Mom on a Mission

Imagine entering a very prestigious career—perhaps becoming a brain surgeon—yet feeling unappreciated, like you had settled for less. Imagine how you would feel at cocktail parties, if each time you told someone you were a foreign diplomat, they would reply, flatly, “Oh,” and turn their attention to someone else. Or imagine if you had accepted the job of astronaut and were about to embark on a trip to save a space traveler stranded on Mars—but you had never received an aerospace education.

Those scenarios are what new mom Hannah Keeley saw for herself and other at-home moms: women engaged in an important career, but disrespected and undertrained, and as a result struggling with depression, anxiety, and stress. “I was there, I was completely there,” she admits. “I had three children, I was depressed, swimming in debt, couldn’t see a way out, my home was cluttered, I was unhappy, frustrated, out of shape, in a sweatshirt and ponytail all day long. I knew this was not how I was supposed to live…, so I kind of just whipped my own butt in shape, from the inside out. I realized what was most important and got my philosophy straight, and everything just kind of worked out from there.”

To share her new vision with other moms, Hannah started a newsletter, “Home by Choice.” This led to magazine articles, to a book, and more recently to public television’s first reality show, Hannah Help Me.

“There’s still so much that needs to be done with how moms are so discredited,” Hannah says. Her mission is to change that, in part by educating moms.

“There’s no training for motherhood,” Hannah says. “I think that’s what leads to so much frustration, and to the feelings of being overwhelmed that a lot of these moms are feeling, because they’re thrust into a career that they have not been prepared for adequately.”

One of Hannah’s resources is her web site, HannahKeeley.com, with a multitude of articles on a variety of topics, including the obvious - family and children - plus beauty and style, healthy living, home and garden, self improvement, money management, sex and marriage, and more. It also offers recipes, a blog, and other resources for a better family life.

She has published one book - Hannah Keeley’s Total Mom Makeover: The Six-Week Plan to Completely Transform Your Home, Health, Family, and Life - and has one more in the works.

On her public TV reality show, Hannah spends two days helping moms “at the end of their rope.” She keeps in touch with the moms afterwards, too, to keep them on track. In fact, she even took the six moms on a tropical retreat. One of the moms said to Hannah afterwards, “I’ve never ever felt this inspired to be a mom. I’ve always wanted to be a mom but I never felt inspired to be a mom till today….” Those are words Hannah would like to hear from many moms, not just the six on her show.

Hannah’s guidance comes with great credibility. She now has seven children, ages three through 16, all of whom she homeschools. When her husband, Blair, was unemployed for two years, they struggled with debt. Even now, a household of nine makes economizing a necessity. They have a small house for their large brood, but that’s okay—not only do they enjoy the closeness (“You can’t go down the hall without touching someone you love,” Hannah explains), they appreciate that a balanced budget means less stress.

As important as Hannah’s tips and tricks are, they aren’t the soul of Hannah’s message. Instead, the key is the attitude. It’s deciding that family is what matters most and giving them your best. It’s knowing that by having children, “You’ve made a commitment on a spiritual level that’s not about you, that you’ve decided to give of yourself for what you’re going to leave behind.” It’s seeing every day “as an investment, that every moment counts…. It’s not like the decisions are made in the big pictures, the years; they’re made in the one-minute and the five-minute segments. ‘Yeah, I can read you that story.’ Or ‘Yeah, let’s work on that project together,’ or ‘Yeah, I’ll help you with your Brit Lit paper.’ It’s just knowing that this moment, right now, that I’m faced with, this challenge, is not going to get the best of me.”

Although she acknowledges the reports on a mother’s financial worth—the sum of her work as a housekeeper, chauffeur, babysitter, teacher—Hannah sees such information detracting from what’s truly important. “If you’re focused on the external, then you will never, ever be content or satisfied in your role. You’ve got to have that internal drive…. We’re worth so much more than that…. It’s what we’re leaving behind. We’re changing the world.” 

Hannah doesn’t forget this attitude when she attends to her work outside, always putting parenthood first. “I’ve told everyone I’ve worked with, anytime I’ve been a spokesperson, they know my family’s my first career and you’re going to get the leftovers. It’s going to be at the end of the day, or it’s going to be on the weekend.”

Hannah’s husband shares that commitment to family, giving them priority time after work, and taking time off when Hannah is away filming segments for Hannah Help Me.

“He knows how important it is,” Hannah says, “and he shares the same passions and philosophies that I share. We have been through the fire; we know how difficult it is for families. We know how hard it can be—but it doesn’t have to be that way. We found a better way, so we’re hoping we can spread the word.”

Although Hannah wants moms to feel affirmed in their choice of making motherhood their first career, she affirms the importance of outside responsibilities, too. Her experience has taught her some lessons there as well. Early in her split career as mom and writer, she tried to slip family and homemaking in around the edges. It didn’t work.

“When I feel like I need that fulfillment [of an outside career], I never get it,” she says about her journey, “but when I get back to what’s important my fulfillment comes out of home. I’ve been down that road, it’s really cool. I’m going to do this, do that, I’m going to write more; and every time I went after that, the fulfillment never came…. I think that’s why we strive so much, because there is no internal fulfillment, there’s always, ‘Well what is that next step?’”

Instead, Hannah suggests, a person needs to examine her motivations. “I call it ‘finding your why’—‘Why am I doing this?’ If it’s your career, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Is it so I will feel more affirmed, so that I will feel more accomplished? Am I lacking?”

On the other hand, she continues, “I find when my first priority is family and home, I’m doing it for a reason other than what you can see. It’s for what my kids will be doing when they’re my age. It’s not about me. I think that’s where a lot of moms have problems who are trying to balance a lot, we have to realize it isn’t about us, we’re players in a much larger game, and if we can see the eternal aspect of it, then all of a sudden, we do have that fulfillment, that we’re in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.”

For Hannah, the time she is devoting to her family is worth the time she’s lost in the workforce. She acknowledges the struggle that single moms have, and admits that any parent who chooses family instead of career falls behind on skills and can find it difficult to play catch up later. “But if that’s a mistake,” she declares, “I’d much rather make that mistake than to make the mistake of missing out on that time that my kids needed me the most, because that’s irreparable. You’ll never have that again.”

Woven throughout Hannah’s message is her emphasis on spirituality. She speaks of family devotion time, of God’s guidance, of faith.

Perhaps the most important mark of Hannah’s credibility is seeing her at home with her family. Although the house is clean, it’s not immaculate—it’s comfortable and lived in. Theirs is “the noisiest house around,” Hannah claims, with sounds of conversation, laughter, and music. Guitar music emanates from the basement—practice from someone’s music lessons—but it later becomes evident that the practice is bolstered by siblings playing the parts of percussionist and “bodyguard.” The questions Hannah fields range from letter identification from her youngest and British literature questions from her oldest. The children are polite, articulate, and friendly, with the visitor, their mom, and each other. An energetic atmosphere of fun pervades the home.

Although Hannah Keeley would never put her children in front of the public eye like Jon and Kate Plus Eight (“No way! My kids are kids. I don’t want a camera in front of their face all the time…. This is a sacred home”), the Keeleys would make a great new twist on the family reality show: Hannah and Blair Plus Seven: A Home Made in Heaven. It probably wouldn’t work, though, as there is too little of one of drama’s most important elements: conflict!