00:00On my first day back at work, being on a bathroom floor in my designer suit with tears streaming down
00:05my face and breast milk coming out of me, so it's like everything exploded, I was really devastated and really
00:12thinking about, well, how am I going to fulfill all of these other responsibilities in my life if I can't
00:17do something as essential as just pump milk for the baby?
00:21My name is Tiffany Dufu, and my life's work is advancing women and girls. I used to be someone who
00:27was terrified of ever dropping a ball. I used to feel that it meant that I was failing to take
00:33timely action, that I was being irresponsible, that I was disappointing myself and my community and my family, and in
00:41my case, as dramatic as it sounds, the entire black race.
00:45But I learned over time, as I began to drop balls and Armageddon never hit, that we're feeling a lot
00:53of pressure, all of us, to keep all of these balls in the air, and I just decided to reappropriate
00:58the term.
00:58One of the most defining moments for me in my drop-the-ball journey was my first day back at
01:04work after maternity leave.
01:05I started the day with all of this hope and optimism and promise that I was going to be this
01:11badass working mom who did everything right at home and everything right at work, and that illusion lasted for about
01:17six hours.
01:18I was so busy running from meeting to meeting on my first day back, that I forgot to do something
01:24really essential, which was to pump milk for my baby, and it wasn't until I was sitting in a meeting
01:30with really engorged breasts and milk seeping through my silk blouse into my nice, pretty suit jacket, that I realized
01:38I needed to get up and do something about it right away.
01:42Unfortunately, the room that I had negotiated to pump milk turned out to be just a bathroom, which, by the
01:48way, is illegal now.
01:49You have to, workplaces have to provide a healthy place for women to pump milk, and it was basically a
01:55comedy of errors.
01:56I'm in the bathroom trying to pump the milk.
01:59It's not really working because I've never dealt with engorged breasts that the pump can't latch onto, and so I
02:06ended up having to express my baby's milk into the toilet.
02:09And on my first day back at work, being on a bathroom floor in my designer suit with tears streaming
02:15down my face and breast milk coming out of me, so it's like everything exploded.
02:20And one of the most important lessons that I learned in my drop-the-ball journey is that it's not
02:24supposed to be easy, and that if you want something that you've never had before, you're going to have to
02:30do something that you've never done before.
02:32I used to have a really bad habit of something that I call imaginary delegation.
02:37This is when you assign someone a task and you fully expect them to complete the task, and when they
02:43don't do it, you get frustrated or angry, but you never tell them that you assigned them the task.
02:50So I had to figure out how to go from imaginary delegation to what I call delegating with joy, which
02:56is really putting the task at hand or the support that you need into some context that reflects a higher
03:04purpose.
03:05So for me, dropping the ball now means that I really have let go of unrealistic expectations of doing it
03:11all, and I figured out how to engage people in my life so that I can be my best self.
