Mothers understand each other. In this episode of the ALPS In Brief Podcast, Attorney Abigail Benjamin talks with ALPS Account Manager Meg Ratzburg and Underwriting Manager Leah Gooley about the hardships and triumphs of being both a mother and an attorney — and how legal culture shifts like ALPS' new Parental Leave coverage help to better accommodate women who want to bring their best to both worlds (and not have to leave law practice). — Transcript:  Leah Gooley: Well, hello and welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Leah Gooley and I'm the underwriting manager here at ALPS. And I'm here with Meg. Meg Ratzburg: Meg Ratzburg. I'm the account manager for the states of Georgia and West Virginia for our ALPS insured. Leah Gooley: And Meg is here, both of us are here to introduce Abigail Benjamin. She is an experienced West Virginia attorney and one of our insureds and is here to share an amazing story with us. So with that, we'd just like to turn it over to Abigail to tell us a little bit about your experience, starting with how you began in a solo practice of law. Abigail Benjamin: Yeah. Oh, okay. You guys just see me. This is kind of an eclectic story, so you just let me know if I'm going too much in the weeds, but I'm almost 50. This practice has been going on for seven years and I sort of did the traditional college law school graduate at 25, found what I thought was my dream job in public interest law, and then had two kids and I ran into that barrier, I think we're going to talk to later about being a female attorney with young kids. And I want to say it wasn't just a time crunch. It was wanting to show up for my family and my kids in a way that I wasn't just exhausted and overwhelmed. So I didn't get that support and I just chose my kids. And at age 40, I had made what I thought was a very happy life, not practicing law. I had six kids, ages 13 to 1. I was growing kale in my backyard. I was writing fiction, I was following politics and on the news, living in a corner of my home state of West Virginia, about 70 miles from DC and God bless anyone from dc but there's a lot of lawyers in DC and there's a lot of unhappy lawyers in DC. So I was very comfortable not practicing law. And The practice came out when I was 41 on a base of a very ethereal idea and some very good, wise people giving me thoughtful advice. And so the first start was in my faith tradition, Pope Francis is our head, and he really encouraged us Catholics to lean into this idea of environmental justice. And I had been a nonprofit lawyer. I was very keen to economic issues and worries about justice with the poor, but I hadn't really, really thought about economic justice issues and how that impacts both poor Appalachians and people of color around the United States. So I just had this thought, but again, raising kale, homeschooling six kids, I took a one-shot volunteer opportunity, limited, limited, and I volunteered at an environmental film festival called the American Conservation Film Festival. And I saw this film that just blew... It knocked my socks off. It just really opened up my eyes. It was about a water crisis event we had in West Virginia. It was the Elk River Crisis. And this was the interesting part about art and film. I definitely was somebody that was educated in the audience. I knew what my state's problems were. I read the news. But seeing this timeline, as a lawyer, I was just like, oh my gosh, this was not an inevitable catastrophe. What happened is we have these giant chemical plants storing chemicals, very dangerous stuff, right on the waters that we all drink from. And it was two rust holes the size of quarters that dumped all that toxic stuff and one half of my state's population lost their drinking water. And it wasn't the regular boil advisory where it was an inconvenience. You put the pot on the stove for 30 minutes