Women Who Build: Strength, Family, and Inclusion in the Field
What does it take to balance motherhood and a career in construction? In this special Women’s History Month collaboration episode, join Rebecca Leonardis, STO Building Group’s SVP of Marketing and Communications, Stacey Dackson, Structure Tone New York’s Vice President of Operations, and Tonia Rivers, host of Mothers in Construction and owner and president of WLS Construction Consultants, as they dive into what it means to build not just structures but legacies—juggling deadlines, leadership, and the unique challenges of being not just women, but mothers, in the industry.
Women Who Build:
Strength, Family, and Inclusion in the Field
HOST
Rebecca Leonardis
SVP, Marketing and Communications, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Stacey Dackson
VP, Operations Manager, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Tonia Rivers
Host of Mothers in Construction and owner of WLS Construction ConsultantsView Bio
Rebecca Leonardis (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Building Conversations, the STO Building Group podcast. I’m Rebecca Leonardis, the SVP of Marketing and Communications. Joining me are Stacey Dackson, Structure Tone New York’s Vice President and Operations Manager and lead for our local Structure Tone New York Women in Construction chapter. Also with us is Tonia Rivers, host of Mothers in Construction and owner and president of WLS Construction Consultants. In this special collaboration episode for Women’s History Month, we’ll be exploring the realities of being a mother in the construction industry, the challenges women face, and the changes needed to create a more supportive and inclusive network environment. Let’s start by introducing everyone and sharing your backgrounds. Stacey, would you like to begin?
Stacey Dackson (00:52)
Hi everybody. So I’ve been in the construction industry about 30 years now, starting off in civil and heavy highway and moving my way into building construction. My last 20 years have been here at Structure Tone and have been like a really tremendous opportunity and tremendous experience. Starting off first as a superintendent, working my way into general superintendent, project management, and ultimately where I’m currently sitting as Vice President Operations Manager. So really interesting work that I get to do, a lot of employee development that I get to work on with some of my younger project managers and supers. So just very rewarding to see them continue to grow and take on other leadership roles.
Rebecca Leonardis (01:42)
Tonia, would you like to go next?
Tonia Rivers (01:44)
Yes, hello everyone. So I’m Tonia Rivers. As mentioned, I am the podcast host and also the executive director of Mothers in Construction, which is a podcast and also a nonprofit dedicated to providing resources and advocacy for mothers in the construction industry. I also have a construction consulting firm called WLS Construction Consultants. And I’ve been in the industry for a total of 19 and a half years now—I had to think about that. I started off my career on the project management track. So I’ve been a senior project manager for several general contractors in the Washington DC area. And also, I worked for a government entity as a major stakeholder. Now consulting mostly with architects and on construction administration. So I’ve literally sat in every seat at the table which has been really, really great for my career and my trajectory as far as being able to be reachable and attainable to all sides of the construction project. So, I love what I do. I started off mothers of construction just based off of my tears and—we’ll call it my plight—as a mother in this industry.
Rebecca Leonardis (02:59)
So great, let’s dig in. It’s interesting that you mentioned how you started Mothers in Construction. I’d love to hear a little bit deeper about that and what really made you passionate and want to do this?
Tonia Rivers (03:15)
Well, I love to tell this story about my first experience being a mom. I was suit-casing and what some of us know as working in a different state, working on a project team. So, I was about two hours away from home, working in Virginia and living in a DC area. I was driving two hours to work one way. So a total of four hours driving some days and I was pregnant. A young mom and my water broke on the job site. So two hours away from home, water broke on the job site. It was myself and two other women on that team. And I had no clue what to do because we all plan our pregnancies, right? We know that it’s going to be that certain date and I was waiting for that date and I just knew that’s when my baby was going to come, but he had other plans. So I’m on a job site, my water breaks after I walk, was inspecting some piles, and got back to the trailer.
And the ambulance came and I was so embarrassed. And I was stuck five minutes from the job site, two hours away from home. And I was in a hospital for three weeks on bed rest because it was a premature rupture. And I watched my baby fight for his fight for his life for a month after that. And that experience was something that, you know, again, I never planned and it changed my career. It changed my thoughts on my life.
And just from then on, I had sober experiences being a mom in the industry and just pushing to remain put, you know, and to make sure that I’d maintain my status as a woman who wants to stay in the field. And it was hard. It was hard. It wasn’t that many women to talk to. Even if they were, we never had those discussions. I mean, you may have known one or two moms who were in the industry, but they just did what they had to do and they put their heads down because we fought so hard to be women in this industry. How dare we speak about being moms and the struggles with that? So I started Mothers in Construction because at one point in time, I was ready to throw in a towel figuring that the construction industry is not for moms. I can’t get to work every day at five o’clock. I cannot stay until seven and nine o’clock.
It was rough with the experience of how others perceived me and my place in the industry. So I just thought about the fact that, you know, for us to entertain women being in this industry and moms being in this industry, we have to provide grace and we have to provide resources. And that’s really what it’s all about. We can stay here, we can maintain our careers, but we need additional support and a support system to be here.
Stacey Dackson (05:56)
Certainly broaches the topic of just being able to be vulnerable, right? This is an industry that you do not want to show vulnerability. You shake off what you’re bringing into work, right? You don’t want to show what’s happening at home. You are there, fairly stoic in approach, but to be in that position, Tonia, of that vulnerability of having to literally ask for help for a personal situation,
two hours away from home where you’re just your whole entire compass is off is really something to be said and people to really think about how women in our industry have to be a little more vulnerable and we have to be able to provide an environment to allow that. Because that is something that certainly has prevented me from maybe pursuing certain things, is showing a level of vulnerability or as I would say to myself is a weakness, right? And it’s not necessarily a weakness. It’s just the fact that you’re being human. And sometimes you’re just afraid to show that human side.
Rebecca Leonardis (07:09)
And Tonia, some of the feedback that we get from women in the field that are part of our women’s network is they don’t necessarily want it to be treated differently or special. They want it to be treated the same. And in a situation like that, it’s very hard to make that happen. Stacey, do you want to explain a little bit of why you were excited when we invited you to do this podcast with us? I obviously am not a woman in the field, I’m in the office, but I do have some insight from what our women’s network has taught me, feedback from those ladies. Stacey, you have a different perspective.
Stacey Dackson (07:47)
Yeah, so I myself am not a mother, but I do work with many mothers that are in the field and trying to again provide an environment that makes it feel inclusive. I opted not to become a mother, right? So that was just a choice that I made. And it was really as a result of the fact of not really being around enough people that, you I didn’t have very many women that were working in the field when I was in the field 30 years ago. And I thought I had to make a choice between the two. I also have an issue with vulnerability, right? So, when this opportunity to talk on this podcast came up, it was really such a great opportunity to really open people’s eyes and really understand that, you know, it takes every type of person to build our jobs, right? It takes every type of person to be part of our teams and creating again, as I said before, the environment with which to just be yourself and to feel, you know, that level of belonging and also still being able to have opportunities and not feel that again you have to choose. And it is hard. The demands of the field are absolutely supreme. And for myself, I didn’t know how I could juggle. But if I had met more women doing that, I may have been able to say, I know that there’s never going to be the right time. We know that in our career path, right? It’s never the right time, whether it is whether we’re contemplating leaving a company, going to another or taking on that next role of just, I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m ready. But, you know, to be a mom, you never feel ready, right? It’s just a matter of what happens and you’re amazed at how ready you have been for that role. So, I just thought that this opportunity to talk would give people inspiration and other women inspiration that they don’t have to choose between motherhood or career.
Rebecca Leonardis (09:56)
I think that’s really great insight, Stacey. And that leads me to the next flow of conversation. Obviously, the construction industry is built on long hours, early mornings, and physically demanding work. I would love to hear, Tonia, your thoughts on how these challenges impact working mothers differently from their male counterparts and what your experience has been like?
Tonia Rivers (10:52)
So, you know, for the most part, and this is changing and every household is different: the mom manages the household, you know, so when it comes to doctor’s appointments and everything of the sorts, you know, we’re mostly handling that as well. And maybe not, at least in my case, that I don’t have the help is that I want things done my way, because I’m that A-type, right? That’s how we survive construction being A-type. So I bring it home, unfortunately.
Rebecca Leonardis (10:47)
I think that’s something we all have in common.
Tonia Rivers (10:50)
Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, just trying to juggle all of that and doing drop-offs, you know, I remember, you know, COVID, you know, I’m not saying that we’re thankful for it, but it showed us that remote work was a thing with construction. But I’ve been remote working since I started having children because I could not be at the five o’clock, the five a.m. meetings or I couldn’t be at the seven p.m. meetings all the time. So Tonia was on the phone—speakerphone at that time, right? Because we didn’t have FaceTime back in the day. But I was on the phone or I would, I learned ways to adjust to what my project team needed and to put out those fires. But the hours were long, you know, I had to rely on whatever circle I had. And also being a military spouse, you know, there were times when I was just the only parent there. So it was to the point where I had to really rely on my team. And as you mentioned, Stacey, become vulnerable and mention my needs, but I too had an issue with that because I felt that the weight of all of the, I felt that all of the women in construction were sitting on my shoulders because if Tonia didn’t make it that all of the young women that I spoke to every day and told them that they can do it, if they saw me fail, then they would believe that they would fail as well. So when it came down to adjusting to the long hours, it was really relying on my circle, being vulnerable with my teammates, having a strong back system within my project teams, my superintendents to say, hey, I’ve got to go at certain time. Can you cover my back? My young engineers or young project managers that were underneath me, they grew because I had to go. So I focused that it changed my leadership style. I had to build up the people around me in order for us to all win. And that was one way that I adjusted to, you know, the hours, but the hours are the hours, right? That’s never going to change. That’s something that we have to decide as women in this industry, which side of our lives is going to win.
Rebecca Leonardis (12:58)
We create these villages at home and at work that we kind of rely on, right, to get through and get it all done. I can appreciate that.
Stacey Dackson (13:09)
Yeah, mean, not to interrupt you, Rebecca, but, you know, even talking from a mother point of view and then also caretaker point of view, very similar where, you know, like I’ve had to take care of my parents over the years and my grandparents and same as you, Tonia and Rebecca, that it’s only going to get done my way. That’s the only way and I have to see it through. But in turn, you end up empowering your teams. Part of being a true leader is being able to rely on your teams to take that lead in your absence and having that trust. So it really makes you have to let go. And sometimes you just have to let go and it really helps everybody.
Rebecca Leonardis (13:57)
So let’s shift and talk a little bit more about mental health. Obviously, the construction industry is known as a very high-pressure environment. Are there any unique mental health challenges that you have faced or you feel other women have faced in the field? And is it different than their male counterparts? You know, things are evolving with marriages and parenthood these days where there are dads that are wanting to participate in things and help and be a true partner, right, to their wife. So I do know that I have heard that there are a lot of times where the dads want to leave early and make sure they can attend something and do something. Let’s kind of breach this topic a little bit and see where it goes.
Stacey Dackson (14:43)
Yeah, mean, I definitely, the environment is very different, right? The role of what dads do now, comparative to what even my own father did is so different. And I’m kind of, sometimes I secretly chuckle like, wow, they’re so interested in their kids. But that too helps to just, again, reprioritize family. It helps to just level set and take a pause sometimes and sometimes the chaos of the job site and the chaos of the job. We all are under such heavy deadlines and deadlines that have various liquidated damages and monetary fines that come with that. And then also, again, for our own personal selves that we want to be able to deliver an exemplary project. And with that, you really pulled in so many directions. What happens, right? So is it, is there that work-life balance that everybody talks so much to or is it more of a pendulum and what swings in each direction depending on the need of where you need to be and being able to focus on that. But it is something special with women.
As Tonia had said before that the household duties do rest on the woman. For myself, I have two step kids and I have one of my stepson still lives with us and I’m still in charge of the household, right? Like the laundry has to get done, everything has to get done. The weight of life does get on you, right? And just how do you manage through that pendulum is something that I think we as leaders work with our teams to try to reprioritize.
Sometimes if I am noticing certain behaviors, I try to pay attention to my people and I try as I develop my people to talk about some emotional intelligence, picking up on the environment, picking up on personality, picking up on certain behavioral things so that we can hopefully nip things in the bud or get them into the right spot insofar as if they needed to see an outside source, you know, just to talk things through or remind them of their PTO or remind them of when the workday needs to end and your phone gets shut off and somebody else is covering for the night, you don’t have to feel that you’re on. You can reset yourselves or making sure that you have a full weekend off so that you can get the rest that you need. So I think it’s just important we as women who have that certain intuition of picking up on the things that are not being said, it’s important to try to instill that in our team so that we can identify some of those issues as they go along.
Tonia Rivers (17:23)
I think from the standpoint of being a mom, we deal with a lot of shame. Shame that we don’t speak about out loud. There hasn’t been one pregnancy while I was in this industry where I was actually excited the minute that I found out that I was pregnant. Because I felt, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What is my team going to do? And I looked at my CPM schedule. Like, that’s crazy that I have a baby and the first thing I do is whip out the schedule and see what stage of the project is going to be in, you know, when I deliver supposedly, right? And I dealt with a lot of shame. I had these feelings of the rest of the team didn’t ask for this. You know, I had this child. I made the decision to have this child. And why does it have to be everyone else’s problem? You know, and there are some people that actually felt that way also. And I embodied that for a while in my mind that it was my issue and it was my problem and it was my problem to solve. So by solving that, again, as we mentioned before about being vulnerable, I felt ashamed to ask for the additional help. So I would work. I remember there was one project that I was on. It was a killer project, it was the project that really changed my career, but it was a killer project. And I had just gotten off of maternity leave with having my third child. I had her at 36 and my body just didn’t respond the same way with the others. I couldn’t walk after I had her. I went to postpartum and I talked to my project executive at the time. They held my spot, which is something else that women have to deal with. You know, if I am I going to be able to come back and have my spot? They held my spot, but they held the work as well. So when I went back, I’m going through postpartum. I’ve got two other children. My husband has his career where he’s traveling all the time.
I’ve got a three-month-old baby. My body’s not the same and I’m walking into this fire and everyone, I mean, as soon as I sat down, there were 10 people that needed everything from me. So I’m brushing teeth and I’m on the phone. And my executive thought, you know, he had good intentions, but he thought that, well, since you can’t be here as late as all of us, let’s have these meetings. So now it’s 11 PM. I’m breastfeeding my baby on one side. I’ve got another hand, you know, working a mouse during this meeting. And I was just so stretched and maxed out my potential. And I was too ashamed to say it because I knew again that Tonia had to make it because everyone else is looking at her and I don’t want them to say that moms don’t belong here. So I just, I silently suffered for all of that time. And I literally had a mental breakdown on that project. I was sleeping not eight hours a day, but eight hours a week, there were times at four o’clock in the morning, I was just finishing up work and I had to get my kids up at five o’clock. And I went on like this for months and months and months and it was hard, it was horrible. And the mental anguish and anxiety that I went through, just trying to make it is something that I know a lot of moms go through because we want to make it, we want to shine, we want to continue on our trajectory. We don’t want to give up.
We don’t, we want to be winners, right? Because that’s what got us where we are in the first place. There’s not a woman in construction who is successful, who doesn’t love it because you have to love it to endure, you know, as much as we do. And it’s not easy. I love it, but it’s not easy. So I dealt with so much stuff and I internalized it into, just, it balled over and then I wasn’t good to anyone. So it’s something that a lot of moms deal with. Also,
the pressure of leaving your baby sooner than it’s time at times. The thought of trying to take off six months, that’s unheard of, but sometimes it’s needed. I’ve had babies that are premature. When you bring that baby home, it’s not like bringing home a full-term baby. So you need additional time and we have to cut that time short at times. So it’s something again that the mom struggles with.
And it also adds on to your mental health because of the guilt of leaving your child and choosing your career over your child, choosing your career over your own needs, Stacey, as you mentioned, making those decisions on your life. One of the best advice that my mom actually told me is that, “Tonia, you deserve to have your life, too.” I never wanted children because I wanted to have my career. That was my thing. I told my children today, and said, I didn’t think I was going to have children.
And it was the truth because Tonia was about her career. And when I had my first child and I was so ashamed, my mom said, “You deserve to have your life too. So I think a lot of women in our industry don’t understand that and they just, suffer and shame. So it definitely impacts mental health.
Stacey Dackson (22:32)
Yeah, I think the more we’re able to bring the topics to the forefront so that these conversations are not under the cover and they’re not veiled, that people can actually approach you. So Tonia, think about the fact of knowing what you were juggling and if your manager had a level of comfort or felt that they can actually approach you to say, Tonia, how are you actually feeling? Or at least mirror back a little bit about it. And even whether it’s even if it’s a male manager, more so, right? To just understand it, right? We go through all different parts of our lives, right? As whether it’s as mothers or getting married. P.S., I had consulted my schedule at the time when I was getting married to see if it would fit within the TCO of my project. And I was convinced that I would have the TCO and then I would be able to get close out on the job, then I would get married.
Well, the TCO ended up happening many months after that. But meanwhile, my marriage date, when I think about it, I said, well, that really was influenced by a project and thinking about where the team was and what the readiness would be. But to have a manager that’s able to actually bring up the topic so that you don’t feel you need to find the courage to bring something up sometimes helps to bridge some of those issues before it becomes insurmountable.
Rebecca Leonardis (23:59)
So now let’s talk a little bit about mentorship and leadership. Tonia, you’ve spoken about a mentor of yours, Jackie Glover, on one of your podcasts. I was catching up with that over the weekend. She had a major impact on your career. Could you talk about Jackie a little bit?
Tonia Rivers (24:17)
Yes, Jackie Glover was an inspirational woman to me because she embodied the sense of pulling the next woman up. I mean, she was a connector. Unfortunately, she passed a few years ago. And when I went to her funeral, the main theme was connector, connection, connector, connector. She just brought so many different people together. And she taught us the importance of sponsorship, of networking, and establishing the people around you, getting to know so many different people so that you can always have someone to call. And relationship building, it was so important. But as a young engineer, Washington DC looked a little different for me. I recently did a post on how many women I was able to engage with early on in my career. And I know there were several studies that have been done and a lot of women have not had that opportunity. They didn’t work on the female leadership. They didn’t have that many peers that were women. And I don’t have that story because it was just a little bit different for me. So yeah, having someone like Jackie, you know, within the first couple of years of my career was vital. It was everything to me because it showed me, it made me a different woman in this industry. And I’ll say this, that I think that because there’s so few of us, sometimes we have that mentality that there can only be one of us. And we forget that we’re in this together. There’s healthy competition in construction. I think that’s always going to be there. But sometimes the competition gets a little bit rough, you know, with women because we feel like I’ve got to outshine the other. And having someone like Jackie to mentor me early on, just that it went away, you know, immediately because I didn’t look at things. I don’t have that outlook. I always looked at it like. “If I make it, you make it, we make it. And I always remember to reach back. So yeah, she really changed my life.”
Rebecca Leonardis (26:21)
I was lucky to have one female mentor early in my career, but most of my significant mentors to date have been men or what our women’s network calls he’s for she’s. These are men that help promote and connect and lift up women. Stacey, I know that you have some moments to share about a mentor that had a profound impact on your career because you’re very, very passionate about mentorship and that had to come from someone.
Stacey Dackson (26:52)
Well, believe it or not, it comes from not having one. So, Tonia, I too saw one of your posts for International Women’s Day over the weekend and I was so jealous. I’m like, how could Tonia know all these women? And I really don’t know anybody. As far as when coming up through the ranks to give the inspiration. So most of my mentorship, all of my mentorship was through men, but it was all informal. Not anything that was really set up, but again, always looking to learn from people, learn some of the things you shouldn’t do, some of the things you should do. I inadvertently would find out that I had more active sponsors, but I didn’t know until well after. And I wish I did know just to be able to feel a certain level of, to feel that sponsorship, right? To know that someone is speaking on my behalf. And I know a lot of people like to be a little bit like a secret Santa, right? That they do something in the shadows, but I would have liked to have known a little bit more. So what really kind of guides me now is being an overt mentor, right? Being the overt sponsor.
Let somebody know that you’ve said their name in a room because they should know that rather than it just happening and you hear about it days, months, years later. And to be that connector, as you say, Tonia, is such a major adjective to be able to use for someone and so positive. You find that there are in this industry that there are so few women, even though the numbers increase, doesn’t seem to be, sometimes it doesn’t seem very palpable, doesn’t seem very, you don’t feel it all the time.
Some women, when they’ve gone through the career and it’s been a bit of the school of hard knocks or just their sentiment is just, they’ll learn the hard way like I had to learn the hard way. And there is a certain part that I do believe that you need to do the long division, right? Before you’re getting into the short division and you got to kind of learn it on your own a little bit, but to smooth some of those edges, I think are so supremely important. It doesn’t have to be so hard, right? That you face these decisions like I faced for myself. I had to pick one or the other. It’s my career or it’s my personal life.
What sacrifices and now that I look back as a 50 something year old, I look at the sacrifices I’ve made and I wouldn’t change anything now but how do I help to influence others as they come through the ranks that they don’t need to sacrifice some of those things that you can have. You can have it all, it’s just not all at once.
Rebecca Leonardis (29:48)
Well, that leads me to my next question. As leaders in the construction industry, how do you actively seek to uplift other women entering the field? Are there examples that you could both give me on how you try to make that easier, so to speak?
Tonia Rivers (30:11)
So, I think when I was mentoring or sponsoring the younger generation that I worked with, it was being just flat out honest. And I think that we’re still at a time where I told them, you have to work 10 times harder than the rest. It’s just reality. There are things, qualities, milestones, and markers that I would just lay on the table and say, you’ve got to hit these points to make you better, to make us better. And especially there’s sometimes where you get on a project where there’s no time for learning. You got to jump in and you got to run. There’s no walking. You got to run. And you want to be ready no matter what project it is. You could be knocking down a wall or you could be building a $200 million museum. You’ve got to go and you’ve got to be ready to go. You’ve got to be ready to change. You’ve got to be versatile.
And I think that that’s something that I’ve always pushed, you know, in my leadership style there was a lot of, that’s right, tell it like it is. And a lot of, I call my young engineers my children. They call me mom. I’m like, I mothered them, you know, and whether they liked it or not, I was a mom to them and I still look at them, some of them and see where they’ve gone. And I’m so proud, as if I had them myself.
You know, because it is a family. It is just a family. You have your work husbands, your work, you know, uncle, and you spend a lot more time with your project teams. Sometimes you spend time with your own family. So when you embody that spirit and you bring that to the table, and I allowed, you know, the teammates to consider that we are a family. The good, the bad, the ugly, we’re not going to like each other every day. Sometimes some weeks may go weeks without liking each other, but you got to get over the hump. You got to get to that end line and try not to let things get in the way. It’s just like a family so that we can get to the end goal. So that was something that I’ve always brought to the table.
Stacey Dackson (32:26)
Yeah, for myself, as far as the women I work with, trying to really expand their access to resources. When you’re working out in the field, you’re definitely siloed. You’re running your own little business out there, but yet there is still a mothership to come back to. There’s still the corporate side of things that are running things from behind the scenes. So, really showing them the resources that they have access to, to give them a level of autonomy from understanding the financial aspect, the budgeting aspects, the legal aspects. So this way then they really know where they can call upon to help educate themselves as they carry through their careers. That it’s not just the field, there is a whole host of things that are happening.
We’re in the business of construction, not just, you know, we’re building, but we’re in the business, right? So it takes a whole lot of different sectors within our organization to make that job happen. So to really educate them on the resources for increasing their autonomy is important to me.
Rebecca Leonardis (33:39)
So let’s do some closing thoughts. For the women and mothers listening to this conversation who are thinking about joining or advancing in this construction industry, what’s the one piece of advice you would give them to help them move forward more confidently?
Tonia Rivers (34:00)
So I think that you have to communicate, communicate your needs and don’t be ashamed to communicate your needs. Don’t let the circumstance happen to you, you know, create the circumstance. And I think that if it became a standard that when a woman finds out that she’s pregnant, these are the things that we need to discuss. These are the conversations that you need to have. You need to think about who’s going to take over while I’m out.
What is my transition back in? What does that look like? What resources are going to be available to me? How many times do we need to check in? Who is my go-to? Who do I talk to? I think that, you know, a lot of times it just happens. Well, we’ll wait till your water breaks and then we’ll deal with it. You know, and then that’s that strain on the entire process. So I think that having the courage and having the vulnerability to speak up and have those conversations with your leadership is very important.
The other thing is to also establish yourself grace and to really think about what it is that you really want. You may not know everything, you may not know what your next 10 years ahead looks like, but there’s going to be a sacrifice. You’re going to sacrifice your career or you’re going to sacrifice time with your family. That work-life balance, we mentioned it. I don’t believe in it. There’s no balance. Something wins. Each day, something wins.
Sometimes it’s going to be your children. Sometimes it’s going to be the job site. Something is going to win. Sometimes you’re going to win. Sometimes you’re going to fail. There’s no balance. It’s just trying to get to a happy medium for you to survive, for everyone to survive. So just allowing that grace, establishing grace, communicating your needs, and knowing that you belong and knowing that you’re needed and you’re valued. And I think that’s one thing that was missing for me is that as hard as I worked, I didn’t know how valued I was until I almost quit my job. That’s when everybody said, “Where are going? What do you need?” And they gave me everything that I needed. So I went through all of that for that amount of time because I was afraid to raise my hand because I was expecting someone to raise their hand for me and say, you know what? She looks like she is on her last days. Let me, let me step in. But no, they were used to strong Tonia, you know, so she’ll come around and I didn’t.
Also understanding that it’s okay to not win all the time. You know, sometimes you’re going to fail. We all have times where, you know, I always used to say, always used to say failure is not an option. Well, sometimes it happens. And when it happens, whether it’s in the home or if it’s on your job site, you still belong. You’re human. Establish the grace. And just remember that you’re valued and you’re important. And once you start with that, think everything else will fall into place.
Stacey Dackson (37:00)
They’re all very good points, Tonia. was thinking that the advice that I would give is to just not strive for 100 % perfectionism every single day. Perfectionism equals paralysis at certain points because you just can’t get through it unless it’s absolutely perfect. And we know what it’s like to put a tight grip on something and you could put a tight grip and then it’s just sand coming through your fingers. You can’t control it and you’re holding on for dear life. Also, not being afraid to not know everything. Sometimes you’re just not going to have all the answers and that’s okay. That’s why we have a team. And that’s what makes that team so strong is that each of us represents something a little different that we can bring to the table. And then also the fear of failure, right? It goes back to vulnerability. We can’t fail, we can’t fail, but if we could take those moments of where we were not necessarily our best or we didn’t know everything and we’re able to learn from that and go forward, again it gives people an example and you become that example for others to say okay you know that I don’t have to be perfect every day, I don’t have to have all the answers every day.
But every day I’m going to show up and I am making a contribution because you are contributing more than what you think you are even on those lesser days. So that’s my bit of advice.
Rebecca Leonardis (38:37)
It does sound like a lot of this is pressure we put on ourselves. And the grace thing definitely hits close to home based on a lot of conversations I’ve had with women in our network. We assume the worst and we are not vulnerable. That shame piece that you talked about earlier, Tonia, is so relevant to many of our women. So we need to focus on that grace.
Rebecca Leonardis (39:03)
So thank you, ladies. I think this was a great conversation. A lot of great advice. Thank you, everyone, for tuning into this episode of Building Conversations. Be sure to listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, thanks for listening.