Weekender #182

📝 Can you back out after accepting a job offer? What career experts say.

💰 Gen X women say they’ll need over $2 million to retire comfortably.

🍓 Eat with the seasons using this month-by-month guide to fruits and veggies.

🔑 Unlock smarter hiring with the best ATS.

Grief doesn’t announce itself politely.

It shows up uninvited, in the middle of a workday, in the hallway between meetings, in the silence after a feeding, when your hands are full and your heart is already heavy.

When both of my parents became terminally ill, my life split down the middle. Half of me was in hospital rooms—learning medications, managing symptoms, holding their hands through the unbearable. The other half was wiping sticky toddler hands, teaching phonics to my students, and faking smiles so no one would worry. I was in my twenties, with a one-year-old on my hip, a three-year-old who needed bedtime stories, and two dying parents who still needed their daughter.

There was no blueprint for this. No manual for how to be everything for everyone while quietly falling apart.

So if you’re reading this while balancing caretaking, work, motherhood—or all three—this is for you.

You’re allowed to not be okay

I became an expert in emotional compartmentalization. One moment I was helping my mother sip water through a straw. An hour later, I was standing in front of a classroom pretending I hadn’t just cried in the car. At home, I put on my “fun mom” voice for my babies. They didn’t need my pain. And I didn’t give myself space to feel it.

You don’t have to pretend it’s fine. You don’t have to keep performing. Your grief, your overwhelm—they deserve space, too.

Survival mode isn’t failure. It’s strategy.

I lived on hospital coffee and adrenaline. I skipped meals, skipped showers, skipped sleep. It felt like weakness at the time—but it wasn’t. It was a kind of radical endurance. When you’re caregiving and working, you’re not failing if you don’t fold the laundry. You’re surviving. That’s enough.

The goal isn’t thriving. It’s breathing.

Feed the kids. Show up to the meeting. Take one deep breath. That counts.

Ask for help—even if you don’t know how

People said, “Let me know what you need.” But I didn’t know what I needed. So I smiled and said, “We’re okay.” We weren’t. Eventually, I started saying yes—to help, to favors, to grace. When someone offers to lighten your load, don’t let pride or guilt say no. Let them carry a corner of what’s crushing you.

You’re more than what you hold together

Being “the strong one” comes with a quiet kind of pressure. People see you functioning, showing up, handling it—and they assume you’re okay. But they don’t see what’s underneath: the mental gymnastics of pretending you’re fine when you’re not. The exhaustion that doesn’t go away with one good night of sleep. The way you start to disappear into the role of caretaker, teacher, parent, protector—without anyone noticing that you’re the one who needs support.

I forgot who I was outside of the responsibilities. And honestly, I didn’t have the time or energy to even think about what I needed.

But eventually—when the noise started to quiet, when the hardest parts passed—I realized something important: I was still in there.

Maybe not the exact version of me from before. But a version that still mattered. One who had been through more than she thought she could handle and was still standing.

If you’re in the thick of it right now, you don’t need to find yourself overnight. You just need small moments that are yours. A real meal. A walk. A break. A conversation where you don’t have to be “on.”

Start there. Let it be enough. Because you are not just what you do for others. You’re not just the glue holding everything together. You’re a person who deserves time, rest, and care, too.

It’s not selfish to come back to yourself—it’s necessary.

And it’s okay if that takes time.

You’re allowed to heal slowly.

Recruiting the right talent is one of the biggest challenges for any company. Between posting jobs, sorting resumes, and scheduling interviews, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed—especially when it comes to managing feedback across hiring managers. Building a strong team should start with an efficient, collaborative, and data-driven recruitment process.

When I asked my best friend (who’s been in recruiting for years) about Greenhouse , she wouldn’t shut up about how awesome it was—the text pictured above was part 1 of many gray bubble responses.

She told me Greenhouse makes hiring way more collaborative —giving managers access to the platform so everyone’s on the same page for scheduling and feedback. Plus, the customizable scorecards for interviews make gathering actionable feedback super easy.

And if you’re into optimizing (who isn’t?), the data you get from the platform is a game-changer. You can see the types of applicants coming in and tweak your search strategy in real-time.

TL;DR: If you’re looking to cut down your hiring time, improve collaboration with managers, and get deeper insights into your talent pool, Greenhouse is a must-have.

(TA Co-founder)

📚 Read: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

A modern spiritual classic, The Power of Now invites readers to break free from the mental noise of past and future and fully embrace the present moment. Tolle’s insights offer a calming, perspective-shifting guide to finding peace, purpose, and enlightenment in everyday life.

📺 Watch: WWII in Color on Netflix

This gripping docuseries brings World War II to life with restored colorized footage, offering a vivid and visceral look at one of history’s most defining periods. Through powerful visuals and narration, WWII in Color makes history feel immediate, personal, and deeply moving.

🎧 Listen: What Once Was by Her’s

With dreamy indie vibes and nostalgic melancholy, What Once Was captures the bittersweet feeling of longing for a past version of yourself or your life. Her’s delivers hazy guitar lines and emotive vocals that make this track perfect for late-night reflections or peaceful daydreams.

HR can be tricky to manage. It’s about handling processes, keeping your team happy, compliant, and growing with the company. Whether you’re facing issues with payroll, keeping employees engaged, or scaling your HR operations, these challenges require attention.

💰 Payroll and Compliance

Payroll is one of those tasks that never gets easier. You need a system that can handle taxes, compliance, and reporting without a hitch.

• Paychex: This one’s great for all things payroll. It automates tax filing, handles compliance, and makes paying employees a breeze.
• HiBob: While HiBob offers payroll features, its focus is more on employee experience and engagement than deep payroll management.

💬 Employee Engagement

Keeping employees happy and engaged is tough without the right tools, especially when it comes to feedback and performance.

• HiBob: This one’s a winner if you’re looking to boost engagement. It has tools for performance management, feedback loops, and even social feeds to keep employees connected.
• Paychex: It offers basic performance reviews and surveys, but it’s more focused on the backend HR tasks rather than day-to-day employee engagement.

📈 Scalability

As your business grows, so do your HR needs. You need a system that can grow with you.

• Paychex: Perfect for businesses of all sizes, Paychex scales easily and handles complex HR tasks for larger teams.
• HiBob: If you’re growing fast and have remote teams, HiBob’s flexibility and modern design make it a great fit.

Bottom line? If you’re focused on payroll and compliance, Paychex is a solid choice. But if you want something that blends employee engagement with flexibility for growth, HiBob might be the way to go.

Loki is a dog with a mission! This clever girl knows exactly what she wants and isn’t shy about getting it—especially when it comes to snacks (she’s been known to put her paw down, literally!). But she’s not just demanding; Loki is incredibly helpful. Need to locate the hidden snack stash? She’s your canine GPS. Struggling with a door handle? Loki’s on it. Lost in your phone and forgetting your walk? She’ll grab her leash and lead the way. And don’t worry about the car window—she’ll handle that too (child locks permitting, of course). She even remembers those forgotten items outside!

Despite her busy schedule of assisting her human, Loki always makes time to appreciate the little things, like stopping to smell the flowers.

🐾 Got a cute fur baby? Submit them to be our pet of the week in an upcoming issue.

• RWH HOLDINGS is hiring for an HR Manager (Woburn, MA).
• Sunstates Security is hiring for a Talent Acquisiton Specialist (Raleigh, NC).
• HR Path is hiring for a Sr. SAP Payroll Tax Specialist (Atlanta, GA).
• Tandym Group is hiring for a Recruiter (Salt Lake City, UT).
• Aquent is hiring for a Sr. Specialist, Marketing & Data Analytics (Columbia, MD).

⭐ View more jobs here >

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