Hi, Karin:)

Powerful and useful post, using a metaphor that many of us can relate to easily.    Your fourth skill "Juggle to Survive" might well be the best description of daily life as a parent that I have read.    Much of value exists when we recognize how our skills from one part of our life can be useful in other areas and your post helps us do this beautifully.

Your post did raise a question in my mind about how general this analogy is.  My experience as a parent was that the whole world seemed to be families with kids, but when I looked at the statistics, I found something surprisingly.  According to the 2012 U. S. government report "America's Families and Living Arrangments", only 20% of households include a married couple with children and including single parents with children only adds 9% more.  Although I am sure a significant number of parents live apart from their children, but still function in the parental role, this is still a much smaller number than I was expecting.

... which brings up a somewhat tongue-in-cheek question:  Where do the single folks get leadership inspiration from:)?

John

PS:  Here is a link to the report I mentioned - long and dull, but with fascinating number-crunching:  http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf.