The Messy Middle - Amy Shoenthal
Season 1, Episode 3
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in life were a straight line, up and to the left? Always moving forward, always finding success. If only that were true. Author and Forbes contributor Amy Shoenthal has dedicated her professional and personal life to exploring the trajectory of our life and trying to understand more about how we overcome those setbacks. As a mom, her work is even more important now than ever before.
Listen below or on your favorite platform:
Show Notes
About Amy Shoenthal:
Pre-order THE SETBACK CYCLE, available in March 2024
Read Amy’s articles for Forbes here.
Learn more about Amy’s work here.
About Amy Kugler:
Check out Amy's website and writing.
Sign up for Unscripted, Amy’s bi-monthly newsletter.
About the Show: “And More with Amy Kugler” is a production of BEAM, a venture dedicated to amplifying the untold stories of motherhood and building public/private/advocacy partnerships to shift policy for moms nationally and globally.
For more information about BEAM, visit welcometobeam.com.
To financially support, visit BEAM’s crowdfunding page.
Share your own perspective on BEAM’s website.
Transcript
Amy Shoenthal:
No matter what age, no matter where you live geographically, everyone's in a different season of their lives. As some of us are barreling towards like 40, 50, these certain milestone ages. We're thinking like, oh, I need to get all these things accomplished by this arbitrary deadline. While other people are kind of like, you know what? I'm done running the race. I just want to take a back seat. I just want to sit down my ambition. I need to take a break from my ambition. I just want to find balance. And that's all good. No matter where you are, it's okay. And if you're an ambitious person who doesn't feel particularly ambitious in this moment, that doesn't completely redefine your identity, it just means that you're having a season.
Amy Kugler:
This is And More with Amy Kugler. It's a show where we'll explore all of the stories about motherhood and caregiving and how they can be a driving force for change. We'll talk about the challenging and hilarious moments that we rarely say out loud, and we'll find a way forward that lifts us all up. Let's get started.
Hey everyone, it's Amy and I hope you have your coffee. I know I do. And I just wanted to share something I've been thinking a lot about. I'm thinking a lot about the pivot. The one you come up against a roadblock, whether that's at home or in the workplace, and you have to find a way through. They are messy, messy sometimes, but ultimately they turn out okay. I've experienced them. I actually was let go from a job in the brink of a global pandemic during unrelenting childcare needs. I look back at that time now, I know it was the most challenging feat to the fire, a moment I've ever faced. And yet somehow we're here standing. So I wanted to think about what does it look like to be a mom in the midst of multiple pivots and setbacks? And there's no one better that I know to come in to talk about this than Amy.
So lemme tell you a little bit about who she is and then we'll welcome her to the show. Amy Schoenthal is a journalist, author, and marketing executive with nearly two decades of experience, and she takes her marketing expertise with her formal journalism training and the way she approaches storytelling is what I love. It's a talk contributor for Forbes women. She shines a spotlight on those who have been historically underestimated, yet are doing the work to solve society's biggest problems. I'm all for that. And I will say that we are just cheering her because her book, the Setback Cycle is out next year. It is so exciting. Plus she also has a daughter of her own. She lives in Queens and also has a children's book called A Magical Day at Sunnyside because why not? So let's Amy to the show. Amy, thank you so much for being here.
Amy Shoenthal:
Thank you so much for having me. That was such a lovely intro. I sound so impressive when you talk about me.
Amy Kugler:
Well, there's nothing but love. And as we're coining this, the Amy and Amy show, so you will hear two different Amy voices, which one you normally hear, the new one. She will be back on the show many times, I'm sure. So get used to it. The Amy and Amy show were here. So as this show is really that conversation around the many different roles that we play, I'd love to talk a little bit about what your path to motherhood was like, right? And the stories that define you as a mom and more.
Amy Shoenthal:
Yeah, that's a big question, but I'll start at the beginning. So I wasn't necessarily totally sure I was going to be a mom or that I wanted motherhood. I had this big exciting life in New York City and I had a lot of freedom. And it wasn't until I started dating a guy who told me he wasn't sure if he wanted children. That made me realize, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, wait. I definitely want a child. And so yeah, after a lot of discussion and soul searching and really having to figure out where do I see my life going? This thing that I just assumed would fall into place, but I had to consciously make the decision of do I stay with this person? Do I leave? Do I blow up my life? What do I do? And it was many years of debating and deciding, and ultimately we decided to stay together and get married and have the one child, which we did. And let me just tell you that these two people, myself and my husband, who were not necessarily sure if we wanted a child, we are the best parents ever. My husband is the best dad ever. I love motherhood. I can say I'm pretty good at it, even though I work and I do a lot of stuff. I'm a pretty good mom.
Amy Kugler:
I love this. I mean, own it. You are a really good mom, I see from afar, but also she looks loved and you guys look like you're having fun. And that is really all the battle. That is it.
Amy Shoenthal:
Yeah, it's
Amy Kugler:
Fun. And also it's pretty empowering to sit there and say, I didn't know if I wanted to be that.
Amy Shoenthal:
I think it's a choice. It should be a choice. And it was a choice for me, luckily. And I think when you go into something like parenting, you don't go into it lightly and you become determined to be the best parent you could be. And yes, it's exhausting. Yes, it's heartbreaking at times, but when you go into it that consciously and you have someone else who went into it very consciously, we were aware of what we were getting into. You know what I mean? A lot of our friends had kids before we did. We came to the decision very and very intentionally. So I think that helps with everything, not just parenting. Thinking through things is a good idea.
Amy Kugler:
It's always good. And it's also one of those things where you're like, I'm hoping that I'm seeing all of the factors here because you and I are pretty logical people. We want to know all the variables that then parenthood throws you so many variables that you never even imagined. And so I think those are the moments though that as you talk about in your work is where it shines, where you kind of are refined and shined. So tell me about a time when you were, especially as a parent, when you really had to make some pivots and understand what setbacks look like as a mom.
Amy Shoenthal:
Well, if you're a mom, you probably have five setbacks a day. I don't know. I've had to get a kid ready for preschool this morning. We had to get into the city for an allergist appointment and sit there for four hours while we did a food challenge. By the way, she's no longer allergic to pistachio. Big, exciting day. Praise.
Yeah. But I mean, there's a setback right there When you find out your kid has food allergies and then all of a sudden everything is just totally blown up. And you have this whole new world of things to worry about, which parents don't need more things to worry about. There's enough. You don't have to add food allergies into the mix. And then you have to worry every time you go to a restaurant, you have to go to send them to school. You have to learn. It's basically another full-time job on top of everything else. And so taking them to and from the appointments blocking out your day for these four hour food challenges, I mean, it's bonkers, but you have to do it because there's all these really amazing treatments. Actually, I know this is not what the podcast is about, but there's always treatments. If your kid does have food allergies, there's ways to help them outgrow it. And if you can find an allergist in your area that does oral immunotherapy, we started doing this when my daughter was, I think under two years old. She's going to be five next month, and there's a chance that by next week she will have outgrown all of her allergies. And she had five big ones. I mean, it's been a journey and I would be happy to talk about it, but it's just talk about a setback.
Amy Kugler:
Talk about a setback, and
Amy Shoenthal:
Talk about an obstacle and a thing that just totally dominates your life and contributes to all the anxiety that you already have about all the other things you have to deal with. Being a parent of a kid with food allergies is certainly, it's a thing. It's a thing.
Amy Kugler:
It's a, it's a challenge. I mean, as a person who has had food allergies throughout my life, it is a thing I can't imagine. I have a lot of fear around that with my own kids.
Amy Shoenthal:
It's terrifying because
Amy Kugler:
It's the stories that I know of. Okay, well, I almost died because we had peanuts. It's a
Amy Shoenthal:
Thing. It's horrible.
Amy Kugler:
It's horrible. But like you mentioned, parents and mothers especially are navigating enough. We're navigating a caregiving crisis. We're navigating a formula crisis. We're navigating equal pay. We're trying to get to equal, we're trying to, or just equity in general. We're navigating so much. So when we add those little things to the mix, it sometimes feels like, I don't know, can we break for a little bit?
Amy Shoenthal:
And when you have to take off of work every couple of weeks to take your kid to a four hour allergist appointment, it really puts a whole dent in all those things we're fighting for. So yeah, talk about a reversal in progress.
Amy Kugler:
I know, I know. Well, and as we talk about the stories that make up our lives, both as moms, and I know you've heard a ton of these stories right through your work, both at Forbes and through writing through the column at Forbes and in your work with your own business too, and in the marketing side, I'm curious, from the conversations you're having, especially with moms, what are the themes that you are seeing come up around conversations about ambition, motherhood, handling it all, doing it all right? And I'm using air quotes there. What are the conversations that are coming up for you and the people that you're talking to?
Amy Shoenthal:
Everyone's different. Everyone, no matter what age, no matter where you live geographically, everyone's in a different season of their lives. I think as some of us are barreling towards 40, 50, these certain milestone ages, we're thinking like, oh, I need to get all these things accomplished by this arbitrary deadline. And then there's some people. So you kind of go into speed up mode and get it all done mode because you kind of feel like time is running out, as morbid as that sounds. It's how a lot of people feel during this point in life. While other people are kind of like, you know what? I'm done running the race. I just want to take a back seat. I just want to sit down my ambition. I need to take a break from my ambition. I just want to find balance. And that's all good. And I think that's the conversation I am having with a lot of people about ambition that no matter where you are, it's okay.
And if you're an ambitious person who doesn't feel particularly ambitious in this moment, that doesn't completely redefine your identity. It just means that you're having a season and that's what a season is. There's behavior and there's identity, and those are two very different things. So if you're exhibiting a certain behavior right now, it does not define you. And I think people forget that a lot. And they start to feel, you said you were laid off at some point. I was laid off from my full-time job and I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I knew that would probably happen eventually, but it still shook up my identity even though I knew it was coming. It's these things. And then I looked around and I was like, so what if I got laid off? I have this huge career. I built a career that was just one job. So I think there's a job and there's a career, there's behavior, there's identity, there's ambition, and there's the seasons of ambition, and it's all very cyclical.
Amy Kugler:
Totally. I love, and I'm going to trademark it for you, seasons of ambition. And I think because often when we're sitting here in the thick of it, we can only see what we have right in front of our nose. And you're focused on the fact that all these other people seem like they've got it all figured out and they've got it together. And the key takeaway is, none of us do except for you're the best parent, which we're going to claim, which I think is totally true. And it all comes with seasons. It all ebbs and flows, and that's so hard to remember in the moment. How do you remember that in the moment in your day to day?
Amy Shoenthal:
I mean, I have my moments where I forget, I have all this, I've been spending the past few years researching how people work through setbacks. And those setbacks can be personal, professional, societal, cultural. There's all kinds of setbacks that you have. And yet, when I find myself in one, I do not properly go through the setback cycle as I have written it. So just because you are an expert at something does not mean you are always exhibiting the exact right behaviors as you have defined them. And so I think, how do I remember that? There are seasons of ambition. I don't always, and like I said, when I was laid off from my job, I felt my identity was shaken up. I probably felt it for a shorter amount of time, then I would've had not prepared for this moment and done all this research and had all these tools at my disposal and had a very healthy network of people to go to who parroted back to me when I told them the news. Well, you knew. You always said that was going to happen one day. You always said, women over 40 in marketing get sort of optimized out because that's a real thing that people have said, and you've been building your side career with that in mind. And so yeah, it didn't make it easier in the moment though.
Amy Kugler:
No, but it's a nice reminder. Well,
Amy Shoenthal:
Nice reminder.
Amy Kugler:
It's a nice reminder. Sometimes we got to take our own medicine
Amy Shoenthal:
At the end of the You do. Yeah.
Amy Kugler:
And have it parroted back to us, the community that knows us really well. I think that's really powerful
Amy Shoenthal:
And you have to give yourself grace when you mess that up and you realize, oops, I should have known better. Oh yeah. I can't fast forward through this. Literally just wrote a book about how you can't fast forward through it. But here I am with the desire to just kind of speed it all along. And I mean, that is why I wrote the book, because I understand that we all have the desire to just get out of the icky thing as soon as possible, and that's not really productive, as you know.
Amy Kugler:
That's not really productive. Well, I want to talk a little bit more about the setback cycle and the conversations that you've had around that book and the work around that book in just a second. We're going to take a break. This is And More with Amy Kugler, and I'm here with Amy Shoenthal.
Amy Kugler:
Hey, it's Amy. So before we fill this spot with an incredible sponsor that we've got lined up, I wanted to come to you with a quick ask and more with Amy. Kugler is a production of Beam. It's a venture dedicated to amplifying the untold stories of motherhood and building public private partnerships along with collaborations, with advocacy organizations to shift policy for moms nationally and globally. Ultimately, we're changing the narrative of motherhood one shared experience at a time. And I need your help in one of two ways. First, support Beam in our efforts through our crowdfunding campaign. You can find more about how you can help us reach our very big goal at welcometobeam.com. You can also, while you're there, share your story. We want to hear from you. Go to welcome to beam.com. That's W E L C O M E T O B E A m.com, and click on support for our crowdfunding campaign or share your story directly on the website. Onward and upward, my friends.
Amy Kugler: All right, we're back here. This is And More with Amy Kugler, and you've got the Amy and Amy show because I'm back here with Amy Shoenthal. She is a journalist and author and has a book coming out almost available for pre-order called The Setback Cycle. This is exciting. You've been working on this book for a while.
Amy Shoenthal:
Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, books take a long time. As you know,
Amy Kugler:
Books take a long time and they take a lot of energy. So tell me a little bit about what the Setback Cycle is all about. We alluded to it just a little bit earlier, but tell us about what the book is all about and how you went about gathering these stories to put it all together.
Amy Shoenthal:
Well, it actually happened in the reverse order of that. I was writing articles just frantically because I was finding so many stories that were so compelling and I couldn't get enough. And I sort of got addicted to interviewing founders about their career journeys and really digging into why they built what they did and how they created it. And I kept seeing that the part of their story that really made their face light up and their energy totally changed in the interview was when they started talking about how they climbed out of some sort of setback. That's what led them to whatever big thing they did that I was interviewing them for Forbes about. I kept seeing this over and over. The more you do something, the more you see patterns and trends and themes, and it was more than just, oh, everyone was learning from their mistakes because it wasn't always a mistake or post-traumatic growth because it wasn't always from a trauma.
And I realized that the common denominator and all of these stories was that they were working towards something got bumped backwards and then had to scramble out of that and work towards something else. But where they eventually landed was even better than they could have predicted when they were working towards the first thing. That is the definition of a setback, a reversal in progress. So it's when you're bumped off the path and you have to really get creative, and that's where innovation is born, and that's why setbacks lead. It sounds sort of cliche, but that is why setbacks lead to success. And I wanted to understand, okay, how did you all do this? Was there a playbook? You were all sharing? Why did this happen and what's the psychology behind it? Why does this happen? And so I went on this journey and I talked to a couple of executive coaches and I talked to a few psychologists. I talked to a neuroscientist and I read all the business books, all the business psychology books, and I just spent two years deep in this research trying to understand why setbacks were this very common occurrence that led people somewhere unexpected and very exciting and gave them this moment of clarity. And that's why the book became the Setback Cycle, because I created a framework with all these experts that shows how people work through the cycle and come out the other side.
Amy Kugler:
Totally. I love this because at the end of the day, when you're having these conversations, we often skip over the mess in the middle. We often sit there and say, okay, well, I started here and then this happened, and it's a chain of events, and then it's all get really, really murky until you get to the end and you're like, and I have it all figured out,
Amy Shoenthal:
Right? Yeah, of course.
Amy Kugler: But that's not the good stuff.
Amy Shoenthal:
It's not the good stuff and it's not the interesting stuff. I don't care about the trust fund kid who started some coffee company because his mom's friends all invested in it. That guy didn't work through anything or come to any interesting insights. I want to know about the overlooked founder who nobody believed in because of whatever reason, and then they came all of these obstacles to get to where they were. That's an interesting story. I'm not trying to glorify their pain in any way, but those are the most creative people. You know what I mean? They are the most creative people or the people who have had to innovate and get creative and work around things because their lives haven't been easy and they've had to figure some stuff out to get to where they are. Those are the stories I want to tell. And I want to talk about the messy middle because that is also the most relatable. I don't have many millions of dollars to build my business, but I want to start this thing. Oh, wait, that's an interesting story about how this person worked around having no funding and then built this incredible business.
Amy Kugler:
Yes. And we want to hear those stories. I think we're also, as a society, we love the underdog story. We do love, I cheer in World Cup too. I was cheering for the Underdogs and Team U S A, to be honest. But it's like I love those stories and I wouldn't say it's not underdog, it's just underestimated.
Amy Shoenthal:
Because underestimated has
Amy Kugler:
The potential, right. And I mean, I've heard this from Arlan Hamilton all the time. It's like, don't underestimate me because I will find five different ways to make this work because of that scrappy resourcefulness. But again, your stories are in the middle of the muck, which is where we shine.
Amy Shoenthal:
Exactly.
Amy Kugler:
When you were digging into all of these stories for the book, were there any that you can share with us, any that were super fun or your favorite story?
Amy Shoenthal:
I don't have a favorite story. There's no way anyone's ever going to get that out of me making a favorite kid. Yeah, exactly. I believe there's about 18 stories in the book that really, because you have to kind of go in depth. So this isn't the nonfiction book that really goes into the psychology and then has snippets of people's stories. You really do get to know them. You would get to know a character of a novel, but they all go through this similar process, but they're all very, very different. So for example, a woman named Blessing Aian, she created Mother, honestly, you know her now. It's called MH Work Life, and she is brilliant. She was a chemical engineering college. She graduated with a chemical engineering degree. She was starting her job at DuPont Energy Fortune, I think it was like a Fortune 100 company at the time.
And she was so pumped and she was ambitious. We talked about ambition. No one was more ambitious than blessing. At the beginning of her career, she was ready to go, and she had also just had her first child that year that she graduated college. And she just figured, well, I have all the credentials. I'm ready to work. I'll figure out childcare. But she was an immigrant who had no family in this country, and she was a single mom. And the lessons she learned that year were very transformative. She could not find childcare. She had to rely on the kindness of her neighbors. And when she saw how little the company she was working at was able to support her in her needs at that time, this many years ago, she just had this awakening of how do people do this? I can't do it. And she wrote a couple, wrote a couple questions on a Post-it note, how are we having children and working at the same time? She put it on Instagram, she went to sleep. When she woke up the next morning, she had hundreds of comments and she realized she was not the only one struggling with this. Yes, her story and her particular journey may have been unique, but she was not the only one struggling with this. So I say leave it to a single mom who has a chemical engineering degree who is part of many marginalized groups. She's a black woman, she's a single mom, she's first generation immigrant, and that's the person that's going to figure this out. Right,
Amy Kugler:
Exactly. So she
Amy Shoenthal:
Created a whole system and software and a community, and now she has a whole conference that she hosts every year, and she has many brand partners, and that's the person that we need to sort of invest in so that they can figure this out on a much bigger scale.
Amy Kugler:
I love, I love her story and I love this is exactly, again, that messy middle, but these are the conversations that we need to have and leave it to her, leave it to those who are underestimated to really chart a path forward because what we've had isn't working. What we have isn't not working. So we need that and we need those examples. I love this. Go ahead.
Amy Shoenthal:
No, that's it. That's it.
Amy Kugler:
I just love
Amy Shoenthal:
It. I was like,
Amy Kugler:
I want her on the show.
Amy Shoenthal:
I want to talk with her. She would be a great guest. She would be a great guest.
Amy Kugler:
And for those of you listening, we're going to have in the show notes, I'll link to her and Mother Mh work life, right? Mh. So that way you can check that out. At the end of the day, what's one of the biggest lessons that you have in writing this book?
Amy Shoenthal:
Lessons about setbacks or lessons about writing a book,
Amy Kugler:
Lessons about setbacks. We'll go
Amy Shoenthal:
To regular. We can talk about that a lot. Well, there's no greater process riddled with more setbacks than trying to get a book published, but we can talk about that one day. I think the biggest takeaway from the book is kind of what we alluded to before, which is you can't rush through it. You need to deal with it. You need to acknowledge whatever happened, whether it was your fault, someone else's fault, a system that just didn't work for you. You can throw blame, you can feel shame. You can get angry. That's fine. Feel your feelings, do your thing. But you can't skip over it like I have wanted to many times during a setback. I just want to get over it and move on. And you can't have to at least teach yourself or try to understand why this setback made you feel this way. And there are tools in the book that help you figure out what you can learn from it and move on. No's pretending. No one's going to go into a setback and say, oh, yay, I get to go through the cycle. That first part is not fun. The first two phases establishing you're in a setback and embracing the process, not fun, but if you do it properly, you can get to explore and emerge, which are the last two phases of the cycle. And those are the fun ones.
Amy Kugler:
I love it. I love it. Amy, I'm so grateful that you are here and that you are chatting about this. And for those of you, again, definitely pre-order the setback cycle. We'll put it in the show notes. Amy, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach out?
Amy Shoenthal:
I have a website, amy schoenthal.com. And I'm Amy sho, a m y s h o on Instagram, Twitter, X, whatever, and LinkedIn, I guess
Amy Kugler:
Whatever on the web, whatever works somewhere. Well, thank you so much.
Amy Kugler:
I could talk to Amy for hours, and frankly we did. After we finished recording this episode, we continued the conversation, so hopefully I'm able to share some of that at a later time. I love how she talks about her motherhood as a choice and the fact that it is empowering to be able to choose whether or not you're a mom. Her journey to motherhood looks different than mine. It also looks different than a lot of my friends, and all of that's okay because again, we have the ability to choose that is important. There are four key takeaways that I have from our time together. First is there is no deadline when it comes to getting to what we want in our lives, whether that's professionally or personally. And it's hard to remember that, especially when, for me, it feels like life is in this race that we have to just achieve and do and be. The second is that breaks from ambition or ambitious pursuits are totally okay. Now, this isn't something that I have figured out because I very much feel like I am in a season of ambition and I want to go, go and do, and there's a lot that sometimes feels like it holds me back. But really, we do have seasons of ambition. Amy was right.
The third is that even when we know where we're going, obviously everything can shift, but here's the key. It's just a shift in our position or our direction, not our identity. And lastly, even when you write the book about making setbacks and managing them, you still have to practice what you preach. I loved Amy's authenticity and vulnerability in that, and I hope that we can think about ways that we're managing setbacks, both for ourselves, for our families, for our loved ones, for our friends, but also just more importantly how we're reframing what setbacks truly are in our minds, and looking at the pivot moving forward. I hope you can take these parts of your conversation into your day today, in this week, and until next week, my friends onward and upward.
Before I go, I'd love to hear from you have a story that we should talk about. For Anne Moore, click the share your Story button on. Welcome to beam.com, and make sure you're signed up for our newsletter there to get all the information about upcoming events, giveaways, and more. You can also follow us on Instagram at Beam for Moms. That's b e a m, the number four M O M S. I'd love to shout from the rooftops from my team who makes this beautiful show possible. Special thanks to Stacey Harris, without whom the entirety of beam would have been just a fleeting thought. Of course, Dave Nelson, the man behind the mic, and all the production for all these things. Benny Mathers, our producer for the KK and w support and graphic Design by the Inimitable Sullivan and Sullivan Studios. And I cannot forget my Dave, Brendan, and Evie, the trio that pushes me always to be more myself. To all of Beam's founding members, we are eternally grateful. Thank you for your unwavering belief that the power of our stories can make a difference. And to you, my gorgeous listeners and guests, we love you. Thank you for trusting us with your stories and your time. It would mean the world to us if you'd follow rate or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get these stories. And also share it with friends, the ones that want to hear it. Until next week, onward and upward, my friends. We'll see you then.
