Sharing by Phone
On Tuesday May 25th, Marc and I will be the featured guests on a telephone discussion hosted by Jessica DeGroot - founder and president of the ThirdPath Institute. We'll be chatting for about an hour with interested participants who have pre-registered for the free phone call. Our call is one in a series of conversations that Jessica has arranged with authors of recent shared parenting books - some of our favorite colleagues in the good fight for gender equal parenting: Sharon Meers (Getting to 50 50), Kristin Maschka (This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be), Jeremy Adam Smith (The Daddy Shift) and Dottie Lamm (Daddy On Board).
We are really looking forward to this hour, since we've known Jessica and her work for many years. In fact, we met her way before our book or even this website were twinkles in our eyes. The story goes that when we first had M, I was an active member of a local working moms group that met monthly. At one meeting, a guest speaker came to talk with us about work/life balance. The speaker turned out to be a local personal coach and who revealed something that day that perked up my ears. She told the group of moms that she had shared equally with her husband in raising her two daughters - both working about the same number of reduced hours to do so. Wow! This speaker was my first ESP mom-colleague and I wanted to talk with her all night! Alas, she did eventually have to leave, but she told me about a nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia that was working on helping couples achieve this sort of arrangement - what they termed Shared Care. This was my introduction to the ThirdPath Institute. I ran home that evening, woke up Marc, and announced to his bleary face that I had finally found "my people." It was a great feeling!
It just so happened that ThirdPath was experimenting with creating a group of interested parents in the Boston area shortly after I learned of them. What luck! Marc and I enrolled in the group, hoping to meet more of "our people." It turned out that the other participants weren't quite doing Shared Care yet - they were there to learn how it could work for them. But Jessica was, and she had come to run the group. It was wonderful to meet her, and we have stayed in touch ever since. ThirdPath does great work - with businesses, individuals, couples, and special sectors/populations. Check them out!
And the inspiring life coach? That's Sharon, who is featured together with her husband, Jonathan, in our book. She and Jonathan continue to be an inspiration, sharing with us how it feels to parent as equals through the teenage years and beyond. They have just become ESP grandparents!
Our phone call is at 12:30-1:30p.m. EST. If you are free at this time, and interested in calling in, just email ThirdPath at time4life@thirdpath.org to receive phone-in instructions. Love to hear you on the line.
posted by Amy @ 8:34 PM
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