Julie-Anne Lufti: Episode 218

Transcript

[0:00:26] CH: What’s up everybody, it’s Charlie Hoehn, the host of author hour where I interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is with Julie-Anne Lutfi. She is the author of Diapers, Date Nights, and Deadlines - A French Working Mom’s Guide to Success and Survival. Now, for most women, it may seem like being a home maker and climbing the corporate ladder are two mutually exclusive goals. According to Julie who is a wife, a mother and a corporate attorney. You don’t have to choose. You can achieve a successful career and a happy personal life. That’s what this episode is all about. If you’re a woman who believes it’s possible to excel at work and at home, this episode will show you how it’s done. Just a quick note, there is some adult themed content in this episode so if you’re listening in the car with your kids, you might want to hold off until you got some headphones in. Now, here is our conversation with Julie-Anne Lutfi.

[0:01:41] JAL: I really just wanted to share my experience about being a working mom who is from a very traditional background and I’m expected to stay at home and my husband is a very traditional Lebanese guy and when he married me, he knew I h ad a career but he didn’t know to which extent I would want to develop my career and he may have thought I would eventually lower my hours and have a couple of kids and cook in the evenings and clean on the weekends and maybe during the week, it just hasn’t turned out that way. We laugh all the time about people who look at us and ask us, how does this work? You guys are both super traditional but Julie’s out at work every day, she’s gone early in the morning and comes home in the evening and works all night, every night on the weekends, on vacation if I even take vacations, which frankly I don’t. People are always asking me, how the hell does it work? How are you still married after five years and how do you look like you still like each other. Just how does it work? That’s why I wanted to write the book. I wanted to share my experience and it may not suit everyone and my ideas and the way I function may not please everyone either but that’s okay. You know, somebody can just get a few ideas from the way we do it then that’s great.

[0:03:08] CH: Yeah, how the hell does it work?

[0:03:11] JAL: Well, it works with a lot of gratitude and that’s the one thing that I can’t stress enough, the only way that we really are able to preserve our marriage and to make everything work is to be in a constant mode of, “I’m grateful for you.” And to always feel like you have the better end of the stick. Even though I want to do the dishes and I want to do the laundry and I want to cook. I just can’t. Right now, I’m the one who makes more money and my husband is the one who has more time and so while he would be expected usually to, as tradition would want it, he would be expected to be the breadwinner and to bring home the money. Right now, I’m the one doing that. We’re both always grateful for the other one picking up the other’s slack and that’s really how it works.

[0:04:03] CH: What do your families think of your dynamic. I’d imagine your parents or his parents, might - it may have taken them some time to get used to how you two – your two’s lifestyle, right?

[0:04:18] JAL: It was definitely an adjustment. My mom for example, she’ll come to our house to visit the kids on vacation or doing a holiday and she lives in France so she’ll stay with us and I’ll undoubtedly be on my computer late at night and she’ll take care of the kids and my husband will be playing with them. And she’ll see my husband carrying a load of laundry downstairs and my mom will legit apologize for the way in which she raised me. She’ll say, “I’m so sorry I’m so embarrassed, you should not be doing this.” And she actually feels embarrassed that my husband is carrying a load of laundry downstairs. For her, it was an adjustment, she’s very proud of course that I became a successful lawyer but I think there’s always a part of her that was hoping I would just give that up and just turn to being a mom full time the way she did and the way my sisters do it as well. Then for my in-laws also, a huge adjustment. For example, when we told my father in law we were going to get married and there’s a whole lot more that goes into this story of course, they’re super traditional Lebanese people and when we told him we wanted to get married, my father in law gave us three conditions. The first one was that I needed to speak Arabic fluently so that I could communicate with my mother in law properly. I do -

[0:05:40] CH: That’s a big one, yeah.

[0:05:41] JAL: That’s a big one, right? We’re there, we communicate just fine. The second one was that he needed to meet my parents at the time my parents, still do, my parents were living in France and he hadn’t met them yet. They’re living in Boston and so he wanted to meet my parents so that was fine and that happened. But the third one was that my husband needed to get a higher degree or a degree on the same level. I had a JD, right? I had a Juris Doctorate but he only has a bachelor’s degree and he didn’t want me to have a higher degree than my husband because the man could not be on a lower level than his wife. What’s kind of happening right now wouldn’t happen. However, it’s happening and my father in law and my mother in law take care of my kids almost every day, they’re wonderful and they’re completely used to it and you know, as long as I hold my end of the bargain and not just focus on work completely, they’re happy.

[0:06:40] CH: Julie, tell me, who is this book really for. I take it this is for moms who don’t want to compromise being a mom or being a woman with their career, right?

[0:06:52] JAL: That’s right. It’s primarily for them and any woman who also is not a mom yet but who wants to be in the future and is perhaps doubting that it’s possible. A lot of women these days are waiting until they’re 35 or older to have babies because they want to build out their careers. You know, it’s funny how they always talk about geriatric pregnancies after the age of 35. I didn’t want to wait that long and I didn’t think I needed to and this experience at least, what I’m going through now is proving me that the way in which these times are moving is that you don’t have to wait anymore and you don’t have to sacrifice. It’s primarily for them and for the women who are in my situation to have young children also and trying to make it work. There’s ways, the number one thing that jumps off right now is to just be honest with everyone about your limits. People at work understand if you have to attend to a sick child and people at home will understand including your children if you have to do work on the weekends. It’s all about being completely open, communicating your feelings and your availability and your limits and that’s it. It’s also for dads who wonder what they can do to help the situation and I think my husband, I can’t say enough nice things about him, I would never say all of these good things to his face, he’d get too full of himself so I need to keep him on his toes. But there’s really a lot that husbands and men can do to help women be good moms and feel like they’re good moms and be successful at work too. You know there’s the saying that there’s a great woman behind every great man, well, I think there’s a great man every great woman too.

[0:08:33] CH: True that. Yeah. I got a bunch of questions for you but this really resonates with me. My wife and I, we’re talking about this the other day of how much pressure women really feel at this time in their life. It’s usually between 25 and 30, maybe 35, to basically do everything as quickly as possible, right? To establish themselves in their career and to start a family and to have secure attachments with their kid while being present with their child, while still being able to pay the bills - That is a really tall order. I’m wondering how were you able to pull this off? What does a week in your life even look like?

[0:09:25] JAL: You know, that’s actually really funny you ask because the first chapter in the book is exactly a week in my life and it walks you through every single day of a week and what that looks like and how I deal with it. It’s not easy and you know, it takes a lot of sacrifices and you can’t – a lot of people say that some women have it all or how can you have it all. I don’t think you can have it all, I think you can have certain things that you really want and everything else has to be sacrificed. What I really want right now is to be a good mom and to be a successful attorney and a good wife, obviously. That’s it. I have room for literally nothing else in my life and my friends understand and my family members understand. Sometimes I can’t go to parties and I can travel. I can’t shave my legs all the time and I can’t do anything to my hair and I haven’t done my nails in three years. You know, it’s all about priorities and just planning your life in such a way that those things that are the most important are the only things on your calendar.

[0:10:30] CH: How did you decide what was most important to you? I mean, a lot of women and frankly, a lot of people just in general have those priorities of, “I want to take care of myself, I want to spend more time with friends, I want a vacation.” How did you decide what really mattered to you?

[0:10:48] JAL: I didn’t decide, I think I’m just wired that way and I’ve had a really strict sense of obligation and responsibility ever since I was 15 or 16 years old. I moved from home to college when I had just barely turned 17 and I was on my own and my parents, they could have but they didn’t help me financially. I was working full time and I didn’t have much time for fun. I think I just grew up into this person that I am and I always have this memory of my dad saying, “You know Jules, you’ll have time for fun when you’re older. Now is the time you have to focus.” He’s right. You know, while it’s hard to work and take care of young kids. My kids never have to worry about anything. With the way things are going right now and God willing, everything continues on this track, my kids will never want for anything. To me, that’s fun, that’s worth all the traveling in the world.

[0:11:47] CH: What do you mean by that Julie? They’ll never want for anything, are you giving them everything they need or everything they want or what?

[0:11:53] JAL: They will never – I’m definitely not giving them everything they want, I mean, all they want right now is toys and breastmilk, right? For sure I give them everything they want.

[0:12:02] CH: How old are your kids?

[0:12:04] JAL: Two and a half and 10 months.

[0:12:05] CH: Awesome, congrats.

[0:12:07] JAL: Thank you. You know what I mean is? I’ll hopefully be paying for their college, I’ll be paying for private school, I’ll be covering – I’ll be paying for their clothes, I’ll be paying for their food. I’ll be – I just never have to worry about anything.

[0:12:22] CH: Your book, you're really helping women who are like yourself, who are wanting to have both sides. How do they make themselves into someone who – I don’t want to say has it all because like you said, it requires a lot of sacrifice, but how do they get themselves in the zone that you’re talking about?

[0:12:42] JAL: You know, it’s all about the mindset and it’s just about finding really what’s the most important to you right now. Friends will be there, if they’re your friends, I don’t see my friends a lot but I promise you that anytime I need a friend, they’re one text away, one phone call away or one car ride a way. But for now, they understand and they’re in the same zone that I’m in right now. It’s family and work and once we make partner and once the kids are older, we’ll have time for all of this. It’s really just about getting in that mindset of everything will be there for you in a few years. It’s how we get through this pass that we really need to figure out and make work. I think a lot of women give up unfortunately in this period because it is fucking brutal. I mean, honestly, on Sunday after staying five days of my kids over thanksgiving at home. I couldn’t physically work during the day because I’m either carrying a baby or fixing up some mess that the two-year-old created. The work emails are piling up because big law doesn’t stop over Thanksgiving and I was too freaking exhausted by the end of the day to be working all night which I normally would be doing because I had to take care of my kids during the day. After five days of that. I want to shoot myself and you know, I hate saying this because of course, there are women who want children and who can’t and my heart really bleeds for them and I can’t imagine not having my kids and I love them to death but my God, is it hard.

[0:14:11] CH: I know, you know, I used to think – you know how Oprah has said, being a mom is the hardest job in the world and I would always think like, really? What about miners and stuff like that but then seeing a single mom especially, I was like, “How was that even possible?” I don’t even understand how it can be done.

[0:14:32] JAL: Well, 100%. I really don’t understand. It must take a lot of wine, some antidepressants, some uppers and downers, whatever it takes, drugs. I really don’t know and actually, in the introduction of my book, I’m asking those women to give me advice because really, it’s beyond me how a working single mom with young children can do it. I cannot do it and I stress so much of my book about how the reason for which I am able to do everything that I do is thanks to the support of everybody around me. I think it takes a village and I make full use of that village whether it would be the nanny that I have or my in laws or my husband. I am always asking somebody for help and I just give out the control that I love and need but I just have to give up. And knowing that my kids are well taken care off is good enough for me but my God, it is so hard. I can see why women would want to give up something either reducing their hours at work or maybe not have that extra child. It’s just very, very difficult.

[0:15:37] CH: Yeah, it definitely is, no debates there. You do have a chapter in your book called #feminist. What’s this about?

[0:15:47] JAL: So this is really about how I am able to let go of the little things at work because of my mentality or the way in which I was raised is very French. As you know by now I was raised by a very French traditional mom and there are certain things that aren’t as prominent in France as they are here and I think the mindset that I have makes me enjoy work a little bit more or maybe –

[0:16:16] CH: Wait, what kind of things? Sorry to interrupt again but what kind of things aren’t as prominent?

[0:16:20] JAL: So for example sexual harassment. And I am not trying to diminish the meaning of Me Too or the entire movement. I am 100% against any form of sexual harassment or any man making any woman feel uncomfortable. With that said, I have a very sarcastic attitude or a very French sense of humor, I think you would say, and what a lot of women in the US might perceive as sexual harassment, I often just brush off or just give it right back to the person.

[0:16:53] CH: Right, which is actually a more powerful stance in many situations.

[0:16:59] JAL: Well exactly and so one of the things that I try to pass onto the merging your attorneys here is instead of thinking a man said something inappropriate to you or complaining about it and then again, I am not endorsing it whatsoever, I am just saying that if somebody makes you feel uncomfortable tell them right then and there and have the courage to either laugh if it’s a joke or if you think it’s funny and then move on or if it made you feel uncomfortable or if you were offended by it tell them right then and there. So that he knows that what he said was offensive and that he will never do it again. So in that way I think because I really do – I don’t take myself seriously and I don’t take a lot of what others say seriously especially if they are being stupid. But I think a lot of people where I work feel comfortable around me because I am just one of the bros and so does that make sense?

[0:17:54] CH: Yeah, totally and again like you said, it is not to diminish anything that is going on with the Me Too movement and all that stuff aside there is something really to be said about having some thicker skin when people are just using words and being able to just confront them.

[0:18:14] JAL: Exactly. And so you know it goes with sexual harassment but it also goes with being a younger woman at a big law firm, right? People pay insane amounts of money for my legal fees yet a grey haired man’s opinion will be valued more than mine. That drives me bonkers and every time I have the chance or the opportunity to change that I do. So a few weeks ago I was on the phone with a client and he asks us a question and I give him the answer. And the partner sitting right next me, the 50 year old male partner sitting right next to me and he gives the thumbs up, he likes the answer and then the client on the phone says, “Okay and what do you think older male partner?” I said, “Are you kidding me?” You know really, I just yelled and you know a lot of women I think would just stand back and not say anything. But I am going to call out any man who thinks that my opinion is not just as valuable as the older grey haired partner right next to me. Even though his answer invariably every time is exactly what Julie just said. So I am trying to change that one by one and I found my work environment to be much more enjoyable that way.

[0:19:28] CH: Yeah, I mean you operate in a male heavy industry so you’ve got to be able to play in that realm. So let’s talk about your relationship with your husband. You have a chapter called ‘Love Conquers All If You Work in the Relationship.’ Now I know you said that you guys practice gratitude and look through that lens as often as possible but, again, this is a challenging lifestyle it is not for everybody. So how do you sustain love?

[0:20:00] JAL: Well you know it is not easy. One of the things that we do and that we have to do and that you can see right in the title of there is that we have a date night once a week. No ifs and buts about it, no I’m tired, I’m not feeling well. Every week we have to have three hours to ourselves to reconnect. So that is super important, we try not to talk about the kids. We try not talk about work and we try to be silly and be ourselves and not parents and not even married. Just be the best friends that we are and just connect that way.

[0:20:34] CH: What do you guys do?

[0:20:35] JAL: We usually go out to dinner not too far from the house. We’ll rarely meet up with our friends and try to be social but that’s not as important to us right now as it is for us to reconnect. So yeah that’s it, we’ll just have a few glasses of wine. He’ll have a few cocktails and we’ll just have a nice meal. We love food and we love to drink, so that’s what we do. That’s our thing.

[0:20:56] CH: Excellent, I love that. So three hours to reconnect, anything else?

[0:21:02] JAL: So you know at home obviously there is one thing that I think falls to the way side and it definitely would if we didn’t make a conscious effort is to be intimate with each other. And the book that was published is actually a bit of a PG 13 version of the original I had written but when I wrote the book, it was important to me that everybody around me especially my family and my direct colleagues at work were happy with it not embarrassed by anything. And I had talked about my special secret at home which is to just give my husband blowjobs all the time and you know it takes five minutes, nobody needs to get undressed. We don’t need to set the mood, we don’t need to do anything. It’s like wham-bam-thank, you ma’am and I know it may sound dirty but you know that’s our thing. That is my way of saying thank you and that is his way of letting me know that, “Hey I am still here for you, still attracted to you.” And so it is not in there anymore as blunt as it was originally but I’ll say that’s our secret -

[0:22:07] CH: Oh man.

[0:22:08] JAL: I know, a secret sauce not a whoo – you know.

[0:22:11] CH: Well bless your heart Julie, you know this might be the most heartwarming episode we’ve ever done.

[0:22:18] JAL: Well I’m glad that you liked it.

[0:22:20] CH: Appropriately, yeah. Well I am certainly going to share this episode with my wife and give her the old wink-wink-nudge-nudge. But so appropriately the final chapter that segues nicely is called, ‘Grab your Happy Ending by the Balls.’ What’s this about?

[0:22:39] JAL: Well you know it’s very interesting so the entire book sound like a lot of fun and there’s one theme that keeps coming up throughout the book is that my son when I first started writing the book and even before that was sick a whole lot and my husband and I thought we had a very sick child with us and it was incredibly hard. He was having fevers at first every few weeks or so and then after six to eight months his health was just completely degrading. He was losing weight, he wasn’t eating much anymore, he wasn’t sleeping so we weren’t sleeping. We had a brand new baby at home so you can imagine how hard that is and we just didn’t know what he had and near the end, he had a very high fevers almost every day. He looked like he was in pain, my husband had stopped working entirely so he could help take care of the children because by that time I had gone back to work after my maternity leave. So you could imagine how hard it is to take care of healthy children so imagine the heartbreak of having to take care for a sick child. And at this point we were testing for cancer and cystic fibrosis and you know really bad things like that and at that point I thought, “Okay this is just not possible. I cannot be working a 100%.” I mean at some point I was in the hospital with my son and I think I was sleeping two or three hours a night. I was working from 9 PM when he would go to sleep to 3 AM in the morning when he would wake up in pain and then he would go back to sleep and I would try to sleep. Anyway, you can imagine how hard that is and at that point I almost gave up and somebody that you know actually had offered me a job and it was a job that will allow me to be an attorney still but it would allow me to work from home and I would be able to be with my kids more and I thought that would be very appropriate and while we were having these discussions and while I really didn’t want to quit my job, I loved it so much but I just couldn’t - I knew I wouldn’t be able to dedicate myself to this job as much as I need it to be to succeed and right when I was about to give up, we had another stay in the hospital and they decide to look into my kid’s lungs after putting him to sleep and they found and almond.

[0:24:59] CH: An almond?

[0:25:01] JAL: And I forced the doctors to go look in there, they didn’t believe me, they found a full almond that had been lodged into his lung for all these months and it was just getting infected and infected and infected and it was hurting him and it was causing the fevers and they took the almond out and I had told them I knew something was stuck. Nobody believed me and they took it out and then the next day he was like a new kid and he’s barely had a cold since. Yep.

[0:25:27] CH: What? Wow.

[0:25:28] JAL: Yes sir, he had aspirated a full almond. So I am giving away the shocking story of the book, but that’s what happened. So I grabbed my ending by the balls because I told the doctors finally just, “Listen to me, this kid does not have a disease. There is something that’s wrong, go look.” And I was about to make a big career changed and I had convinced this person to hire me for what could have been a perfect job but luckily, they found the almond, my kid was fine, I didn’t need to quit and so here we are.

[0:25:59] CH: Wow, thank you for sharing that story. I am so glad your child is okay. Oh my gosh.

[0:26:04] JAL: Thank you, me too.

[0:26:06] CH: It must have been terrifying as that was going on.

[0:26:09] JAL: It was. It was awful. You know it looks worse now that I’m reflecting upon what happened thinking, “My gosh how could we have let that happen for so long?” And especially with a brand new baby at home and it could have been much worse but thank God. Thank God everything is a-okay.

[0:26:26] CH: Yeah, I’m glad you gave them the direction they needed to save your kid. It could have gotten a lot worse.

[0:26:33] JAL: You know, Boston Children’s Hospital too. It’s like the best hospital in the world but no, it is actually just so uncommon that a kid is able to function with such a large foreign body in them and so our kid was super strong, I guess. So don’t let your kids eat almonds.

[0:26:51] CH: Moral of the story. Yeah, goodness gracious well this has been really fascinating to hear about your life and how things are going and I hope any moms and women listening to this take heed and those who want to have both being a mom and having a success career can see that it is possible. Now I’ve got a couple final questions for you and the first one is, what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you or follow you? I know that again, you’re an attorney in the Boston area maybe they want to hire you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

[0:27:33] JAL: So they can either google my name, Julie-Anne Lutfi online and my law firm is Foley & Lardner and I am very easy to find that way. Otherwise, I am quite connected on LinkedIn as well. So if somebody wants to reach out to me through a message on LinkedIn, I will respond that way.

[0:27:52] CH: Perfect and the final question I have for you Julie is to give our listeners a challenge, what is one thing they can do from your book this week that will have a positive impact?

[0:28:04] JAL: You know I think we didn’t discuss this so much but the one thing I do and that everybody wonders how I do is I work out all the time but never in the gym and I don’t go out for runs. I just don’t have time for that anymore. So I find funny ways of working out throughout the day to keep my energy going and to keep things moving and so I do a lot of random workouts just throughout the day in the office or at home playing with the kids. And so I think that is the one thing that I’ll leave people with as we go into this holiday season. Just keep things moving, keep things fun and don’t take life too seriously.

[0:28:44] CH: The book is Diapers, Date Nights, and Deadlines. Julie, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:28:50] JAL: Thank you Charlie.

[0:28:52] CH: Thanks again to Julie-Anne Lutfi for being on the show. You can buy her book, Diapers, Date Nights, and Deadlines, on amazon.com. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for full show notes and a transcription of this episode and we’ll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.