Photo credit: Joshua Spruiel, City of Atlanta
Deya Direct: Can you talk to me about the importance of the balance of work, and still being able to maintain your life? I don't know how much of that you get to do now, with marriage, family, along with your vocational choice and in this case leadership.
Mayor Lance-Bottoms: Well for me I'm really struggling in that space as it relates to balance. But it's interesting the last since I was sworn in January 2nd. I feel I've come as close to achieving it as I have in quite some time because I'm getting settle into the new normal and so is my family. And it really does take a village. I'm so very fortunate to have a very close knit family. My mother lives less than five minutes away. So she's at my house every morning at 6:30. She fixes breakfast for my kids helps him get off to school and she's there when they get home every day. And I have an incredibly supportive husband, he's my rock. And in so many close friends that just pitching in and help. And so it now it's really about balancing it out for me learning to turn off learning to stop working when I get home. I'm running again I hadn't run in six months. And it's interesting just the toll of the campaign. I've had a break out on my face like I hadn't seen since I was 14 and I've put on weight during the campaign and all these things that are associated with just this extreme level of stress. So for my personal health and sanity and really for my family just trying to right that ship and this will be new because we've not lived and existed in this space but it's much more comfortable much sooner than I anticipated it would be.
Deya Direct: On that note, Women's History Month is a celebration of women power and all that we’ve done and do. And there's this whole sense of some women being independent the whole superwoman complex. And personally I'm not sure if that served us fully, but I'd be interested in your perspective of in the middle of celebrating all that we have accomplished and continue to accomplish. What do you say to the notion of being a super woman and you kind of alluded to it because you still need help. But so many of us don't even know how to ask for help; or once we take on the role of Superwoman, people don't even know how to deal with us when we're not that person.
People may look at you and think that you have it all together and you're doing it all. And that makes them internalize and feel like well, I should be able to do everything. To that woman, you say what?
Mayor Lance-Bottoms: That the Instagram life is just that it's the Instagram life. And then there's reality. And what I look at women all day every day who do it alone and they do it without the help that I have. And they do it without any accolades. And I also see women around me who were doing it all. And it's at the expense of their health and sometimes their lives. And we all know what our limits are and we all know we all have our personal signals as to what our limits are. And so for me it's about you know certainly I push myself in many ways.
But I have to remember that at the end of the day the most important job I will ever have is to be mother to my four children. And so there is a limit. There's a point that I have to stop if not for myself for them. And I would just say to women it's OK to push. But you also have to stop and take care of yourself because if you're not good to yourself you're not going to be good to anybody else and you're not good to anybody else if you aren't alive. And I am of the age now that I'm I'm seeing so many women struggling with real health challenges with breast cancer and heart disease and diabetes and things that are taking them away from their families. And as important you know sometimes that the S on the chest gets a little crooked and when it does you just you need to take it down and straighten it out. Because you got to be good to yourself if you're going to be good to the rest of the world.