This year I accomplished my goal of reading a few biographies. There’s something about sitting inside someone else’s whole life — the choices they made, what they sacrificed, what they’d do differently — that shapes the way I think about my own.
This year I read about Katherine Graham, Virginia Roberts Guiffre and Indra Nooyi. All incredible women. But it was Nooyi’s story that grabbed me by the shoulders and hasn’t let go.
If you don’t know Indra Nooyi, she’s the former CEO and Chairman of PepsiCo — a highly educated woman from India who worked her way into the top tier of American business. Throughout her biography, she doesn’t come out and say it directly, but you can read between the lines: she was not always fully present for her children. She had a lot of help from family. She also mentions multiple executive assistants whom she deeply valued (which I obviously love as an EA myself).
But the moment that stopped me in my tracks comes near the end of the book. Nooyi had just received the call asking her to become CEO of PepsiCo — not something she’d necessarily been working toward, but an extraordinary honor. She rushed home to tell her family.
She walked in the door, and her mother — who had been watching the kids — didn’t want to hear about it.
“Mother, I have amazing news.”
Her mother looked at her and said, “I don’t care. We need milk.”
And then she said a line I don’t think I’ll ever forget:
“Leave your crown at work Indra. Your family needs milk.”
Hmmm…
That phrase has stayed with me for months. I keep coming back to it.
It doesn’t matter who I am at work. It doesn’t matter what I’m in charge of, the people I lead, or the projects I’m running. When I walk through my front door, I’m a wife and a mom. And outside of those walls, there really doesn’t need to be much talk of the rest.
I think “leave your crown at work” should become a classic phrase — a reminder for every working mom that our first and most important job, our first ministry, is with our family at home.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about our work. What we do there matters. But it’s not the thing that matters most.
With the holidays right around the corner, here’s my challenge — to myself and to you: let’s be fully present with the people at home.
Plan ahead so you can take the time off. Be intentional about it. Put the phone down. Close the laptop.
Leave the crown at work. And put on the mom hat, the wife hat, the sister hat, the friend hat. They may not feel as shiny as the one you wear at the office, but they are the ones that matter most.
Our families don’t need our titles. They need us.
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