What Is Balance, Anyway?

Vegas Mom wrote about how she balanced working, caring for her five-year-old daughter and taking charge of her husband's care after a debilitating accident. Fred wrote about balancing being a husband, a dad and a son. I've written about day care, breastfeeding, packing your husband's suitcase, stay-at-home moms, working-full-time moms, teenagers, Disney World, and my own balance between achieving career milestones and raising my three children.

All these topics seem to be -- one way or another -- about balancing work and family. Yet nearly every day, no matter what the topic, someone here seems to cry "But this isn't about balance!"

So what is balance, anyway? Do you have to have children in order to struggle with balance issues? How do you find your own balancing point in life? What makes you think you are balanced -- and others are not -- or vice versa? What happens when you tip over -- how do you right yourself and your life?

I've tipped over so many times, I don't know where to start. I once cried for four hours when I couldn't get my car to start -- it took me that long to figure out my frustration was caused by working too many hours for too many months, not the automobile's refusal to start. A few months ago I felt like ripping out my uterus, I was so discouraged by how mothering and endless laundry sapped my ability to work. Two weeks ago I had one perfect juggling day -- I woke at 6 a.m., took my children snowtubing, and by dinner was 200 hundred miles away giving a speech about the mommy wars to sixty businesswomen.

Parenthood often seems much more about "unbalance" than "balance," making the quest to find equilibrium an impossibility, some kind of insane inside joke. The only way I have found "the edge" in my own life is by repeatedly going over it. What is balance for you?

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  March 29, 2007; 10:30 PM ET  | Category:  Free-for-All
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