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Sometimes the universe shows you a way to meet amazing people, and you just have to follow the path.

Thanks to my blog and my quest to interview working mothers around the world, I got the chance to find Amanda Lamb‘s website. Never in a million years did I think that we would have had the chance to meet face to face. She is a TV reporter, working mom, blogger, book writer and half-marathon runner…in North Carolina, U.S . As for me, I’m a working mom and blogger in the Zurich area in Switzerland.

When I found her website I was very impressed and slightly intimidated. She is a woman of 1000 activities, TV personality, and very well-established writer with 8 published books. I hesitated for a couple of days before contacting her for my project, “Meet Another Working Mom”. But then it would seem that some magic happened: she replied and found time for me within a couple of days in her very busy schedule.

 

Reporter, writer, blogger

We start talking about her writer’s life. She wrote her first book ages ago and, very much like me, the essay was stored safely for a long time in a drawer (yep, at that time there was not a computer folder…). The memoir was about her life as a mother and as a wife. After a careful search, she found an agent in California who believed in her, and she published her first book Smotherhood in 2007. From then on, Amanda wrote crime books, mostly based on real crime cases she followed as a reporter and more memoirs. Currently, she has 8 published books.

In the meantime, she keeps her followers posted about the latest parenting news in the blog – Go and Ask Mom – while working full time as a reporter.

I had been speaking with her for 15 minutes and I was very impressed. This was more than a busy life. How did she manage? Is there time for relaxation in her life?

 

Amanda: “Everyone has a different Zen,”- she tells me with a big smile, – “I like to run, for example, and this gives me energy. While running, I listen to podcasts because I still want to do something useful. I keep busy, and I like to be surrounded by people who have a lot going on. ”

 

Yes, this I can fully understand – in fact, this sounds very much like me.

 

Amanda, the daughter

Every one of us has role model to follow – a woman to look at and admire, someone who can teach us the fundamentals of life. For Amanda, this person was her mother. When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, she took her home and spent the last weeks taking care of her. This is a very poignant story which Amanda shared with the public via a blog and then with a book.

 

“I took a family leave for my mother. When I started to share our journey, I realized that I had lots of followers coming from my TV work. People started to see me as a normal human being, and not like the serious reporter they were used to knowing. I discovered that writing while my mom was ill was important not only for me, but for my followers as well.”

 

Her mother never read her blog, but she was aware of it and listen to the followers’ comments when Amanda was reading it. Watching Amanda speaking about her mother, I see a lot of emotions surfacing, and the most evident is pride.

 

A: “My mother was a lawyer in the ’70s. A force of nature who did everything, because back then she did not had a choice. She taught me that it is very important to have something that is only yours, a project not related to anyone else other then you.  She also supported me to continue to work when my daughter got a severe case of meningitis as a baby. I wanted to leave everything to stay with her. My mother always told me that I could do it, but it is not going to be easy.” 

 

And here I’m facing a grateful daughter praising her working mother. Amanda continues to tell me how important her mother was as a role model for her and how, now, she feels the responsibility to do the same for her 2 daughters.

 

A: “I want my daughters to know that I’m going to be in the wings to support and cheer for them, no matter what they do. I’m raising them to be independent and capable of achieving whatever they want.”

 

Next frontier

Now that her children have grown, Amanda is thinking about the future and her next steps. She is excited to know what is going to happen when her nest will be empty, and how she and her husband will reframe their life. Of course, she is not waiting quietly. Recently, she started a communication consulting business to help people improve their public speaking (“Stage Might” Facebook page) and she is writing two books – one for children and one novel. Of course, she is doing all of this while keeping up her work for the TV network and running half-marathons (check her Instagram, is very inspiring!). To everyone who keeps saying I’m doing too much, I will recommend for them to have a chat with Amanda, as my life is nothing in comparison.

 

I would have liked to continue our conversation, but we were in the middle of the night in Zurich, and suddenly, my baby girl woke up, also waking up her big brother. My interesting conversation about the current book market situation is interrupted, and my time with Amanda is over.

 

I leave my laptop with the feeling that I could have talked for at least another 2 hours, and I could have asked her so much more! I would have loved to learn how to become a good writer like her, as well as get some tips on how to manage it all as a working mother and how to find the Zen. I guess this is going to be for the next midnight call.