{"id":322,"date":"2012-01-30T06:59:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T11:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/?p=322"},"modified":"2012-02-01T06:46:40","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T11:46:40","slug":"interview-with-cindy-pierce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/interview-with-cindy-pierce\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Cindy Pierce"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cindy<\/a>

Cindy and her husband Bruce Lingelbach run Pierce\u2019s Inn in Etna, New Hampshire, where they do most of the housekeeping, maintenance, and cooking. Their children are 9, 11, and 13. Cindy also speaks on college campuses about healthy attitudes toward sex, and does one-woman shows in New England about parenting, sex, and keeping it all balanced. She is the co-author of Finding the Doorbell: Sexual Satisfaction for the Long Haul.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cindy Pierce, speaks about accepting messiness, parental guilt, the value of family meetings, and the joys of being a \u201crighteous imperfectionist\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 You\u2019re juggling a lot.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I go from making beds to skiing with kids to jumping on a plane or scrubbing pots and cooking to reading with kids to stepping on stage. It can be tough when I can see a pot boiling over a few yards behind one of my kid\u2019s crying and needing to process an emotional moment. Or I can feel the dirty toilets calling us when we are out throwing the football.\u00a0It can get sloppy, but we are able to let a lot go to survive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 What do you let go of?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 One thing we loosened up on was our own housecleaning. As innkeepers who clean toilets, we weren\u2019t too interested in scrubbing our own after doing ten at the Inn. So the kids have taken on that chore. Other overwhelmed guilty moms used to admire how I juggled it all so gracefully:\u00a0 “How do you do it? You own an inn, you are a mom of three, you speak, you wrote a book and you keep it all together.”\u00a0 Hah! I used to give a tour of our less than tidy family bathroom, our cluttered office\/mudroom, and our bedroom (living out of laundry baskets). The Martha Stewart wanna-be\u2019s would almost weep with gratitude. I could have charged admission for that tour. I am determined to keep up zero pretenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 How do you deal with the chaos?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I\u2019m not attached to messes.\u00a0 Every time I run to the phone I see 200 things that need fixing.\u00a0 For sanity\u2019s sake, I have to put my blinders on and let that go.\u00a0 Is it better to fix something, or read to my kid?\u00a0 I\u2019ve set the bar low.\u00a0 If it\u2019s out of control, I clean. Otherwise, I\u2019m truly present.\u00a0 I ask myself: am I managing my family, or trying to have a relationship with them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 You hold weekly family meetings.\u00a0 What\u2019s that like, and how does it help keep life running somewhat smoothly?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 We don\u2019t always get to it, but once a week is our goal.\u00a0 I have to give credit to a program called Parenting On Track, by Vicki Hoefle, who got us into this.\u00a0 We start our meetings with each family member verbalizing gratitude for the others.\u00a0 My nine year old, for example, will say, \u201cI really appreciated it when Zander let me play with his friends.\u201d\u00a0 At first these statements were awkward and self-conscious, but now that the kids have come to appreciate hearing something meaningful from the others, they\u2019ve learned to contribute something meaningful, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We use our meetings to assign family contributions – dishes, wood hauling, cleaning of common spaces, bathroom cleaning, etc…Then we solve grievances that the kids record in a special book during the days before weekly meetings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our kids have come to love these meetings. They have become a place where all kinds of truth can fly. \u00a0We each find out who and how we are in the family.\u00a0 Sometimes the kids are uncomfortable with what\u2019s said.\u00a0 But that\u2019s OK\u2014speed bumps can be productive.\u00a0 As parents, we are darn good at laughing at ourselves and admitting where we need help.\u00a0 Now the kids too are empowered to really give us perspective and ideas on how we are doing.\u00a0 They receive feedback with greater ease.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 How do avoid feeling guilty about being away so much, for your speaking?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I\u2019m not like your average woman, in taking on guilt. I think when it comes to children, a little benign neglect is good.\u00a0 When I travel as a speaker, I have no issues about being away from my kids nor does my husband. The kids groove well.\u00a0 When I worked as a teacher, I often saw \u201cdoormat\u201d parents, who put all their brain energy into their kids\u2019 lives.\u00a0 While I try to be fully present with them at certain times, I believe in teaching kids independence.\u00a0 And kids develop stronger relationships with the other parent when one is away.\u00a0 Likewise, they can get a lot from their sitters and other adults.\u00a0 They feel more capable when they are contributing, like making breakfast for the family.\u00a0 We empower them to have a role in the family\u2019s well-being.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: What\u2019s your most important advice for businesspeople who also have children?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 Be present for your kids when you are with them.\u00a0 Some parents feel they\u2019re not truly parenting unless they are doing \u201cfor\u201d their kids and nagging them about something. We can come to think that nagging is how to get things moving forward.\u00a0 How about just sitting there, being fully present?\u00a0 Turn off the computer, and sit on the floor with them to read Goodnight Moon, even if you\u2019ve recited it 20 times in the last three days.\u00a0 Focus fully.\u00a0 If you\u2019re distracted, they\u2019ll smell it.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take long to make a meaningful connection with a child.\u00a0 When you take the time to tune into them, a lot of the behaviors that bug us as parents disappear.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 Your overall philosophy and approach feel healthy to me.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I consider myself a \u201crighteous imperfectionist\u201d. I don’t spend time and energy worrying about what other people think.\u00a0 I am always ready to find the humor and the lessons offered by the setbacks in life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People shouldn\u2019t be so hard on themselves.\u00a0 Imperfectionism is liberating.\u00a0 It gives you so much more brainspace for joyful things.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(If you are interested in Parenting On Track, see their website at <\/em><\/strong>http:\/\/www.parentingontrack.com\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cindy Pierce, speaks about accepting messiness, parental guilt, the value of family meetings, and the joys of being a \u201crighteous imperfectionist\u201d Q:\u00a0 You\u2019re juggling a lot. A:\u00a0 I go from making beds to skiing with kids to jumping on a plane or scrubbing pots and cooking to reading with kids to stepping on stage. It can be tough when I can see a pot boiling over a few yards behind one of my kid\u2019s crying and needing to process an emotional moment. Or I can feel the dirty toilets calling us when we are out throwing the football.\u00a0It can get sloppy, but we are able to let a lot go to survive. Q:\u00a0 What do you let go of? A:\u00a0 One thing we loosened up on was our own housecleaning. As innkeepers who clean toilets, we weren\u2019t too interested in scrubbing our own after doing ten at the Inn. So the kids have taken on that chore. Other overwhelmed guilty moms used to admire how I juggled it all so gracefully:\u00a0 “How do you do it? You own an inn, you are a mom of three, you speak, you wrote a book and you keep it all together.”\u00a0 Hah! I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":486,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}