Full Episode Transcript

Dr. Ashley Blackington (00:01.03)

All right, hello and welcome back to the AND/BOTH podcast. I am here today with Jessica Weitz. I didn't even ask you how to pronounce your name beforehand, which is what I always do because I have such a complex about this. Did I do it right?

Jess Weisz (00:13.425)

Ways.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (00:30.81)

Weitz, okay. Anyway, she is here and we are gonna talk about, I believe, things to do with motherhood and corporate culture and how that is all needing to get shaken like a snow globe. So first of all, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Jess Weisz (00:32.948)

Thank you. And yes, I think that's like a perfect thing to start talking about.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (00:37.054)

Yeah, yeah, let's start with the small stuff, right? Like rethinking and restructuring corporate culture for mothers. Yeah, no, we should. So tell, if you can tell everyone a little bit about you and sort of how you dropped into that as a focus area.

Jess Weisz (00:43.374)

NBD. Yeah, I'll keep it short and then you like ask me more questions if that makes sense because I could go on That's a long story

Dr. Ashley Blackington (01:01.998)

All right. Ha ha ha.

Jess Weisz (01:24.392)

Uh me my jam is helping people live what I call well-rounded lives. So how do you have a life that includes? career also Caregiving and self-care and um, I see that and I kind of

pull at it as like, I call it, it's a rebel brand. Like it's, I call it rule breaker, being a rule breaker. Because to do that actually, although it sounds so like almost vanilla is quite challenging in our modern society, particularly for professionals, particularly for those of us that are in the thick of it with young kids or teens and kind of were going to women's events in their twenties and in the early 2000s and were like god had kids and realized what the heck this is not at all what they talked about right there were slides missing uh in the presentations i went to and um that's basically how i got here is that my own personal journey of a very corporate blue chip kind of experience and then i now have a five and a half

Dr. Ashley Blackington (02:03.501)

No.

Jess Weisz (02:21.48)

gone through this own personal journey of being like, yeah, no, this isn't at all what was cracked up to be. And so now wanting to share that with others.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (02:31.326)

Yeah, I love it. I love I think that I you and I connected on LinkedIn first. And I think it was like you had a line in there. It was something to the effect of like corporate is not set up for mothers or something like that. And I was like immediately like antennas swiveled like I would like to hear what this lady has to say. And I would like to know this person and all of that. And then through the links there.

It was, I saw your sub stack and I'm like, rule breaker sub stack, like all of these things. And then you hosted an event talking about motherhood and work and balance, but not balance. We need a different word, balance is the worst. It is, there's no such thing. It's like, I liken it to like plate spinning.

Jess Weisz (03:14.596)

I hate that word. It's, yeah. No.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (03:23.446)

Right? Like you're just like trying to not let all the plates smash on the floor. Like you just have to keep them all spinning at the same time. But there's no way to balance that. It's just like one fire to the next.

Jess Weisz (03:32.72)

Yeah, it's just doing it's I call it life thing, right? Like, like, we're just life thing and I think there's like a Yeah, I think this notion of balance sets you up for a very frustrated existence.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (03:47.702)

Yeah, I also feel like the notion of balance is the thing that keeps us feeling like we haven't done enough already. It's like people are saying, oh, if I could just have more time for this and less time for this, but whatever it is that you're trying to do more of or less of, there's always a solution for you to buy or buy into that's gonna get you that piece.

Jess Weisz (03:56.786)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (04:15.114)

And it's this idea of like, we're just trying to find, we're being sold a problem and we buy that no problem, only to be promoted a solution, which isn't really a solution because it's messy.

Jess Weisz (04:34.164)

Agreed. I think so how I've kind of come to understand it, particularly within women and gender equality and what have you. I think what we grew up in was this notion, the lean in manifesto, right? So that is the corporate feminist manifesto that if you sit at the table, if you make your partner a true partner and you don't leave before you leave, you can get there. And everyone around us is gunning for us to become senior executives. Essentially it's like the whole world is rooting for that, right? Studies are coming out, initiatives, mentorship programs, you name it, right? And what it did was it put the onus on the individual to push to get there. And what happened, and so that was the problem, right? We were told that we were the problem, right? You weren't confident enough, you didn't have a good enough personal brand.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (05:11.97)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (05:36.772)

And so we tried, right? Like we, we really, we put our, we buy more, go to this next event, sign up for this course.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (05:40.234)

More. Try more.

Jess Weisz (06:07.624)

Like we really pushed ourselves. And what I have found personally was that it didn't matter because at the end of the day, my children need daily watering, right? There is no, there is no shortcut or silver bullet to caregiving, let alone finding a motor chrome of time for self-care. And so it really actually isn't my fault. I actually, you know, have great confidence and I believe that there are just as many women as men who struggle with, let's call it confidence, or asking what they want and striving for the C-suite. The challenge is systemic.

It's not my problem. It's the fact that we procreate, right? Like the whole existence of this is, you know, humanity exists on procreating and making new humans. And guess what? You can't outsource that completely or the whole world can't outsource that completely. Senior executives certainly can with night nurses and nannies, but the majority of the population actually, as I go back to what I just said, need to daily, you know, need to give their children daily watering, right?

Dr. Ashley Blackington (06:41.197)

Right.

Jess Weisz (07:06.292)

It is every day they need to be put to bed. Every day they need the books. Every day they need the bath. And then they need help with homework. And so while we encouraged women into more lofty goals and professional goals, we didn't then address the other side of life, which was the complete set of unpaid caregiving that they were doing at the, you know, prior. And we sort of assume that was magic bullets, like, you know, here's a solution to your problem. Here's a new agenda, a new way to make yourself more efficient, freeze your meals, la las, but it doesn't work like that. And we don't value that part of the world. And so it just kind of got swept under the rug. And so I do believe that there are solutions for women and it is about recognizing the rules of the world and how society is structured and what we value and what we place importance on over others and recognizing that that's not caregiving and that's not self-care. And so you can acknowledge that. And then it's for you to look inside and say, well, how do I want to run my life? And I'll pause there because that was a long diatribe of this monster.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (08:26.475)

Yeah. You know.

Jess Weisz (08:32.326)

Amen.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (08:33.606)

I feel like, I mean, I know people can't see me, but I feel like my head is like the bobble head on the dashboard. I'm like, yes, mm-hmm. And then more yes to that. I just, yeah, like I think that is, it's so spot on because the things that, once you exchange goods or services for money, then it has value, right? It's how everything is structured. But if you are doing, unpaid caregiving, then it's, it's just part of your job description. However, you're, it's an unpaid position, a fund like a, you know, and so I think what happens so often is that that, you know, that's like, well, if it's not paid, then it's not hard enough to that to warrant being paid for, right? 

However, when you turn around, and if you are in a corporate setting where you are going back into work and this these like high level positions or striving things like that. You have to pay somebody to do the work that you're doing for free. And so like how I just the disconnect between us as P as moms doing the work and not getting paid for it versus like if I hire the woman down the street to watch my kids, I have to pay her, now all of a sudden it's added to the household budget. Now all of a sudden it's added to, you know, the conversation about salary because your salary has to pay for that person who's down the street. 

But how do we do both? Like how do we improve the caregiving options, not the caregiving, because we're all killing it out here. We're doing a really good job. How do we improve that at the same time sort of bring everybody else up to speed because it's true, like we go a million miles an hour and people say like, okay, mediocre job, lean in, run faster, but like, you know, take a shower every once in a while, that's self care. And like, be pumped about that because the water's warm, right? It's like, how does that all change and how do we move forward in a way that is less lean in and more lifing with a thumbs up?

Jess Weisz (10:46.238)

Yeah, yeah, beautiful question. So there's lots of things in there. My, if I were, I like to play the game of if I was ruler of the world, and I could like recreate the rules, it would be valuing caregiving.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (11:09.611)

I like that.

Jess Weisz (11:24.984)

So when GDP was initially defined, because let's again remind ourselves GDP is a human created construct, just like EBITDA is and the rule of don't microwave fish at the office. Right? We decide all of these rules and how our world works. There was a, so when GDP was defined, there was a suggestion, and I'm completely blank on her name, from an economist that said, hey, we should include caregiving. Right, because it is a fundamental part of how things work. Even Adam Smith had his mother cook his meals until she died.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (12:01.585)

Perfect.

Jess Weisz (12:19.748)

Like, this was like a... And yeah, that's a whole other rabbit hole. Obviously we know that wasn't included, right? That got scrapped because for various reasons. So one is value caregiving. And I bet if we placed a dollar amount or whatever we want to kind of, in some sort of future world, maybe it's not dollars, it's whatevers, it's eggshells. And we say, like, that this is then the value, I think our efforts would change, right? 

We would start seeing that people would spend more time on that because it would be of importance. What is happening right now, and just to sort of like, I'll call it just more like amplify the problem, the is that we have what's called greedy jobs. So Claudia Golden won the Nobel Prize for Economics last year in 2023. And her thesis, her insight was that, and it was that it is greedy jobs and the lack of value for caregiving that leads us into this gender equality thing. 

And what she means by greedy jobs is that there is a non-linear, so it's an exponential curve for hours worked and money made. So what that means is that the more hours you work, you earn exponentially more dollars. And so when you think about it, we think about investment who are able to jump on the flight last minute for the business deal in Japan, who are able to stay super late because the deadline is tomorrow morning, who go to the networking dinners and the breakfast and what have you. 

And what we know is back to where we started is that's impossible to do with caregiving when you have children. And so what happens is couples, they'll be on the same track and then they have children and then they make the decision.

And one person, and who does it end up usually being, it ends up being the man, makes the decision to continue with the greedy job. And then the woman takes a step back and takes the non-greedy job. So she has predictable hours where she knows she's gonna be able to do daycare pickup every day at 4.30. And that's exactly what happens when you get the wage and seniority gaps start to begin.

Um, so in my like back so in my ideal we would value caregiving everybody Everybody from ceo down would end at 4 35 And then everybody would be involved in caregiving and could you imagine if you had 20 somethings who you were related to right? My 20 something cousins were now also helping me with dinner and it was a family kind of extended family Now you actually have the village right and the 50 something aunts and uncles who could also come, right? 

And we were always actively involved in caregiving because we saw and we recognize that this isn't a sideline job for the lowest value people, i.e. women, i.e. minorities. Like if you think about who is working in our daycares, who is making the $20 an hour type wages, it's, you know, we do have a class system and it is not as well defined or a caste system. It is not as well defined as that in India, but it still exists. And I think if we put value on the work that those people were doing, that we are doing, things would look differently.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (15:37.912)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, when in because you're in Canada, right? Yeah. So I'm from like right down the road from you. I'm from Calgary originally, but I live in the States now. But yeah, like, so here we have like I live in a in a town that's a city. Small. It's the little city that could. There's like 20,000 and we're about an hour outside of Boston.

Jess Weisz (15:59.729)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (16:24.314)

And the daycare situation is heinous. So all of these things, daycare, trying to get a spot for daycare, people go on daycare waiting lists before they're pregnant. Like we're gonna try and have it, yeah. So they're like, okay, I need to do that. And then don't get in.

Jess Weisz (16:35.976)

That's bananas.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (16:52.118)

Like I've got friends that have, they patch together, leave, because we don't have paid leave because that's cool. And so they like patch together all of these different like temporary solutions. And then there's usually like a bridge of time where it's like, I hope that like, you know, my aunt so-and-so can help with this to get into daycare. But it's the same thing that happens, summer camp.

Jess Weisz (16:52.157)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (17:21.826)

So some of our summer camps, they open in January for like, July or August, and they sell out in 20 minutes. No joke. It's like, and it's $500 a week for nine to three. So if you need before and after care, because nine to three is not working hours for like a typical full-time job, it's $100 a day on top. So now you're talking about like hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and it impacts people's ability.

Jess Weisz (17:26.543)

oh yeah. Totally.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (17:51.446)

So like people are like, I just spent, you know $5,000 trying to figure out summer arrangements for my kids for eight weeks. And we're doing this and we're going here and all that. And it's just this idea of like, like you have kids and I mean, I can't even get into all that's going on right now in Arizona and all that's going on, whatever, because that's a soapbox that is concrete. Like we're so focused on getting the kids here. And then once we're here, it's like, that's your problem.

But by the way, there's no scaffolding. It's like, I feel like corporate, trying to have corporate success as a woman is like trying to reach the cookie jar on top of the fridge, but you're standing on a chair on top of a chair, hoping that you don't fall and break something while you're trying to get the cookie.

Jess Weisz (18:39.644)

Totally. And it's probably like two swivel chairs on top of each other, which is like, adds the precariousness. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing, right?

Dr. Ashley Blackington (18:43.146)

Yeah.

Jess Weisz (19:08.836)

There is no value. No, there has been. So when you talk about leave, we have placed a price, if you will, on the value that procreation, bringing the next set of workers into our economy creates and in the United States it's zero dollars, right, or some fraction of that. And in Canada it's below the poverty line or just at that low income level of 500 dollars a week of income, right, and because that's what you get for paternity leave under EI, employment insurance offered by the government. And so, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (19:31.582)

no matter what, right? Is it no matter?

Jess Weisz (19:34.34)

You can, and it depends if you take 12 months or 18 months. So you get something and that's beautiful, but again, we've placed a price, right? We've placed a price that says, this is what we think it's worth. And it's not really very much. So yeah, it is costly.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (19:56.033)

Yeah.

Jess Weisz (19:59.744)

And then it's no wonder that people choose not to work, because it's just as it costs them more to work than it costs them to stay home with the kids. What's interesting, what you kind of got me to thinking about was, why do we want women working? What's the impetus? And there's a sneaky like kind of snarky part of me that says it has nothing to do with female empowerment and like live your dream and do what you're meant to do and what have you. And it has everything to do with economic growth. So and what I mean by that is when, so there was a time when women weren't working, right? And that was fine. And there was this like social structure.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (20:43.574)

Mm.

Jess Weisz (20:57.54)

And then things started to dip, right? And from an overall economic perspective, we, it wasn't going as well as it used to be. And we always need to keep up with this economic growth number. And so I have this feeling that people were sitting in an office, men were sitting in offices, like, well, what about if women worked? That would increase our labor participation rate and increase our productivity and output.

So, hey, let's get them going. And so then there was this whole thing. And then we kind of clamored in on like, oh yeah, it would be great if women worked. And then, hey, let's also disguise it in this raw, raw girl power shit and pretend like it was their own idea. Now, I do think that there was a lot of, like I said, it's a snarky view because I do think I love working. I am a horrible stay at home parent.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (21:27.5)

Yeah.

Jess Weisz (21:59.512)

I'm a better parent when I work and so I do believe that it is it is the fuel but and I think that the point of this like kind of rabbit hole was that women working benefits the man, if you will, right? It benefits the overall economy and the overall structure of what's happening. What we're trying to do is in each of our countries. And again, because of the lack of value on childcare and self-care, women get hosed basically.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (22:42.446)

Totally host. And I think too, like this is something that's not, I think sometimes it's like the way that it gets talked about, especially nowadays is like, we've all just discovered that like there's the raw end of the deal. It's like, there's some sort of like enlightenment that's happened between, I don't know, like 1995 and 2020 where people were like, I guess, wait a minute, like this isn't great. Like as programs, like, as like our generation, like my generation, my grandparents were like heavily involved in and there was still that like community piece and like their kids, they're like my grandparents as kids, like they were raised by like a group of the family, right? And so like that was that community piece.

Jess Weisz (23:28.721)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (23:38.698)

But now it's like, like in the last however long 20 years or 25 years, the reckoning of you can have it all, you can do it all, you can be it all, you actually physically have to do it all. But I also wonder about, this is not a 25-year-old problem. When people way back in the day were working in fields and they were living off the land and someone was tending the fire at home and someone was plowing the fields and all that stuff, there was this collaborative effort, right?

you go and do this and I do this, but we're all working towards this one goal. And then as people start to move into an industrial space, it's like, you know, when you have machines that can do stuff, it's like, well, I don't need to be stronger and I don't need to be like the man to be the one to operate this. You can do this, too. So like, why don't you do this? But it was at that point in time when women went to go work in factories and they went to go work in industrialized places where they were like.

Yeah, you need to go too. But that was when the program needed to start. Like that was when that at that and how long ago is that like how long ago was the Industrial Revolution where we brought people into factories because we've got to go back and work through from that point forward where the ball got dropped.

Jess Weisz (24:57.176)

Yeah, so, I mean, and things were way different there then too, right? You actually had children in those factories working too, because they've got really neat fingers. So, like, they're excellent at doing the small things. They can climb into the big vats that you like dye fabric in, and then, you know, whatever. They can climb, they can crawl through tunnels if you're mining. They're fantastic at that, if you didn't know.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (25:05.59)

Yeah, that's a little suspect.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (25:16.332)

Oh, can you imagine?

Jess Weisz (25:26.204)

So that's a whole other thing. How I think about it is, and I want to kind of, it's always, there's like the next post brewing in my brain. The next post brewing in my brain is why it feels so hard to be a professional and a caregiver in 2024, and call it like five macroeconomic charts.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (25:42.795)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (25:56.596)

And there are a bunch of things that have kind of co- I think you're onto something that there's a bunch of things that have coalesced to make what is happening right now even sort of more acute. So one is versus 20, 30 years ago, jobs are greedier, right? Blackberry to cell phone, right? Laptops, now it's everywhere, it's on your watch.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (26:14.786)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (26:25.256)

The evolution there has been pretty quick to say, you can work anytime, anywhere. Travel has gotten cheaper, right? So again, we're traveling more. Now COVID was an interesting shift there, but still you're working from home, but now you can be working all the time, right? There's no, oh, I'm not in the office. So jobs have gotten greedier. Two is the amount of time that parents spend caregiving has increased.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (26:56.466)

Mm-hmm. I love that statistic.

Jess Weisz (27:00.013)

So whether it's because of our sort of like new, what's in vogue, the like patient parenting and really engaged, we gotta help you with your homework, but also we have had children later in life. So that is another statistic. And what happens then? Well, guess what? Your parents are old, right? They're...

Dr. Ashley Blackington (27:10.818)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (27:26.932)

And I'll speak for myself, I had my youngest when I was 40, my parents are in their mid 70s. They don't have the same nimbleness as a 60, late 50s grandparent. And so they can't get down and take care of them all day and get down on the floor and do the diapers and all of that jazz. And then we're also moving away from our families.

We've also further devalued caregiving in the call it and like really isolated ourselves into these very nuclear families. So you don't have the village that you require. And so when you kind of mash all of these things together, it's a perfect storm for parents today. That it just feels super, super heavy. And I would believe heavier than it did perhaps when, the initial creators of the Lean In movement might have been scaling the corporate ladder.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (28:28.174)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think too the part that I think the connection that a lot of times doesn't get made is that because we live in such a mobile society, that's great. Right, like we can travel, we can go places, the internet makes the world like feel like a neighborhood and not like a planet and all of that stuff is great. However, the way in which families, the way in which caregiving functions optimally is exactly opposite to the global mobility and the like the super, it's not inauthentic, but the super like shallow connectedness of the world. 

So like we get on the computer and we look at, ways to ideas for what we can do with our kids' playroom or this activities and stuff like that. And that's great. However, how are you gonna do that? If you are, you're in California, your parents are in like, I don't know, Connecticut, and then you've got siblings over here and it seems like, oh, it's just a quick plane ride, but there's a big difference between a quick plane ride and like parents living down the street or in the next town or something like that. And that's like, we get farther, but we need to be closer, but the world doesn't work that way anymore.

Jess Weisz (29:56.42)

And that's exactly it. I think that's the other macroeconomic chart that is needed in this, which is we live further apart from our village. And so then there's also this trust, implicit trust in society. And you'll also hear parenting experts talk about the fact that kids don't walk home alone anymore. Or play outside on the street anymore because there's this fear, right? And that's a, you know, even bigger thing outside of just where your immediate kin live, and more on overall trust within society. 

So you don't have the stranger that is keeping an eye, that sees a kid doing something and you feel comfortable that they can go and go into their house for a band-aid if they fall right, off their bike in front of their house. All of that stuff further, so your parents and siblings living a plane ride away, which makes it a vacation or a trip, not a day-to-day sort of lifing. And then the insularness of our families make it so that, again, you're just like compounding the burden on the parents and on the family.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (30:51.662)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (31:21.496)

people that are meant and then on us that who had this grew up with this idea that yeah, I can be anything and I should be CEO.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (31:30.186)

Right, right. Like there's not only one column. Yeah. I think too, like that's the other part is like, why is the message always like, if you want to do something, you have to, you have to be the number one. You know, like why, why does that, how, how come that is still playing into it? Like we can't, who is it? I'm pretty sure it was my grandmother because she was hilarious, but she was like, we can't all go to the moon, honey.

Jess Weisz (31:33.18)

Good luck. Yeah!

Dr. Ashley Blackington (32:00.046)

And I'm like, no, that tracks like, you know, it's like we, not everybody, there's a first chair in the orchestra. There's not like a 100th chair in the orchestra. Why are we all fighting?

Jess Weisz (32:12.654)

because we're taught that from our earliest days. And I have like perfect example. My dad, he doesn't, you know, bless him. He didn't give this as a, he didn't really know what, it was on sale at the grocery store. So he bought this gift for my daughter, is a coloring book. And it is full of these what are seemingly pro-feminist messages of like, she kept persisting and she then succeeded, or you can be anything you want in the world. And exactly those. And she's literally five coloring this shit in and she doesn't understand. 

But like, let's be clear, I tell her all the time, there will always be someone better than you. She's like, oh, but there will always be someone with better, more than you. And maybe I'm a jerk for squashing my five-year-old's dreams, you know, we booster up in other ways, but your grandmother was exactly right. We have this, we were fed this belief of exceptionalism and that unless you are exceptional, you are not worthy. And as you exactly say, we cannot all be exceptional. And it is very hard to unwind.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (33:06.39)

Hehehehehehe

Jess Weisz (33:33.668)

That belief that you will not be exceptional um it and uh, and then It is very hard to hold that belief constant because the minute you go Outside of your own mind you get bombarded with these messages and my like shorthand for this is go and look at the magazine rec in any Uh bookstore

pharmacy. I don't know where they sell magazines in the US. Did they sell them in pharmacies? I'm like this is gonna sound so Canadian that they sell them in pharmacies. That's where you buy magazines. Stoppers Drug Mart.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (34:04.354)

Yeah, like convenience stores kind of thing. Yeah. Yes, yes. Oh my god, I missed that.

Jess Weisz (34:20.811)

And you look at the magazine covers, there is nothing but exceptional.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (34:25.612)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (34:28.104)

Why would you strive then for anything else?

Dr. Ashley Blackington (34:28.586)

And right. And then we and then we internalize that. And like, it's like this, like we have this like, need to be the best at something. So it starts with we need to be good in school or in sports or whatever, like that thing, like that thing that you're good at or that thing that you like to do. And then when you start working, it's like, well, I guess I'm just going to be the CEO. And then you have children and you're like, okay, well, I don't know if that's the thing I want anymore, I don't want. Now I'm going to take that energy and that expectation and I'm going to drive it into parenting. And then, you know, it's just like, how about like, how about we have these like feminist coloring books that say, like, I'm friggin tired, you know, like, like that's and I feel like that's the like that maybe the next wave of feminism is like, I am a human and I'm trying to human in a world that like is expecting me to be exceptional all the time. Like, I just want a hot cup of coffee and five minutes of silence.

Jess Weisz (35:31.508)

Totally, totally. And I would say, how about you're worthy of love? You're worthy of love because you are you. I think that is the fundamental message that has gotten lost. We're not worthy of, what we're told is we're not worthy of love unless you are exceptional. And the reality is we are all worthy of love because we are, because we exist. So I actually started

Dr. Ashley Blackington (35:39.022)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (36:01.176)

uh this thing i call it the roundy award and it is for people who uh live well-rounded lives they have a full career they are a caregiver and they do self-care and it is self-nominated there's no like whatever and it there's no um special um things hoops you have to jump through except the fact that you essentially reject um the this common notion of exceptionalism.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (36:10.373)

Love it. Yeah, like you have to be willing to stand there and say like, I am doing a great job. Like, yeah.

Jess Weisz (36:39.076)

Yeah, and I'll say that like, yeah, and I value these other parts of my life that aren't necessarily going to get me richer or on a magazine cover.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (36:50.136)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (36:53.802)

Yeah, I love that. I do a newsletter that I will admittedly say that I've fallen off the wagon on because that stuff is, you know?

Jess Weisz (37:04.166)

It's hard. Totally.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (37:21.246)

It's so hard, but the end line of the newsletter is you're doing a great frigging job. Put it on t-shirts, like the whole thing. And it's like, so many people email me and they're like, I have a friend, she bought a sweater for her daughter and like, you know, wear it into school or like the other one is not my circus, not my monkeys. And it's just this idea of like, let's just focus on the things that we can focus on and like be realistic and like give ourselves the credit for what we have and what we're working on. Oh my gosh.

Jess Weisz (37:36.212)

Totally, totally, totally. It's, yeah, so, yeah, I'm totally with you. Roundy awards and just reminding ourselves that we do a great fricking job.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (37:45.25)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (37:51.47)

Mm-hmm. And so how did you, so the LinkedIn, the lives that you've been hosting on there, the workshops that you've been doing, how did that come about? Because I think that those are incredible.

Jess Weisz (38:05.892)

The IWD event, International Women's Day event, came from me being like, I hate International Women's Day because it's turned into this corporate, it's been co-opted by corporate where it's like, yeah, let's celebrate exceptionalism. And the roots of IWD are actually revolt and anger and progress and strikes and protests.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (38:27.543)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (38:33.116)

And I said, well, listen, I will pump up women 364 days of the year. I want to take this one day and still focus on what is next and what do we need to continue to evolve. And to me, the what is next among many things, because there are, I'll call it more severe women issues that are that are present in our world. Let's talk, you know autonomy and decision over reproductive rights, female genital mutilation, on and on. For me, the thing that I could impact and influence was our sense of self. And essentially all that we've been talking about, which is rejecting the fact that you need to be this ideal version of a professional and ideal version of a caregiver, and instead define your own version of what needs to be.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (39:04.462)

Tuff. Nightmare.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (39:17.217)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Weisz (39:31.64)

And what was fantastic was the reception and the enthusiasm around just having this conversation and really being seen, right? And being seen and understood and being able to put words and articulate something that we feel very viscerally in our stomachs. And so I'm doing more of them. We have another one next week on April 19th and a course launching.

I think that this is going to be the thing for the next little while is just getting women and men and people, I'll call it, together that say, hey, the current system, the way things are set up right now aren't serving me. It's going to take a while for us to reframe how we quantify GDP. So in the meantime, let's focus on what I can do as an individual. 

Dr. Ashley Blackington (40:15.647)

Yeah.

Jess Weisz (40:29.055)

And that's where I wanna come in and help folks with thinking about that.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (40:33.642)

I love that. I love the so many on so many levels. And I do think that, yeah, like I agree on the International Women's Day, like when the whole world turns pink and everyone's like sisterly love and I'm like, but no, it's like it's like on like LGBTQ awareness, like these companies that openly support anti LGBTQ in the US politically, they support anti

causes or causes against this that was not English causes against this. And then and then like they turn their company logo like a rainbow for one day and they're like, we stand in solidarity. It's like, well, you really don't. So thank you. No. And it's the same. It's the same notion. It's the like trying to earn a buck off of posting the right thing on the right day at the right time and all of that piece. And it's but it's not really it's not allyship. It is. It's profiting off of that.

Jess Weisz (41:31.544)

Yeah, and they call it pink washing, rainbow washing, what have you. And I completely agree. I saw someone who I know and she's an executive now at a big bank and posted this like paragraphs of why she like the company and herself stand with LGBTQ. And it was like, you just copied and pasted that.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (41:34.423)

Yes.

Jess Weisz (42:00.492)

I just, I like, oh, and you just talked about it today. Like, don't, just don't, just be a good company. Pay good wages, pay corporate taxes, you know, like have, pay, and that, there is, there's become this like, yeah, like look at the marginal tax rate for many of the wealthiest individuals. There was a really cool ProPublica thing that did on the, on folks in the States. And it's like, well, you know what?

Dr. Ashley Blackington (42:06.241)

Okay.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (42:12.202)

Yeah, pay your taxes.

Jess Weisz (42:28.964)

I don't care about any of your initiatives or whatever. If you just did that, that's, we'd be fine. That's what society was set up for, right? Like

Dr. Ashley Blackington (42:39.638)

Yeah, I believe the estimate for caregiving, if there was a value on caregiving and the contribution to the economy, I believe it's $11 trillion. And it's this idea of how many of these large corporations don't pay taxes. However, if they did pay taxes, where could that money go? We also have a space force. Can we just talk about that? What is that? How does that all happen? Why are we doing this?

Why are we sending satellites out to go take pictures of something like 80 billion years away or whatever, and we can't feed children, and we are in a first world country, or a non-developing nation. Why are there children on this planet that don't have access to clean water?

Jess Weisz (43:35.999)

Yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (43:36.83)

All of it, it just, it's like, that's the mushroom cloud of what the hell of everything that's going on in Gaza when you talk about like safe and equitable access to reproductive health care and all big soapbox big it's not a soapbox it's a stage.

Jess Weisz (43:45.524)

No, I mean, it is well and I always go and I was like, I'm like, and then there's Yemen, right? Like how many years do you have to have civil strife and how many hundreds of thousands of people to need to die, but yet we never talk about it, right?

Dr. Ashley Blackington (43:52.854)

Yeah, right.

Jess Weisz (44:14.216)

The, there's a great synopsis of all of that, that I read in a book called The Night: feminism for the 99%. It was a short book, a manifesto. And the one thing I took away from it was we value profit-making over people-making.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (44:17.186)

Mmm.

Jess Weisz (44:30.896)

Right? And everything you just said, access to clean water, access to basic nutrition, those are all fundamentals of people making. But we don't place a value on that. But what we do value is getting to space.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (44:40.395)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (44:49.706)

Yeah, space is cool. It's so cool. We just, we put people that don't pay taxes, build rockets and send stuff off into space that we pay taxes to put in the rockets to send off into space. So we can take pictures of space.

Jess Weisz (45:02.909)

Yeah. And maybe at some point live on Mars because we fucked this planet up. Sorry. I'm not sure if I can, I can swear you can bleep me. Um, cause we fucked this planet up so much. Yeah. No, it's it, um, it is infuriating when you are. Um, aware of what is happening on a more micro day to day life thing level of the world.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (45:10.062)

Yeah. Mm hmm. When so my I have a nine year old who's very like, loves animals and like, saving animals and the idea of like, getting involved in that piece, like he's very much like, why do things go extinct? What is extinct? Like, oh, you know, this has been years, years in the making, right? So he watches the movie WALL-E years ago. And he's like, could this happen on our planet?

And I'm like, I mean, yeah, like, let's like fundamentally break down Wally. And so we watched it not that long ago again, because my two younger kids hadn't seen it. And he was just like sitting there the whole time, like shaking his head. He's like. Like, we got to recycle. I'm like, OK, you're nine. Like, you understand the concept of like, if I can do my own thing in my own house.

And like they can do their own thing. And then the neighbor down the street and all this stuff, like, why can't, he's like, why can't people just take care of like each other? And why can't we just help animals? Like, cause taking care of each other doesn't make money.

Jess Weisz (46:43.844)

Yeah, yeah. And because it's not, there's this, there's a independent, right? There is a, I did it my way. And no, you know, we, we all feed in to the American idealism of the American dream, right? That's become the thing. And the American dream is only possible when you did it, right? I did it myself.

And then you get into the exceptionalism. It's the independent individual that is exceptional, and they did it. And so those two concepts cannot coexist. I need to be thoughtful of what am I doing today and how is that impacting not only my neighbors, but my future generations of neighbors does not coexist with how am I rising myself up to be above the fold, rise above everyone else. So it is fundamentally baked into our culture and way of thinking. It's really sad. Yeah. And now you have the younger generations who are not having kids who are totally deciding I'm out with this idea.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (48:01.302)

Yeah, I know. And it's just, yeah, it's like how much, there's everything, there's so much tension in every direction. It's like, how do we make it, how does everyone just sort of like rely, it's like having too many people on the trampoline. Like, how do we make the trampoline stronger so that people feel like they can bounce on it? Or how do we figure out like, what needs to be taken off the trampoline? Because you can't put a car on a trampoline and still bounce it.

Jess Weisz (48:28.176)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (48:28.462)

So like, how do we make it make sense? And so the big question in all of this, well, it's not really the big question, but the person question, the life in question in all of this is so, like you have this experience in this background in the corporate world and in making these different choices and in getting involved in these activities and getting involved in trying to like bring the action. Like, how do you take care of you in all of that?

Jess Weisz (49:00.564)

Mm. Yeah.

Jess Weisz (49:06.624)

I, two things. One is, well, maybe more than two, but let's, I'll start the list. I'm a, my first entry into working world at 23 was a McKinsey consultant, so I have to do things in lists. One is I educate myself on what's going on, right? So being able to know all of this stuff, to me, like you see the matrix, right? And now I understand it. And so I don't, before understanding this, I've just felt angry, like just frustrated and like, wow, right? And exhausted and burnt out and you continue this cycle. Understanding this stuff grounds me. Two is I actually physically removed myself. So I was born in Toronto and then lived downtown.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (49:44.268)

Yes.

Jess Weisz (50:05.852)

uh had our first child downtown and was in that like we didn't have a car like we were Corporate, uh, the equivalent of wall street is bay street in Canada, uh worked on bay street. Um Uh that kind of life I physically removed myself and I now live in similarly a small it's called the town so the unesco or whatever they came up with like a new like, way to categorize and you have to be in order to be a city you have to be above a certain amount of people and there aren't that many this city was downgraded to a town there were 150 000 people but um so physically removing myself has been a game changer um uh so you don't have those um reminders and that feeling of what it feels you know there's a vibe to be in a city um

And then three is it's a daily practice of, I'll call it of gratitude and of awareness. So every night, whether it's written down or I think about it depending on my energy, I'm thoughtful of what filled my cup that day. And when you do that long enough, you realize that to me it was the like.

Sweetie pie kiss that I got from my daughter or the other one, you know Or like the funny thing that they said or the great meal I cooked or the really awesome LinkedIn post that I put out And it can be or the fact that I took a bath that I found time to take a bath after the girls went to sleep and so You get I get to do an inventory and see okay. Is it well-rounded right? Was there something from family and self-care that filled my cup? And was there something of work? Because if there's not enough work stuff, then I go bananas just the same. And it's an awareness that two thirds of the things on that list won't make me more money. And they are important to me.

Yeah, it's a daily kind of... And then it's baked into my family. Like my partner and I talk about it Friday nights. We write in a gratitude journal and what are we grateful for of the week? And we do that. We've been doing that for four years now. So since my daughter was young and you know, we... So it's, yeah, it's baked into our day to day.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (52:52.878)

Mm hmm. I like the concept of like taking like a personal inventory. I always feel like when it comes to like, I think that the gratitude and gratefulness are two different things, which I think is kind of maybe not a topic that people talk about as much as like I feel like gratefulness has this notion of like something was given to me. Like it's transactional versus gratitude as the thing that I was an active participant in. You are an active participant in the relationship with your child and therefore your bucket is filled by their affection. Grateful would be like you give them something, therefore they give you something. It's a transaction. Whereas gratitude is you were actively participating in building that relationship and creating the foundation that led to that not being a transaction. It's just part of your relationship.

Jess Weisz (53:55.06)

Hmm now I like obviously need to go in like grateful versus and Yeah, so gratitude is a constant state of being anyways Grateful for and To it's okay. So anyways, we have to look into it. But yes, I agree that there is something distinct and what comes to my mind is the difference between something you've been given and you just is versus something you were active in. So I am grateful for my hair. I just happen to have thick hair, and it just looks like this. I don't have to do much with it. It just is. I just happened to be born 5'8 with long legs. It just is. There's nothing I can do.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (54:28.99)

Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (54:50.522)

Oh, never. You've never, you've never hemmed a pair of pants in your life.

Jess Weisz (54:54.508)

No, I like I'm the opposite right like these don't these don't fit me But it you know and the reason why i'm grateful for that is because somebody else outside of me decided that this is

Dr. Ashley Blackington (55:14.746)

Exactly.

Jess Weisz (55:24.785)

What is you know the best this is ideal? This is you know the worthy of the praise but the gratitude is something that you know, you put effort into and I love that because um, Uh, it is it is effort to have a life that you are happy with at the end of the day and don't feel burnt out with or struggling or in strife.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (55:32.61)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (55:39.03)

Yeah, and I think too, like the balance between the difference between gratitude and gratefulness is when you have this grateful piece, you know, like the hashtag grateful, hashtag blessed, whatever kind of stuff that you read and you see, it's like this idea that if you don't keep trying to be exceptional, if you don't keep pouring out, if you don't keep the engine running so fast, that you aren't doing enough to warrant all of those things that are coming into your life. 

Whereas looking at it from a gratitude lens is I am showing up as my whole authentic self in the areas of my life that I really want to make an impact. I want to make an impact in my career for myself. I want to make an impact in my family. I want to make an impact in my relationships. I want to make an impact in all of these places. And it is a reciprocal relationship versus a I do this, therefore I get this.

Jess Weisz (56:32.912)

Oh, that is beautiful, beautiful. And I might, I now need to think about it and probably like, yeah, that has spawned me some thinking and maybe a future post too.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (56:34.762)

Hahaha

Dr. Ashley Blackington (56:50.778)

Oh, I can't wait. I just love, I just, yeah. Cause I think that we're all trying, I honestly feel like in all of the different ways that we're doing this, whether it's corporate, whether it's motherhood, whether it's like authentic social media, whether it's all of these pieces that there's so many of us out there that are trying to get to the same place. And we just all have a different perspective and a different history that we're bringing to the table when we do that.

But that we all want that, like we all want to feel like what you do is enough. You are worthy of the things that you have in your life. You are you and you are amazing because you are you, not because you are whatever. And that when we get to that place where we can all sort of like put the shield down, then that eliminates the elements of like cattiness and like one seat at the table and all of those things because we all realize that we have this inherent value that we bring with us and that we do not require things to be given to us in order to be of value or have value.

Jess Weisz (57:57.584)

Yes, yes, yeah, which Which we are trained at from a very early age, right if you do this you get a treat If you sit still we'll go to the store for a present like right. Um Yeah, love it love it

Dr. Ashley Blackington (57:58.936)

Yes. Oh, I love it. Well, so let everybody know where they can find you, your sub stack, and read all of your incredible work and your next event and your course and all that. Where can everyone find you?

Jess Weisz (58:31.172)

Yeah, so you can find me at rule breaker.substack.com and then otherwise I would say find me on linkedin Everything is in my profile. Um, that is the best place jessica weiss and you can put that in the show notes, I have the jessica weiss. So if you search for me or it's linkedin.com.com. It's forward slash I am Jessica Weiss. That is, uh, follow me there and, um, you will see all the things.

Dr. Ashley Blackington (59:14.678)

I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah.

Jess Weisz (59:17.604)

Oh, thank you. This is a dream.