2 Universal Truths of Working Women

It had taken several exchanges of emails over the course of a couple of weeks for the director-elect of MISHRM and I to agree on a date for a private Twitter-versity. We were going to spend a couple of hours together so she could learn Twitter from account creation to retweets to zany backgrounds. It was to be my first class since offering it to several people at an earlier MISHRM Leadership Conference.

The director was specific that she wanted to have the class before the monster SHRMAnnual Conference in Las Vegas so she would be fully prepared; we agreed on the Wednesday evening before the conference began.

About an hour before we were to meet I received an email from her canceling our class. Here’s what she wrote:  “I’m so sorry. I admit defeat. I can’t do it all. Off to hospital to see my mom who has been in icu since Monday. I hope to see u in Vegas.”

Fortunately, I had taken the liberty of inviting some of my SHRM local colleagues to the Twitter-versityso the class went on.

It was only about 54 hours later when an ambulance took my husband to the emergency room and I was forced to cancel my trip to that very same SHRM conference in Las Vegas.

Later, reading the SHRM blogs and Twitter stream that I was supposed to be contributing to, I broke down and cried.  I was reminded of two universal truths of being a working woman:

1. There will be conflicts. When they are serious, family always comes first.
2. Sometimes a girl just needs a good cry.

Then life will go on.

About the author: Joan Ginsberg, JD, SPHR, is an HR and Social Media consultant currently residing in the Detroit area. Her general blog is Just Joan and her blog for the over 50 crowd resides over here.