The thermostat went up around here.  I feel the heat.  The back of my neck sweats, but my smile is thicker than the air.  The Wall Street Journal highlighted me as a FIT MOM.  As an active, athletic woman, I run around in my workout gear and manage a household while balancing a busy schedule of children.  Yeah me.

However, it became very obvious when the WSJ comments rolled in regarding global opinions on the Fit Mom, that not everyone likes her.  She is some how very wealthily, she is obsessive, she spends on trendy gear and has nannies and house keepers.  I slowly began to laugh…..loudly.

People will always hate you for what you do- especially if you are good at what you do.  They want to know that there is some fault to your tick that makes your tock worth a knock.  I find that the female/mother/success “hit” is especially heated.  After all, we haven’t even been allowed to vote for all that long.  However, women scratch the glass ceiling as much as we polish it.  We are our own enemy.  We are our own ally.  Don’t even get me started on body image and plastic surgery.  The comments already began that trend, but failed to noticed healthy, balanced real women raising healthy balanced real children.

I am an educated woman holding an advanced degree in nursing.  I specialized in Women’s Health at Yale University.  I worked in New York City full time and there I gave birth to my first child.  I lived in a 400 square foot apartment shared with my husband.  I ran and have run every day that I have been able since I was born.  I have had every injury you can name.  I have run through pregnancy and listened to the criticism there.  I have run with a stroller.  I have run with a stroller in the rain and in the snow.  I have run while singing Old McDonald and passing out Cheerios.  I have left my child with a baby sitter while I went back to full time work.  I have made a choice, an educated choice to be there for my children.  In everything I do, I do it to 100% and I am far from perfect.  I am human.  But doing human things- like working, running, living, birthing, mothering, cooking, tasting, and loving is a lot better than watching human things like television.  I do not watch any television.  How many hours a day do you waste watching television?

Don’t hate me because I wake up at 4:45am and run 10 miles before my family even wakes up.  There are reasons women seem to not be able to have it all.…

Some perceive women to never be smart enough, thin enough, engaging enough, mothering enough, mothering too much, shopping too much, not shopping enough, obsessed over cooking, not cooking, not caring, over caring, over analyzing, over pursuing, under achieving, over achieving, type A, type B, if you’re type O you better have donated blood, single enough, married enough, married too much, lifted, tucked, plucked, sucked, and if not, fat, drab and had.  We are a judged species.  To that I say, you will never please everyone.  You will rarely please anyone.  But, if by luck and gut you are true to yourself- you will live a happy life.  And isn’t that the point?  The pursuit of happiness?

I have spent nights on a hospital floor attending to the sick.  I was a first responder to 9/11.  I worked as a nurse in our prison system.  I birthed a kid in NYC and then had to walk home from the hospital.  Nothing has ever been the same in my life since that day.  Everyone can be what they want to be- you just have to want it and 9 times out of 10 work damn hard for it.  I teach my children that.  I teach my clients that.

The conversation continues today.  Here’s what Elizabeth had to say on The Juggle.

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