Our featured mother this week is Natasha Hall. I had the very great pleasure of being on Natasha’s radio show a month ago and had a blast. She is fun, warm and welcoming. Natasha loves what she does and finds her job incredibly rewarding. Read on to hear about Natasha as she discusses family, work and the challenges of being a working mum.
You can follow Natasha on twitter and IG on @natashaCJAD or on FB www.facebook.com/hallnatasha
Thanks so much for sharing with us Natasha.
1)How many children do you have? Name and age?
I have just one daughter, Simone. She is almost eight years old. I always thought I’d have three children but we got started late and after Simone arrived we felt like our family was complete. When I look back at how challenging (and amazing) those early days are, right after giving birth, I marvel at anyone who has more than one child, especially multiples!
2) What is your current occupation?
I am a talk show radio host in Montreal. It cracks me up that the name of my show is my name :The Natasha Hall Show. It seems surreal to me in the most wonderful way. It’s a very demanding, yet very rewarding job. I feel privileged every day that I get to talk to Montrealers about what matters to them.
3)What are the challenges of balancing work and parenting?
To be totally honest, I don’t really think that it’s possible to perfectly balance work and parenting. It’s a constant challenge and I figure that the parents who appear to have it all under control, all in order- are probably faking it :)I think we all try our best, we muddle our way through. And sometimes we come close to finding a sense of balance and feeling like we’ve got a handle on things. Most of the time, we just keep on trying, keep on trucking.
(totally agree, i think the work ,parenting balance is a myth and we are setting ourselves up to fail)
4) What is your life philosophy?
Hmmmm…. keep on trucking?!We are all a work in progress. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other to try to get where you want to be and sometimes the “where” and the “what” changes en route. We make mistakes, we mess up along the way and we’ve got to cut ourselves some slack. I often come back to something that Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
(I love this quote!!!)
5) What is a piece of advice you would give other mothers and what is one thing you wish you had know before having children?
When I was pregnant and when I first became a mom, I felt bombarded by all the advice coming at me from all directions, even from people who weren’t parents themselves. I was trying to take it all in, feeling ill equipped and overwhelmed ,then at some point I had a moment of clarity where I thought, I’ve just got to do what works for me and my baby. So now that’s the advice I’d give. Listen to your gut. you know your child, you know yourself and you’ve got to do what works for you.
I wish I had known just how challenging being a parent, having a career and trying to maintain a happy, healthy relationship would be.These days we have a much more open honest dialogue going about all of this and I think as a society, we’ve come leaps and bounds even in very recent years. The reality is that the way we’ve constructed modern life and modern parenting isn’t sustainable. The demands we put upon ourselves are unrealistic. Whether it be running to hockey games, baking cupcakes, swimming lessons. volunteering at school and so on and so on… We can’t do it all but haven’t accepted that. I think future generations will look back on us and say, “what the heck were they thinking!? They were trying to do the impossible.”
My dear Aunt Rose passed away 5 years ago told me that you always have to put your mate first. She said it’ll be counter intuitive because you will feel compelled to put your child first but the best thing you can do for your child is show her what love looks like. Give her that stability, that model. Ouf! It’s not easy. But we strive for it. She also said you’ve got to have your own life because your children will grow up and have their own lives and if your whole life was them-what does that leave you with? Again, not easy, but something to strive for.
(Your Aunt Rose was very wise and it’s so true, so important to nurture your relationship with your partner and to find things that are you own to explore)
6)What is your greatest achievement apart from your child so far?
I struggled to answer this question. There’s still so much more that I want to achieve. With my radio show, I have really tried to give a voice to the misunderstood and under represented.When a topic or a guest makes people uncomfortable or even angry that makes it clear to me that there is work to do, particularly to do with LGBTQ issues, the indigenous and tacking racism, misogyny, etc. It’s human nature to fear the unknown but if you hear someone tell their story it might change your perspective and make you more understanding of what they are living.
7) What have you done that you thought you could never do?
I was raised by a single mom who taught me that I could do anything I set my mind to, be anything I wanted to be. Now, I try to instill that in my daughter. But truth be told, I didn’t always believe that myself. I doubted that I would be able to get where I wanted to in life. For years, I had jobs that were unfulfilling, relationships that were unfulfilling and I felt lost. I’m proud that I persevered despite setbacks-again , just kept on trucking-even when I really wasn’t convinced that it would ever pay off. And then it did. I landed my dream job at CJAD 800.
8) What books do you like reading to your daughter?
I love reading your book, Three Times the Fun, with my daughter. Her reading skills are just developing, so now she reads it to me rather than the other way around. Simone gets lost in books now. She finds a quiet spot to have what she calls “lonely time,” with a good book and it makes my heart sing to watch her. She still loves Robert Munch and her favourite author in French is Elise Gravel(mine, too!)
So wonderful that Simone loves to read and have her lonely time and I am so happy that you and Simone love my book!!