Like many others in their field, critical care nurses Danielle Moody and Bethany Gleason are each juggling a fast-paced career with a busy home life. In this conversation, Danielle and Bethany discuss how their marriages keep them centered and offer some advice for managing a good work-life balance.
Danielle Moody:
Maybe two or three weeks into meeting my husband, he said to me, "What would be your perfect man?" And I kind of half jokingly, but not really said, "I would love to have a house husband, because I hate housework." And strangely enough now, he does the laundry, he does the dishes, he does the food shopping and he cleans the house most of the time. So it allows me to focus on the things that I feel like I'm passionate about and that I enjoy doing. Like I'm working on extra projects at work and feeling like I can go to work and help the team on the clinical floor without worrying about "am I going to have clothes, am I going to have a clean house?" He's just my rock.
Bethany Gleason:
My husband is my rock, too. But we are in the same profession, so I think that there's challenges with that because we both have crazy schedules. We both have struggles going on, and we understand each other's struggles. But at the same time, I'm like, "If one more employee calls you right before we're going to bed, I'm going to scream."
Danielle Moody:
You hit on something that's kind of interesting. I feel like nursing is one of those 24/7 careers. You never really turn it off. You're in the grocery store and someone collapses, you know it's your job to go ahead and help them. I was out to dinner a few years ago with my husband for my birthday celebration, and right there, someone collapsed and I was doing CPR for 40 minutes.
Bethany Gleason:
How do you not let it consume you?
Danielle Moody:
That's a good question. That's a very good question. I've made some rules for myself that I have to follow. Like I work Sunday nights, and I don't do anything work-related on Monday. I take the time to sleep. I don't look at my phone if I can avoid it. I also make sure that my husband and I have plans like on a Saturday, so that I can't do something for somebody else. How about you?
Bethany Gleason:
One of the main things my husband and I have started to do is really take time for ourselves and to go on vacations. And not only go on vacations without bringing work along, but also once a year go on vacation that's just him and me, and not our 3-year-old. As much as I love my 3-year-old, we have to take time for us to just be together and not have that responsibility. And I've also done more limit setting to myself like, "I'm not going to check my work email multiple times during the day." And if someone really needs to get ahold of me, then they should have my personal number.
Danielle Moody:
Deciding to put yourself first is not a bad thing. Because if you're focused on where your passions lie, then you're really being the most efficient version of you that you can be.
This conversation is provided courtesy of StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. www.storycorps.org