine what to do. Their other siblings were not as involved and, you know how it goes, some people feel that if you have to ask, it  just doesn’t help anyway!

So, what is the answer? Let’s face it, we are living longer, particularly with the advances in medicine. Do we need more adult day care centers? Certainly, support groups for the care-givers might help. This is a bigger issue than just one family! And the support group could help the family develop a plan  so that the burden does not fall on just one person. All family members need to share in the caring. If the daughter/son does not have any other siblings to help, the care-giver should have access to respite care.

I am one of the lucky ones. My mother lived a happy, healthy life until she was 89. She was smart, independent and loved by all of her children. At the end, her body just grew tired and she went “went to sleep” surrounded by her three children. While I feel very lucky, I also empathize with those families whose parents are not healthy and/or have siblings who neither share in the care nor agree with the care.

As someone who experienced work place bullying, my first indication that something was wrong began in a very subtle way. My business partner seemed to be neglecting my emails and I would find out after the fact that meetings were being held without me (when I should have been there). I chose to think that these were just over-sights – after all, we had both been through some very challenging times in business together and I could not believe that this behavior was intentional. But I also could not bring myself to confront the situation. This was mistake #1 – I should have asserted myself and demanded to know what was going on. Instead, I did not want to make “waves” -after all, it was important to maintain harmony in the workplace. Little did I know that I was enabling an escalating pattern of bullying.

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There are many things that negatively affect the ability of people to balance work and life. One of them we are seeing all too often – being bullied in the workplace. Can you imagine how demoralizing this behavior is to people and the awful impact it must have on family life?

What is going on? I never realized how prevalent it is and how it cuts across all aspects of business. In the August 13, 2007 issue of Nursing Spectrum, one of the articles is titled “Workplace bullying – Demoralizing for Many Nurses”. The article goes on to state that in it’s June 10th issue, it invited readers to participate in an online survey to determine the scope of bullying problems in nursing. To my shock and dismay, 50% of the respondents said they were at the “end of their rope,” “have had it,” or are ready to “throw in the towel”.

I guess I was just naive in thinking this was mainly a large company issue. Although, I should have figured it out since I was the victim of workplace bullying by my own business partner in my entrepreneurial company. Has this behavior become worse over the years or are we just hearing more about it now?