EP163: The Savvy Working Mom: Grace and Joy with Whitnee Hawthorne

Thriving as a Savvy Working Mom: Insights from Whitnee Hawthorne

In this episode of The Girl Doc Survival Guide, Christine welcomes Whitnee Hawthorne, Global Head of Travel and Hospitality at Snowflake and author of The Savvy Working Mom: A Guide to Prioritization, Delegation, and Making Time for Cocktails. Whitnee shares her personal journey from New York to Georgia, detailing how she and her husband juggle careers, family, and self-care. She introduces key concepts from her book, including the Shine, Manage, Surrender framework and the Grace and Joy morning routine, offering practical advice for working moms to thrive rather than just survive. Whitnee emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, delegating effectively, and focusing on self-care to create a joyful and fulfilling life.

00:00 Introduction to Whitnee Hawthorne

00:55 Personal Anecdotes and Career Journey

02:39 Balancing Career and Family

06:13 Setting Boundaries and Self-Care

12:37 Shine, Manage, Surrender Framework

23:50 Grace and Joy Morning Routine

28:50 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Transcript

Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Girl Doc Survival Guide. Today, I'm very happy to be with Whitnee Hawthorne. Whitnee Hawthorne has work experience at Navan and JetBlue and is currently Global Head of Travel and Hospitality at Snowflake. She has written a love letter to working moms everywhere in the form of a book, The Savvy Working Mom: A Guide to Prioritization, Delegation, and Making Time for Cocktails. Whitnee says that taking care of yourself isn't easy, but the right strategies can help us all thrive, not just survive. The book is available for pre-order, and I will put a link in the show notes to a place where you can pre-order before May 6th. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: May 6th.

Christine Ko: After May 6th, you can order, I'm sure, at any bookstore on an Amazon, et cetera. She has been a keynote speaker all over the world and hosts a podcast. Welcome to Whitney. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Hi, I am so glad to be here, Christine. Thanks for having me. 

Christine Ko: Can you first share a personal anecdote about yourself? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: I live in McDonough, Georgia, [00:01:00] just south of Atlanta. I have two young boys, ages seven and soon to be five. So my soon to be 5-year-old was born in May of 2020, so he is a pandemic baby. At that time we lived in New York City. We moved from New York to Salt Lake, and now I am here in McDonough. I'm really glad to be on the show talking about the things that have helped me grow my career and grow my family with joy and in a way that I feel like I'm thriving, rather just than just surviving. I know that the frameworks that I have used to do this don't just work for me, but they work for other women as well. I've coached women to help them truly believe that they are creating a life that allows them to have joy.

Christine Ko: Awesome. A couple questions. Did you move around a lot just because of your job? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yes. I moved for work. When I worked for JetBlue, I got promoted to run customer support just before the pandemic. JetBlue is headquartered in New York City, but they have two other main offices. One is in Orlando where the training center is, and the other is in Salt Lake [00:02:00] City, where the majority of customer support sits. When I got promoted, they really wanted me to move to Orlando or Salt Lake, and I was like, I don't think I wanna leave New York. So we agreed that I would stay in New York even though they really wanted me to move to Orlando or Salt Lake. Flash forward to the pandemic and it was myself, my husband, our dog, a toddler, and a new baby in a Brooklyn apartment. And I was like, so do you still want me to move? Would you still like me to leave the city? Sure enough, they did. So that's what moved us to Salt Lake City. When I was in Salt Lake City, after leaving JetBlue I started working at Navan. With Navan, we opened an office here in Atlanta and that's what brought us the Atlanta area. 

Christine Ko: May I ask, is it hard to balance those moves for your career with your husband's?

Whitnee Hawthorne: That is a great question. The truth is we've put my career first. My husband works in post-production. When you watch a TV show or you watch the news and there's graphics that appear [00:03:00] and there are sounds that are edited in or edited out. Anything that happens to film essentially after it's been recorded is what he works on.

He's actually career switched recently and now is going into becoming a hearing aid specialist, but he worked in post-production for a long time. And so there was a lot of gig work that he can do, remote work. We've been able to manage with him doing that type of work and letting my career take the lead.

Christine Ko: May I ask, how did it come that you both decided to put your career first? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: It was an easy decision in that he got laid off in the pandemic. So he used to work for Peacock entertainment at Rockefeller Center in New York. And when the pandemic happened, they laid off his entire floor, and I still had my job. And so that really allowed us to lean into my work over his work, I guess. 

Christine Ko: I'm glad that was easy. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: I wouldn't say it was easy. I would say that it got laid out for us where after he was laid off; my career [00:04:00] just continued to grow. And with my career continuing to grow, it made sense that would be the career, then, that we focus on as a family. It really is necessary because with the jobs that I've had, there's been a lot of travel involved and having young kids. Having him be able to be here more consistently has been helpful in our family unit. And if we were in a place where, for example, both of us had careers that we had to travel, it'd be really hard on our kids. But we've decided that we'll lean into my career, and it's working for us. 

Christine Ko: That's awesome. I think it is a difficult thing to try to balance or do the dance of having a two career family.

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah. It's hard for us, right? And tough choices have to be made, right. There's times where I can't take a work trip that I really know would be much more productive to my career because we can't figure out how to have the right childcare. There's also expenses that go into childcare and that kind of [00:05:00] extra support. Without that, it would be even more difficult or untenable even. But thankfully, we can afford the childcare that supplements our time to be with and take care of our kids. We don't live close enough to family that could help us on a daily basis. It really is the two of us, plus whatever daycare or babysitters can support. We don't really have a nanny. We have a regular sitter. 

Christine Ko: Do you guys still take time for your relationship?   

Whitnee Hawthorne: That's a great question. The answer is yes, but it's planned, right? And it is one of those things where sometimes we laugh about it because when you have kids, just to walk outta the house, it's a hundred bucks, right? Because you have to cover the cost of childcare, and the babysitter's gonna have a minimum. We do try, at least once a month, do something together, just the two of us. And when we can do that more often, then we do. But I would say, the majority of our weekends and off time, it's together as a family. The two of us and our two kids. And we also take time for ourselves. Like my husband will go into the city and watch a show or go hang out [00:06:00] with his friends, or I'll go into the city and hang out with my girlfriends for a dinner. So we try to make sure that we have our individual time, and our couple time, and our family time; though the bulk of our time is family time. 

Christine Ko: I find this time issue so difficult. There's really only 24 hours to a day, and in all honesty, I am not a selfless person. I want my own time. In an ideal world, I would have more time just to myself. I'm actually introverted and shy and I can hang out by myself and be actually really happy and comfortable. But I grew up, I realize now, especially through doing this podcast and having conversations with people, that being a mom is a self-sacrificing role and being a wife, actually, is as well. That's the culture that I grew up in. So, I think I personally find it really hard to put myself [00:07:00] first. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah, I think it's real. What you're saying is real. When my first son was born, we had him in daycare and listed my husband as the primary parent. They would always call me first, always. And I'd be like, but we've listed my husband as their primary parent. You gotta call him. They would always call me first, 'cause I'm mom. It's really interesting, even where it's documented, call Dad first, they would always call mom first. They just couldn't get their heads around it that mom wouldn't be the first person to call. As women, we have been set up, I think globally, we've been set up to self-sacrifice, right? And to find a lot of our value in how much we do for others versus how much we do for ourselves. It's a bit of a mental hurdle, but what I found is when I am taking care of myself, I am a better mother. When I'm taking care of myself, I'm better at work. When I'm taking care of myself, I can do all the things in a better way, right? I can be a better wife, I can be a better mom, [00:08:00] and I can be a better employee when I am taking care of myself first. And it can be hard. But when I look at the outcomes of what I get, when I take care of myself, it's happier kids. It's a stronger career, it's a stronger marriage. And so it's worth it. I'm also an introvert. And I think to your point even to the extreme of, probably once or twice a year maybe, I'm just gonna go stay in the city and sleep in a hotel room by myself, wake up, have breakfast, and then come home. Just to get that true alone time, I know when I come back from that, and it's not even really a full 24 hours, that I might be gone. But when I come back from that, I am a much more caring person. I'm much more present. Less irritable. It's important that we think about not just how we're managing our time, but also how we're managing our energy. That energy management makes a huge difference in how we show up for others as well as how we show up for ourselves. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. The daycare. They're still calling you even though the primary [00:09:00] parent is listed as the dad, your husband. When you would be called by the daycare, and you're not the primary parent listed. They're like infringing upon a boundary that's clearly set, like, this is the primary parent, this is who needs to be called. What would you do?

Whitnee Hawthorne: I would ask if they called my husband. I would say, Hey, so we have Jody, that's my husband's name. Jody is the primary parent. Were you unable to get ahold of him? Let me text him to make sure that he'll pick up. Because maybe he's not recognizing the number. I would push them back to him. If it was an emergency, then it's an emergency, and let's handle it. But if it's not an emergency, I'd say, Hey, can you please try and call him? I'll text him, and tell him to make sure that he picks up, right, in case he's not recognizing the number. Holding that boundary was really important. And then it eventually stopped because I would keep doing that saying, no, you need to contact him. And then when I would pick my son up, I had a conversation with the director of the daycare and said, Hey, your team keeps calling me first. I really need them to call my husband first. Of course I'm gonna pick up anytime I see [00:10:00] the number on the phone. That doesn't mean that I have to, from a boundary perspective, that I have to feed into them breaking my boundary. It's more of a like gentle redirection into doing the things that I need you to do, which is respect my boundary and call my husband first.

Christine Ko: Yeah. Was it hard though? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yes. Yeah, it's hard. In a couple ways, especially in that instance, because I am the mom, right? I do wanna be the one, but I also know that I don't have to be the one. And in me saying yes to them, I'm saying no to my career, which during the workday, I try and be present and focused and have my career be what is in front of me, right? And then when work is over, I try and be home and present, have my kids be what's in front of me. And so there's that kind of internal struggle of, but I am the mom, so I should be right? I should. At the same time, making sure that I remember why we set it up that way. My husband's career had more flexibility for him to pick up the phone. I'm in meetings all day. That's the [00:11:00] kind of work that I do; can't really pick up the phone in the middle of a meeting. His work is more solo work, so he could pick up the phone and that's really why we set it up that way 'cause he'd be more likely to be able to respond in a timely manner. So just remembering why we set it up like that and not letting daycare make me feel bad, right? About not being the primary parent, even though they thought I should. It's a bunch of mental tricks that you work through, but then eventually it becomes easy, and it also becomes empowering. It's empowering to hold your boundary, to be able to say, no, don't call me, call my husband. There's power in doing that, and it feels good. Also, it's a good lesson for my kids. They're too young right at that time to know it. But I know that's building the foundation that they will see their mom as someone who has boundaries. And when she sets them, she makes sure that people respect them. Because that's what I want for them, when they set boundaries, even as little people, little humans now. We wanna respect their boundaries and let them know that's how it should be. People should respect your boundaries, and when they don't, that you can push [00:12:00] back on that. 

Christine Ko: I love that. In particular, when you said, daycare maybe would make me feel bad, so that make me feel a certain way. I've been exploring that more recently where really, we shouldn't be allowing anyone else or any entity, whether it's daycare or work, or a system, make us feel a certain way. But I think that's also very common. The way I grew up, it's, oh, you are making me mad, or, you made me upset. Can you talk about that? This concept of how we feel and...? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah. There's two things really that come to mind when we talk about this. One is being prepared for society's pressures. Being prepared for them looks like understanding what is important to you, what matters to you. There is, in my book, a framework called Shine Manage Surrender. And the idea is that [00:13:00] I've identified nine areas of life for us. Work-life balance is setting us all up for failure. It really grinds my gears because when we say work-life balance, we're saying work is one thing and life is the other, and we're trying to balance the two. And it's, come on now. Life is so much more than one thing. And so I've identified at least nine areas of life. And in each one of those, in the book, I use this framework called Shine Manage Surrender, where you look across the nine areas of life and you say, here's where I wanna shine in that area of life. Here's what I need to manage, because we gotta keep the lights on in a way, and then here's what I wanna surrender. And in doing that, it helps you be prepared to say, oh, someone's coming at me about this thing. Society's coming at me about this thing. That's something that I manage, and the things I manage, I don't put a hundred percent into, 'cause I don't have to. They're just things that have to happen. Or even, that's something that I surrendered, like society's coming at me for this thing, but I've made the conscious choice to not be involved in that thing. And an example of this I'll share with my kids is, shine with my kids. I really wanna shine as a mom [00:14:00] exposing them to new things, exposing them to new foods, new cultures, new experiences, like letting them be little global citizens. That's important to me. I put my time and energy into that. What I have to manage for them is they need to be dressed. They need to be dressed for the weather and that's important, but they don't have to look like little Instagram models. Their socks don't always have to match, right? I just manage making sure that they are dressed for the weather, and clean, but they don't look like little Instagram models. And then from a surrender standpoint, I have had to surrender the idea of hot breakfast. I love to cook; I love food. And in my head, I was gonna be that mom who is making hot breakfast for the kids in the morning, and that's just, I can't. So I've let go of that. They do eat breakfast, but I'm not making omelets in the morning for them.

Knowing that and understanding, here's where we're gonna shine. Here's what I wanna manage, here's what I wanna surrender. When society comes at me for anything, it's, oh, we go to a party and my kids aren't dressed the cutest and someone makes a snarky comment, and I just let it roll off my back 'cause that's [00:15:00] not where we're putting the energy in. I've already made that choice. And making that choice and being conscious about making that choice helps me. Same with my career, right? There are areas of my career where I wanna shine, right? I love leading teams, and I love strategic thinking and leveraging that to execute. From a manage perspective, I have to create PowerPoints. Do I like doing it? No. But do I have to do it? Yes. Are you gonna get the snazziest PowerPoints from me? You're not, but you're gonna get ones that have really good content and good flow. And then from a surrender standpoint, there are things that I've decided I have to let go of, going to all the happy hours. Not only does it drain me, but it also takes away from my time with my family. And while there is value in going to happy hours, I've already decided that I will only go to like x number of work events each month because it's just not the thing for me to do. I've surrendered the idea of being that social person at work. And then that way when it comes at me and, oh, there's an invite, come out to the thing. Nope, I can't do that. But I will shine in other ways at work, right? And I will manage the things that I have to manage. And I think [00:16:00] being conscious of that helps you prepare for those feelings that could come on. It empowers you and it lets you have more joy because you're like, this is not happening to me. I've decided this, and I'm okay with it. I'm more than okay with it. I'm glad that I have decided this because I also know what trade offs I'm making. Life is a trade off, right? We can't have everything all at once, and so we're constantly trading things off. 

Christine Ko: Oh, I love all of that. Very succinctly put. Through my doing this podcast, a big thing that keeps coming up is awareness. What you just said, that conscious awareness of the choices that I'm actually making, no one's making me make those choices, but maybe I'll feel bad. Someone makes me feel bad because it wasn't actually really a conscious choice on my part. Maybe it is something actually that I'd really like to shine at, and so it makes me feel really bad. But really if it's something that I surrender, like who cares? I'll share something I surrender about is my house. It's not beautifully decorated, and it never has [00:17:00] been. Theoretically would love to live in a architectural digest type, interior decorated place. I do like that kind of thing, but I'm not willing to put in my own time or pay someone to do it. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: That's great. You've made that choice for yourself, right? And that is empowering. You can say, this is how I wanna live, 'cause you're choosing to do other things with your time and with your energy. I am similar. One of the areas of life that I like to talk about is environment. So the environments we inhabit impact us, right? And for me I commute a lot of times into the city. And when I'm going into the city, your car is essentially an environment. But I've surrendered the idea of the inside of my car being super neat. I have two little kids and there's always toys or like cracker crumbs or just something in the back. I am not going to spend my time and energy trying to make my car look great inside. I've let that go. I've let it go, and I'm okay with that, right? My husband, on the other hand, that is very important to him, and inside of his cars are immaculate. But that's just not my thing, and [00:18:00] I'm okay with it, right? If somebody looks in my car, I don't have embarrassment 'cause I'm like, I have two kids and let's look at all the other things that I'm doing in life. My car is not my priority. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. Can I ask you some global things or maybe specific things that you learned through writing the book, The Savvy Working Mom? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: I learned a lot about one, the book writing process. That was fascinating. You write your book and then you go through all these different types of editing. We're all familiar with copy editing, but there's also this thing called a substantive edit, which is where they're really picking apart your book. Before that, even, there's a type of editing where they basically help rearrange the book so that it makes sense to others. Because in your head, something might flow, but that's because you're so close to the work. For others, gaps need to be filled in. And so I learned a lot about how to explain things to others in a way that is impactful. One of the things that really truly came out in the [00:19:00] book: I have the seven Ds of delegation. These are seven steps that you can take in order to ensure successful outcome every time you delegate. And one of those Ds is, do the math. Understanding whether or not it is worth your time to invest in delegating, talking through it in the book in the form of writing isn't enough. So I put together a literal equation. Sharing that with others, I found that leveraging that equation actually was very helpful to folks understanding how to know whether or not they should invest the time to delegate. That wasn't something that I originally intended to do, write an equation for folks. Essentially you take a look at how long does it take you to do something. How often do you do this thing? And then you add up those minutes. Say it's a report that I'm thinking about delegating and I do the report once a month, so 12 times a year and it takes me 30 minutes, right? So that is three hours of work. Rather than saying, oh, it's gonna [00:20:00] take me too long to delegate this, to teach someone how to do it, I look and say, how long will it take to teach? How long will it take me to teach them to do it? Maybe it takes me an hour to teach them to do it, which seems like too long if it only takes me 30 minutes. But when I say, oh, that hour compared to actually doing it, 12 times a year. And then, how long does it also take me to follow up with them, to do the work of ensuring that what they did was correct. A lot of times we jump to this idea of, it's gonna take too long to delegate. Is that true? I don't know. I don't know if it's true. Do the math first and then make that call. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. So it sounds like the equation is something like my time spent times number of times doing it minus time to explain and teach minus time to follow up with them and make sure it's done is whether or not I should delegate. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah, it's your time times the number of times you're gonna do something. Is that greater than the time it takes to teach plus the time it takes to follow up? 

Christine Ko: I have a question though on that. Wouldn't it be [00:21:00] true that almost anything that you're repeating over and over again, it's not infinity, but say it's infinity, then automatically it's gonna be better to delegate 'cause your time spent over infinity would always be more... 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Over infinity. Yes. It puts it in that perspective because people actually lose that perspective of this is about over time, not just about this one moment. Some tasks will take a long time to teach, especially if it's something that someone's a novice. Let's think about my kids doing the laundry, right? It's gonna take a very long time for me to teach them to fully do the laundry. They know how to sort clothes, they can put their clothes into the washing machine. But when I think about teaching them how to do the laundry, it can feel very daunting. But yes, over time, eventually it's worth that investment because then they'll be able to do laundry by the time they're in middle school versus waiting till they're in high school or something. That is like, yes, to your kind of point to time, to infinity. 

But if we think about maybe at work, you have paperwork, some type of [00:22:00] administrative paperwork that you need to do. When I talk to people about doing something like this, Hey, why don't you delegate that? Why don't you let somebody else do it? It'll take too long to teach them. That is the response that we get. That's what people say. It'll take too long. It's not worth it. It'll take too long. And really, let's take a look. Sometimes you say, okay, for me to review someone's work will actually take longer than doing the work. So they're gonna write this report for me, but if they write this report, actually, it'll take me 20 minutes to read and analyze the report versus 10 minutes for me to just write it myself. And you say, you know what? It isn't worth delegating. But then you've done the math, and and the next time somebody says, delegate that thing, you say, no. We've already done this math and we know it's better for me to just do it.

Christine Ko: Yeah. Infinity, just being a simple, okay. Yes, I should try to delegate something that I know is gonna be in perpetuity, especially something that I hate doing. Yes. But in listening to you, another big factor is the skill level of the person I'm delegating to and also turnover issues. So if the skill level needs to be super high for me to teach something [00:23:00] to someone and yet I know they're leaving tomorrow, it's not useful. So I guess those are two factors for me. It comes into that follow up time piece that you have in your equation. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah. One of the Ds of delegation is determine who is going to do the work. People fall on a scale from novice to expert. And there are a lot of people in between novice and expert. But you really do need to understand who you're giving it to before you decide to delegate, because that will help you understand how much time you're gonna need to invest to make sure that they can actually do the work and you need to make sure that they are gonna be around to do the work over time if it's something that you plan on having them do for any extended period. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. I love your shine, manage, surrender and this delegation equation. Useful. Very much. Are there some other easy tools that anyone can implement to thrive and not just survive? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yes. Shine, Manage, Surrender is one of my favorite [00:24:00] tools to talk about. In the book, I also talk about the Grace and Joy morning routine. That is a morning routine that is designed to help people stay on track to really own the choices that they've made and create a life that they love without asking folks to get up earlier. At least for me, if I wake up any earlier, it'll be 3:00 AM! I'll just be waking up right after I lay down. So I created this morning routine called Grace and Joy. And the idea is that if you do all the things in the morning routine, in the first 90 minutes of your day, you're really setting yourself up for success. And it can take as little as five minutes to complete all the steps or as long as two hours, depending on who you are and what kind of time you have.

Grace and Joy's an acronym and the G stands for Get Hydrated. So every morning the first thing I think you should do is drink some water, get hydrated. And that's not just about replenishing yourself. Hydration is important, but it's also about having that first thing you do in the morning be a conscious choice to do something good for yourself.

So getting hydrated is the G. [00:25:00] R is reconnecting with your body and whether that is stretching, yoga, a 10 minute walk whatever you have time for, but it's taking some time to reconnect with your brain and your body together. Then the A stands for what I like to call accept the moment. Just a moment of mindfulness, whether it's 60 seconds of silence and meditation, or five minutes, or 20, depending on how much time you have. It's just taking a moment to really connect with yourself. And then C is conjure the future, which is the idea of taking a moment to visualize how you want your day to go, how you want your week to go, think about your shines. Think about yourself shining and really do that visualization. E is express gratitude. Taking a moment to be thankful for the things that you have across all the areas of your life. So that's the grace. And then the joy. J is just pick one. So that's really saying, okay, if I lay down at the end of today, what is the one thing I wanna make sure I accomplished? Just pick one thing that you have to get done today and make sure you get it done. [00:26:00] Ideally, get it done before noon, if your schedule allows, but get that one thing done so that when you lay down at night, you know you've accomplished the one thing you want. The O is own your mama, which is really geared towards working moms. It's saying, what's that one thing you're gonna do today with your kids and owning that and picking it because days can go super crazy. It can be very easy to get lost in the day to day of our lives. It's important each day to say, Hey, you know what, here's the one thing I'm gonna do with my kids today. I'm gonna read to them, or I'm gonna pick them up for school, and when I pick them up I am going to ask them questions. I'm gonna turn the radio down, or I'm gonna turn the radio up. I'm gonna let them pick the songs, and we're gonna sing along to the songs that they wanna listen to. Owning that one thing you wanna do for your kids in the day. And then the last, the Y is Yield potential which is like farm talk. Yield, Y-I-E-L-D. So when you think about crops or you're growing plants, right? Yield is how much do you actually get out of it? And so it's really just the idea of you saying, how much can I get out of my day? How much joy can I have? Just going [00:27:00] out with that intent. Go out and live your best life, live your shine, manage your manages, and surrender the things and feel good about the things that you have surrendered.

That's the grace and joy morning routine. When you can do those things in the first 90 minutes of your day, it really does set you up to have the most joyful day that you can have. It sets you up to thrive rather than just survive. 

Christine Ko: The grace and joy routine you said is 90 minutes? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: No, you need to do it in the first 90 minutes of your day. Take those steps, ideally in that order, over the first 90 minutes. And the reason why I say the first 90 minutes is because you wanna get it done in the beginning of your day. But I also know, at least for me, my mornings can be crazy, right? I don't know. The toddler might have peed the bed, then I have to worry about doing all that, which I hadn't planned on doing, or, we're having breakfast and then somebody spills their cereal on the floor, and then it's okay, now we gotta clean this up. You just never know, I think how the morning's gonna go. So the idea is just take those steps in the first 90 minutes. You might get hydrated and then do a little bit of stretching and visualization, and then the day goes crazy. That's okay. [00:28:00] Go back and finish those steps as soon as you can.

Christine Ko: Yeah. Are you able to do it every day or most days? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: I am able to do it most days. It's become very much of a habit for me at this point. I will say it varies. On a Saturday, I might have more time, and so I might take a long walk. During the week, reconnecting with my body, I don't have time to take a long walk, so I'm just gonna do five minutes of yoga to reconnect with my body. So it varies how long it takes me each day to do. But I look forward to going through those steps because after I go through those steps, I usually do feel better about how my day's gonna go.

Christine Ko: Yeah. It's habit enough now, you can just check it off in your mind? 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yes. I just wake up and start, go through the steps. I keep a water bottle by my bed, so that's not too hard. And then yeah, you just fall into it. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. Awesome. I've learned a lot. This is great. Do you have any final thoughts?

Whitnee Hawthorne: I am really glad to be here and talking to you, and my final thought is we all deserve to have a [00:29:00] life that we love. And if the things that you love and want for your life, as long as it's not hurting anybody else, aren't aligned with societal ideas of what you should be, then that's okay.

Don't should on yourself. Just let that all go and really figure out where you wanna shine and what you have to manage, and know those things that you manage, you don't have to give a hundred percent to, they just have to get done. So you can reserve that time and reserve that energy for the areas that you wanna shine in.  

Christine Ko: Thank you, Whitnee. I'm looking forward to reading your book when I get my hands on my pre-order. The more that we can talk about these things and cultivate conscious awareness of tips and tricks and how others have done it and how we don't have to keep doing I think is really useful. I really love what you just said about just let go of any shoulds unless that's what I want, within societal morals and all that. 

Whitnee Hawthorne: Yeah. I would even go so far as to say eliminate should from your vocabulary, [00:30:00] because either you need to do something or you want to do something. I need to do this. I need to pay my bills. I need to exercise. I don't wanna exercise, but I need to do it right. It's not that I should do it. I need to live the life that I wanna have, to have my health be where I want my health to be. I need to do these things, and I want to hang out with my kids. I want to take a walk. I want to be outside. I want to be a great mom. I want all these things. I need all these things. It's usually one of those. And if you're saying should, then you don't really want it or you don't really need it. So maybe that's my final thought. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. I love it. Thank you.

Whitnee Hawthorne: Thank you, Christine. Thank you for having me on.