Industry - Legal

A Little Bit About Our Family

2020 was an interesting and challenging year for our family. Having all five kids at home with online learning for nearly half the school year and having the majority of the usual weekly kids’ after-school activities put on hold (hockey, soccer, marching band, colorguard, private music lessons, dance) meant we needed to learn to live in the home continuously together 24/7 for the first time in the kids’ lifetime. There were brief moments when all of the home time seemed to be helping the kids bond together, but for the most part, the lack of usual outside physical outlets and periodic breaks from each other led to increased family drama. Addie, our eight-year-old, has significant cognitive, physical and academic development delays, so having her support team, consisting of physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and special education teachers, switched from an in-person format to an online-format was also a challenge.

A Lot Can Change Over Time

For the majority of 2020, my husband and I both went to working full-time remotely. My husband has worked from home for about half of his professional career, but this was my first experience working remotely. Because of the nature of estate planning, in-person meetings with clients were still necessary throughout the pandemic, but these meetings took place primarily in clients' homes, rather than in the office, which led to increased travel-for-work time. We also saw the pandemic heighten the importance of estate planning for the majority of clients, which meant it was a very busy year, especially after the first few months of the shock of going on to lockdown. In May 2020, I had more families sign their estate plans than I have during any other month of my career.

Final Thoughts

There were moments where I appreciated the opportunity to be home and spend more time with my husband and children, who were always all home for the first time in fourteen years; but the surrounding stresses of the pandemic seemed to outweigh the positives for the majority of the year. I believe I would have benefited tremendously from having a group to go to for support, for resources, or just an opportunity to vent.  As life begins to return to some degree of normalcy, it is essential to have a network of women, especially working mothers, to connect with.  As we transition back into a more familiar mode of life, the opportunity to process, learn, develop and grow from everything we went through last year is so important and necessary to really make a difference in supporting working mothers.