What does it mean to have it all? Does it mean you are happy and satisfied with your life and enjoy what you have? Does it mean the ability to register success and progress when you’ve achieved it? Does it mean loving a partner, parenting a child or making an impact in the workplace? What “having it all” means is different for each person and changes from phase to phase of our life.

As I follow the interviews and responses to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” I am struck by the complexities of real life — the life that is much more about juggling than it is about balancing. Known for telling women that they “can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field” they are in, Slaughter, the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, reached a stage in life where she had to rethink this adage and the belief system it fosters. Given a two-year window within which she could return to her position as Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy at Princeton University, Slaughter re-evaluated and decided it would no longer work for her to parent under the required conditions. Her two sons, ages 12 and 14, were suffering as a result of their mother being away all week and home only on the weekend.

Continue reading this article at The Huffington Post.