Don't Be Tardy For The Party

Last night, with the help of Working Mother Magazine (@_workingmother_) and Axiom Public Relations (@AxiomPR), we Country Inns & Suites By Carlson (@CountryInns), co-hosted a TWITTER Party (#WMme).Country Inns donated the grand prize (a 2 night stay, $300 airline certificate, and a $100 Visa gift card), and at the end, Working Mother Magazine picked one lucky winner as the recipient of "The Ultimate Retreat" package.

We generated a lot of buzz using the hashtag #WMme -- lots of conversations about how to indulge in "me time" as a working mother; how having kids has changed the concept of "Me time," etc.

What was fun, to me, about this conversation was to see a lot of like-minded women from across the country come together to relate about a topic near and dear to everybody's hearts: how do you maintain balance as a "woman who does too much." I don't even HAVE kids, yet I constantly feel like one of those women -- I cannot even imagine what it will be like to maintain this lifestyle once I (someday, hopefully!) add kids to the mix. There was a lot of laughter, and everybody who participated walked away feeling like they'd made a lot of new friends - myself included!

I think women often feel very alone in their feelings and frustrations -- like, it's not very "nice" to express how much being a working mother stresses you out; how much you love your husband and kids, but sometimes just want to run away from it all. A theme I heard expressed a lot last night was how "Me time" doesn't even have to be anything fancy -- sometimes a gal just wants to be alone with a glass of wine and the remote control -- or a bubble bath and a good book.

Many of them expressed that even being alone with the laptop for an hour or two -- to blog, tweet, and IM to their hearts content - was a heavenly idea.

My takeaway: in this big, wild, wide world, technology can bring us a little closer together; make friends out of strangers, and provide a little bit of anonymity that is sometimes required in order to be really, truly honest with each other. And that reaching through the wires to express a shared sentiment, fear, joy, or curiosity makes this crazy place seem a whole lot more managable.

Tweet that.
~Jessica