Booker T. Washington once said, “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” Hard work had always been a verb in the home I grew up in, not just a phrase but an action in which we all were accustomed to. From an early age I knew that I had to work hard for what I wanted, whether that was a good grade or a career, life without work wasn’t worth having.
My father was the hardest working person I have ever met. I watched as he worked his way up the ranks as a maintenance mechanic, eventually managing subordinates as an assistant to the director of maintenance at Columbia College. He spent his weekends dragging along my sister and I to his many loyal side job customers at local restaurants and family homes around the Chicagoland area. Despite his busy schedule, I never felt as if I was missing any time with my father. Here he was, this incredible figure that worked full time, had a side hustle and was the lead singer of a legendary punk rock group that shed light on the devastation of the steel industry and gave a face to the thousands of workers that were left to rebuild through the ashes. He is the epitome of what I seen as successful, a family man with a rockstar soul. Everything I know myself to be has been built off of his personal view of the world. After his first slip and fall accident in 2005, I watched him suffer the loss of his dream job at the Illinois Institute of Technology because he suffered a freak accident during his 3 month hiring probation. With no steady paycheck and a neck brace required for healing, he pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket and said to me, “no matter what happens to your dad, I’ll never go without.” That is a memory that has been embedded in my brain ever since and will always be one of my favorite moments with my dad.
My mother, in her own right, has the most unfiltered brawn I’ve ever seen in a woman. Regardless of any comfort my father may have provided for the home she ALWAYS held a full time job of her own, at one point making more than my dad did as a liquor store clerk. Since my sister and I were little she would instruct us to never rely on a man to take care of us, that having your own money and your own identity was key to living prosperously. She married a great man that worshiped the floor she walked on and she’s still telling her 6 year old daughter the importance of having her own. I’ve always respected the space that my mother held in the home, never afraid to get her hands dirty and always willing to put up a fight for what she believed in. She always believed in my father but she relentlessly believed in herself and knew the foundation that she laid to make sure everything worked smoothly in our home. Lets just say that if my father would have ever made the mistake of putting his hands on my mom (which he never would dare), 1000% my money would be on my mother.
Growing up in a home that was built off hard work and brawn left me neurotic. I love my parents but I had grown this unrecognized fear of failure. My persistence to win had no room for loss, I excelled in my studies, in piano, in sports & at home. I made sure to be the perfect example of what they expected. By the age of 14 I had knabbed my first paying job, helping to serve food at a local banquet hall where my dad was their handy man. Before I was 16, I walked up and down 106th street applying to local businesses to get my first interview at Jewel/Osco a mere days after my 16th birthday. Even after I went rogue and became “bad,” I always held a job. I was living from place to place, still taking the bus from Lansing to South Chicago to maintain my work status. Work was all that mattered. When I got pregnant with my oldest son, a big part of who I was in my parents eyes was dead but somehow, I believed that a hard working mentality could get me back on track and far away from any statistic that loomed over my head as a new single mom.
So I worked. I worked persistently and without waiver. As my dad always said, one job got me another. I went from a bagger to telemarketer, a Claire’s shift lead to a data entry clerk, a cashier to an assistant manager, a bank teller to an office assistant, eventually leading me to an entry level legal assistant position to a single practice lawyer that lead me to be a third shift coordinator in document services for the biggest law firm in the world. My lowest of lows led me to jobs others would be ashamed of, a seasonal worker at Party City selling costumes for Halloween and even a liquor store clerk in one of the hardest neighborhoods in Gary, Indiana. When I tell you that I am relentless, there is nothing or nobody that can stop me from making a living and taking care of mine. The goal has always been to climb the corporate ladder and become the ultimate boss at any cost. Throughout those years, I paid a heavy price at the hands of my home.
I wish I could say that becoming a mother made me more attentive but it created more of a beast. As any other parent would say, I did it for him. Yet selfishly, deep down, I did it for me. Imagine living your entire childhood afraid of failure, just to get pregnant at 18. The pressure was on and I had every intent to show the world that I was not meant to be placed in the same category of so many other teen moms from my neighborhood. If I could just find a way to work harder than everyone else, surely good things would happen.
Fortunately, it did happen but it did not happen in the way I originally thought. Sometimes we have to thank God for not only the things He’s done but for all the things He didn’t do. For instance, back in 2008 after losing my sons father to gun violence, I decided to leave my job as a data entry clerk to go back to school. After Chicago State University lost my transcripts, I was left without a job and rent to pay. I got a recommendation to work at the same liquor store my mom did growing up. I was interviewed for a basic full time cashier position that started me out at $7.25 an hour. As horrifyingly scary as that time of my life was, it set me up for life. That man that I interviewed with ended up being my husband and 14 years later, we’re still together. After having our first son together, I went back to work unknowingly into an abyss of unresolved cases and no money. Literally, none. I started working without worry, unbeknownst to me that I wouldn’t be able to get paid for weeks. I was so loyal to my lawyer, I didn’t ask for anything. I spent 6 weeks unpaid and still showing up daily. After I asked for a “bone” to get me back and forth to work and my boss ignored the request. As a way of being rebellious, I applied for a Legal Assistant Trainee position at the biggest law firm in the world, which gave me 6 weeks of training prior to jumping into the field. They called me in 2 hours, I had hit the jackpot. That move, led me to the role I have now. This space was not expected but has been the biggest career move of my life. All because my boss didn’t pay me $100 that would have kept me in his office for God knows how long.
Shedding light is so nice to do on the winning moments of our lives but my life has been drastically changed by heartache. I lived my early years working endlessly to meet a goal that I didn’t realize was unachievable. The more success I got, the higher the stakes. You get more money and now the money flows faster, to a point where you are chasing the dollar that you thought you caught. We all have this idea that once you hit a certain tax bracket, all of your money problems will be erased. That once you get a certain title, things will be smooth sailing. Sure, I am able to do things I’ve never been able to, travel the world and rock the dopest gear, yet somewhere in between all the chaos I felt a pull for change. Like a car, as we run our course wear and tear needs maintenance. You keep driving without oil changes & tire rotations, you’re going to break down.
Here I was, working on the executive floor in the headquarters of the biggest law firm by revenue in the world. I was assisting 8 corporate attorneys & backing up 2 other assistants with an additional 15 attorneys should my coworkers take a day off. Due to the hierarchy of the floor I sat on, I was passing halls with some of the most prestigious attorneys in the world. Walking into offices that had signed ‘Make America Great Again’ hats & personalized photos with the Dalai Lama & Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Men and women who had so many accolades, between their educational accomplishments and hefty million dollar a year salaries, a lot of them looked miserable. Barely spending times with their families and billing 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. As I watched these people grind to meet their goals I noticed how my original views on success changed. To the naked eye their lives seemed desirable, yet under the surface as I am running their daily errands or picking up an anniversary gift for their wives, you realize how important it is to hold onto what gives you peace. I was overworked, stressed beyond belief and desperately wanted out of this machine I worked so hard to be apart of. Starting my day at 6 am, out the house at 7:50, hour train to downtown, 2 mile walk to the office, work 9 to 5, 2 mile walk back to the station, 1 hour train ride home (if I was lucky there were no delays), and drive from the station back home. If I was lucky enough I’d make it home by 6:30pm, just in time for my baby’s bath time in prep for sleep. Out of a 24 hour day, I’d have 2 solid hours with my restless baby. Should I want a workout in, the minutes dwindled down even more. My life was dedicated to high paid, incredibly successful workaholics as my family waited patiently for quality time.
One day, my boss had a meeting for all legal secretaries and announced that the document services department were looking for after-hours operators to help with overnight document requests. The job would be Tuesday thru Saturday from 12 am to 7 am in the morning. Since it was a special shift there was incentive with not having to take a lunch and technically only working 35 hours to meet full time requirements. I thought about how my life had been fully immersed in corporate life and saw a way out without leaving this company I loved. It was time to sacrifice the life I’ve always wanted for the life I truly needed and after months of debate, prayer and discussion I decided to take that leap.
Leap I did into a life nobody quite understands. I literally went to the “dark side” working graveyard shifts in an office setting, a job people question on a daily. I went from working smack dab in the middle of the highest executives to working in jeans along side a group of amazing women who were sacrificing their sleep for extra time with their families. As unappealing as that may seem to others, it provided a space for me to see life in a different light, making great money while also having a life of my own. Sure it wasn’t glamourous but finally I was given a chance to make right the years of overworking and self loathing I felt making boss moves over spending time with my children. That is the worst sacrifice working moms deal with, the guilt of working hard at the price of broken memories with their families. I never reduced the special job requirements of stay-at-home moms because I have always chosen to work but that guilt is gut wrenching. No longer were the days of overworking to find a way to the means, it was time to sleep while my kids were at school and make dinner by 4:30, a simple but incredibly powerful luxury I wasn’t offered until now. Working in the office 5 days a week at night was still so much more time easing than any job I had prior to this moment.
Then came the pandemic. March 15, 2020 the world started shutting down as work-from-home programming built itself up. My company started sending home equipment for our team to operate from our home turf and an entire generation of free thinkers began. While Covid-19 was extremely difficult in so many ways it gave millions of workers the opportunity to find balance at home and at work. Productivity was up and so was individual value. It was the workers chance to find their space out of the office and in the comfort of their own homes. The taste of freedom within my own walls gave me power to see success in other ways. I sacrificed my Saturday nights to work 4 days instead of 5, a schedule that proved my loyalty to become the coordinator I am now, working Monday through Thursday and enjoying my weekends in leisure. Thankfully due to my shift I have been working from home ever since.
As my interest in corporate climbing dwindled, a single moment changed my ideals for good. The hardest worker in the world fell. It’s been a year and a half since dad’s accident and the hardest pill to swallow is knowing he never had a chance to relax. He worked from the time he was 8 years old, shining the shoes of the hard working men ending their shifts at Wisconsin Steel and ending his career at Columbia College as second in command for their Maintenance Department at a mere 56 years old. His dreams of retiring in his birthplace of Jamay, Jalisco were done in a matter of seconds. The hardest working man I’ve ever met in my life, was down. Now it became my chance to work for him.
While it may not be the storybook ending he hoped for, this isn’t a story of good and bad. This is a story of reflection, how a daughter rose up to see that success is not based off awards or accolades but of happiness and peace. The sacrifices that a young father made 36 years ago for the sake of his daughters that have paved the way for me to speak on resilience now. The inspiration my father has given me did not stop the day he fell. His hard work is still prevalent in the strength he holds daily as a now quadriplegic disabled man. He still speaks on the importance of work and constantly praises my ethics, a trait that descended directly from him. Although his body may not be what it was, his wisdom stays active within all of us. THAT is my new vision of success.