Hanging in the Balance

Work, Life, and All the Rest of It

by CoVaBizMag

Is “Work-Life Balance” a relic of the past? With work and personal life more intertwined than ever, many argue that separating the two was never the point—it’s about designing your life on your terms.

By Betsy DiJulio

We often refer to “work-life balance” as though it were straight-forward. But, well, it’s complicated.

For starters, what does the term even mean? Though it’s tossed around the U.S. nowadays, often as part of the self-care movement, it’s thought to have been coined in the 1980s during the Women’s Liberation Movement in the U.K., largely in reference to flexible work schedules and maternity leave.

But fast forward a few decades and let’s assume it means something along the lines of achieving fulfillment both at work and at home in a way that allows people to meet their job-related responsibilities without sacrificing friends, family, other interests and their health.

It’s still complicated.

For those who earn a living—or who labor but are unpaid—can work and life really be teased apart? Is work-life balance cultural, generational, gender-specific? Is it related to phases in life? Is it always even desirable? And the answer is a very definite “It depends.”

The Piersall Family

The Piersall Family

Given that the scope of this topic is vast, an argument could be made that it would be wise to start small in the quest to achieve some clarity, if not certainty, around these questions. Toward that end, three women in Coastal Virginia generously agreed to weigh-in.

Christine N. Piersall is a Virginia Beach-based estate planning attorney at the firm of Williams-Mullen with offices in Virginia and North Carolina. In her forties, Piersall is married to Trey, a litigator, and they have two children: a freshman in college and a 16-year-old high school student. “I don’t ever feel like it’s balanced,” she says, “It’s a seesaw and I’m okay with that…my work is a part of who I am, and it brings me joy.”

Piersall describes a work context in which she experiences great affection for her coworkers, her clients, and the work itself, though she concedes that “Not every day is easy.” Recognizing that “sometimes work takes more time, sometimes family takes more time,” together they provide what she needs to feel happy and fulfilled.

With competing priorities familiar to many—spending time with family and friends, taking care of her kids, and enjoying personal time, while also maintaining a high level of professionalism and performance—Piersall sees “work as a part of life.” But she acknowledges that, as she gets older, the demands on her time have changed.

“Obviously, when the kids were younger, they needed me to take care of them. I was also a younger attorney just establishing myself and learning how to become a lawyer, so what got the most attention were the kids and my career,” she shares. Personal time took more of a back seat in those days, yet she is quick to credit her in-laws with the support necessary to afford her and Trey “plenty of date nights and trips away without the kids.”

Now that her children are more independent, Piersall values flexibility over so-called balance saying, “Although my job is still demanding, I have established relationships with my partners and my clients to give me flexibility.” While she still works most nights and weekends—including on her laptop in the car while Trey drives the couple to see their daughter at college—she now has time to work out more than she ever has and spend more time with her friends. “So, it’s not like the work still isn’t hard, but I feel now that I’m in my late 40s, I have a lot more control over my work and life.”

Though Piersall, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, is a self-described “planner,” she readily and gratefully acknowledges those, besides her parents, who have made her path possible: an “awesome” husband; generous in-laws who live close; a “godsend” of an in-home caregiver when the kids were small; and a department head who, when she was a young associate with a new baby in desperate need of reduced hours, made that happen with a wave of his hand and the words, “Do whatever it takes to keep her.” She also has a facetious deal with her clients: they can’t die.

On the other hand, Becky Bump is in a different phase of life with a very different context. She and her partner, Reese Lusk, own r. Lusk Studios and The Designer Workshop, which they recently purchased, and she continues to plan largescale events for clients of Special Assignment, the longtime public relations firm she owned until COVID. While the couple has no children, they are a critical arm of the caretaking team of Bump’s 95-year-old mother who lives three hours away, as well as the providers for a pair each of cats and dogs.

About work-life balance, Bump asserts, “I don’t think about balance between work and life, I think about balance between work and sleep.” Professing never to have been very good at selfcare nor one to “draw hard lines in the sand” between aspects of her life, Bump observes that she doesn’t have the sense that her “balance is out of whack, just that I wish there was more time.”

While her mother lives at home with a caretaker, over the last year, Bump and her two brothers have felt it imperative to “put eyes on her” every couple of weeks. She says those trips, with Lusk and the dogs about 70% of the time, “have all but eliminated the little bit of free time I had.” And the drive time has turned into a three-hour business meeting. Always a planner, Bump emphasizes how essential planning about three months out has become; that, and flexibility.

Non-negotiables in her life are long dog walks; coffee, news, and puzzles with Lusk each morning; and dinner together at night. Bump carves out time for her monthly book club, though longs for hours in her garden and for scuba diving, saying, “Water is my sanctuary.” But what she laments most is that the last year has affected her personal relationships with friends who she doesn’t see very much anymore. “It makes me sad…I don’t get back to friends in a timely manner; their texts and calls get behind ten other thoughts and five other days.”

But Bump has always been a self-proclaimed high-energy multi-tasker. So, while acknowledging a wide range of emotions, ultimately, she recognizes that this is a phase of her life and not forever.

Jenny Ward, MD, is a 49-year-old OB-GYN with fifth grade twin daughters and a seventh-grade son. Like Piersall, she credits her husband, Travis, an owner of autobody shops, with being “indispensable, the rock of the family.” Though their roles have evolved, she credits him with chauffeuring the kids to school, managing a heap of chores, and never complaining. And, while her mother died when she was young, she is grateful to her semi-retired father and his partner who “always say yes” when asked to help, as well as to a “coalition” of sports parents.

Like many, Ward lives the classic parenting paradox of wanting more free time, but “desperately not wanting my children to grow up.” Claiming to prioritize sleep over many things, she also asserts that she doesn’t feel the need to say “yes” or to impress and is “okay with being okay,” except when it comes to parenting and practicing medicine. There she aims for an “A+.”

So, after 23 years of delivering babies, Ward recently decided to focus on gynecology. She jokes that “Babies wouldn’t comply when I asked them to stop coming in the middle of the night.” More seriously, she explains that “Obstetrics is very stressful and high acuity in ways that might surprise people.” So, for her own heath—especially adequate sleep and a healthier diet—she decided she needed to embrace a new phase in her professional life.

While there is far more to ferret out about work-life balance, these three highly personal perspectives suggest the importance of “the village,” empathetic employers, agency, and a realistic reckoning with the ever-evolving phases of life.

Photos (from top of page) by Liza Wilfe and Tung Wu

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