What if you identify as a Mother?

1999.

It was the end of the century.

While people partied to the artist formerly known as Prince’s song “1999”, I was busy with my career. Not only was I a lawyer, I was the Hollywood Resident Counsel at the Screen Actors Guild and the litigation supervisor. I was helping the “working class” actor get overtime or even proper meals. I was also in denial about being pregnant. I didn’t even think about being a mother until I was hospitalized with a kidney infection and was told by my doctor that I could “loose the baby” in my 8th month of pregnancy.

While I was in the hospital, I started to want to become a mother, and started writing a book to my daughter instead of working on legal briefs. After my baby girl was born, I spent four wonderful months bonding with her.

Before the baby could talk or walk, my Family and Medical Leave Act time was up, I went back to work full-time and full throttle.

I adopted a Hilary Clinton’s Mom philosophy — — — instead of staying at home and baking cookies, I continued to work as a lawyer. I was a member of the triple G — “Go-Girls-Gang”. The triple G girls are moms with careers who work full-time and spend week days away from their children. Sheryl Sandberg is G — Cubed and a Go-Girls-Gang poster mom.

I continued to work as a lawyer up until the day I delivered my second baby — a beautiful boy in July 2001. On 9–11, while I was at home on maternity leave and nursing, I watched twin towers fall like a stack of lego building blocks. The devastating images are forever etched in my mind. Witnessing that day, even only on television, shook me to my core. I, like most everyone else in America, was forever changed.

When I returned to work in November, I was told to fly to New York and to be the legal liason for the investigation of the Screen Actors Guild rerun election. Before I had children, this would have been a dream assignment, but it turned into a nightmare.

I was stopped by security at the airport and targeted as a potential terrorist. Why? Because my breast pump and the wires attached to it were cleverly hidden in the big brief case I put on the conveyor belt. The TSA thought the Breast Pump was a bomb.

As a member of the Go Girls gang, I had little time for my babies. I felt like a mouse on the wheel of never ending work.