Curiosity

Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. - Walt Disney

I'm still busy, still moving forward, and still buoyed by your love and support, dear readers.

More fun and summer adventures soon!

xo,
Karen

Confidence (wo)man

When I made my first attempts at going back to work last year, I felt like a fraud.

To say that I was anxious about my qualifications for paid employment after devoting five years to professional mothering is one of those ridiculous understatements people make, like saying it's cold out when in the midst of a blizzard. In Siberia. I was a mess of doubt, indecision and insecurity. I had tangled myself in the belief that my time off had made me irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

Can you imagine?

I felt insignificant.

As though my choice to be at home with my children did not matter.

As though the work I had done prior, the work I had done during, and the work I had the potential to do given my own growth and maturity as a person (who now also happened to be a mother), meant nothing.

As though I had somehow evaporated into a mist of motherhood.

I no longer mattered.

I managed to project all of the feelings of failure and doubt that came from taking time away from work and becoming a new mom and transported them five years forward to apply to any new situation where I was uncomfortable.

I was not relevant.

Though I had become the most important person in the world to two very small humans, critical to the operation of my family unit, integral to the service of mothers in my community, an essential part of my children's learning and the development of relationships and alliances that would provide the basis of their lifelong education and their abilities to contribute to the world, I was not enough. Being just a mother was not enough. Because I had not been paid for my work, I should not be paid for work, would not be paid for work.

I will not marginalize or diminish my internal struggle here, because I believe my experience to be common to women becoming mothers and mothers becoming working mothers.

Some choices are easy, others are overwhelming.

* * *

This suit is a costume. I am dressed up, but I am no more a working professional than Ellie is actual royalty when dressed in her princess clothes.

I wrote that in my journal one August afternoon, sitting in the reception area of a high-rise office tower in Beverly Hills, waiting for my first interview. It was not a job I was offered, nor one I would have accepted.

Realizing that, I knew I'd made progress.

* * *

Let us now fast forward to more recent days. I am back in the game - my game - though I am kicking myself for forgetting who I was, and who I am, through the transitions.

It only took me 37 years 6 months (give or take) to find the confidence and strength to set foot on the path towards doing exactly what I want to do.

And what is that, you ask?

I've put all the pieces together, the sum of my experiences, and I am now creating a coaching practice to help guide women in transition, with special focus on mothers returning to work.

My vision is three-part. In addition to coaching individuals, both one on one and in groups, (in person and by phone), I will develop locally-based online communities where women who are re-entering the workforce can join in a conversation with working moms in traditional full-time occupations, as well as those working as entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants and contractors. It will be a place to network, share resources to improve and enhance businesses, and will ideally create linkages for mothers to find more opportunities for flexible and family-friendly employment. Within these communities, I will identify mentor moms who are willing to share their experiences to support women who are considering new industries or directions towards personal and career fulfillment.

This is what I want to do.

I've passed the crossroads and have made a choice. The market is not saturated with me - at least not yet. I've dared myself to follow this passion and create this niche. As every day passes, I am more and more sure, and I'm happy. Because I am an optimist, I am convinced that this is not only worthwhile, it is also possible and important.

You know where I've been and now you know where I'm going.

I'm already on my way.

Speed Racer in Five Words

Me: Hot Wheels meets Willie Wonka.

Jake: Best day of my life.

Are You My Mother?

One of my son’s favorite bedtime stories at the moment is called Are You My Mother? If you’re not familiar with the story, it starts with a mother bird realizing that her egg is due to hatch at any moment, so she hurries off to get something for her baby to eat. The story is then told from the viewpoint of the baby bird who enters the world looking for his mother. He walks around asking every animal and thing he sees if they are his mother until he is finally returned to his nest and his mother returns to him with food. The baby bird knows and understands from his adventures in the world all the things that are not his mother and he is happy and comforted when he is home and under his mother’s wing again.

This story speaks to me as a mom. First, there is concept of the nesting instinct and the mother urgently preparing for the arrival of her baby. With both my children, I took great care in creating their little nests, choosing colors I thought would be soothing to them, beds that would cuddle them, and filling their rooms with toys and books that would engage and enrich them. I sat in those rooms before the babies arrived to inhabit them, imagining who the little person inside me would become on his or her own. Everything was clean and neatly folded in their drawers just waiting to become worn, used and outgrown. I wanted everything to be just so when my babies arrived, and though it didn’t matter to them if they slept in their new crib or a borrowed bassinet, these acts of preparation helped ready me for the transitions in our home and family.

The time we spend with our children as babies and toddlers gives them the ability to develop their independence and self-confidence. The nest we create at home is a safe retreat from the rest of the world. We invest time and money to make our environments free from as many dangers as we can imagine (think of all the pool gates, cabinet latches, stair fences, crib rails, outlet covers, etc. that you’ve installed and that have been installed in the homes of all families you know and multiply it by thousands!) so that our children may be able to explore and learn on their own. By the time they are preschoolers, they are more equipped to leave the nest, knowing how to behave around others, how to manage some of their feelings, and how participate with their peers and trust other adults. At the end of a busy preschool day, I think my son is happy to return to the comfort of what is constant and known at home.

It is my hope that my husband and I are effectively raising our children on a solid foundation of our values, beliefs and traditions so that they will not have to question their place in the world or who they are just as the baby bird who asked everyone around him, “Are you my mother?” only to be answered with silence or a resounding “no.” I want my children to always know, without a doubt, that they belong and are loved. Certainly, as teenagers they will have moments of rebellion and angst, but I hope that they will always find our home to be a safe nest, and that as parents we can continue to provide for and comfort them as they ready themselves to create nests of their own.

But really, the best part of the story is when the pages have closed and Jake turns to me, looks up, and says: “You are my mother and I am your son.”

* * *

I wrote this piece as a President's Message for my MOMS Club chapter's newsletter in September 2005. Jake was just three and Ellie was nearing her first birthday. I had considered it one of my better pieces, and one that I might one day submit somewhere for publication (you know, back when I was going to be a freelance writer, and before I understood that often you pitch stories before you write them). Anyway, it's yours now.

I'm not posting it for posterity, not even to make a point about my career choice. It's here, now, because it represents an evolution in my life.

The other night, Jake read this favorite bedtime story to me.

The things I didn't do

One Friday morning in the month of April of the year 2002, I was thinking about work. Actually, I was thinking about a big problem at work, and I was also drinking a peanut butter-banana-chocolate soy milk smoothie, and doing these things concurrently while driving to an appointment with my obstetrician.

While on my way to see my doctor for a very routine visit in a highly uneventful pregnancy, doing my best to solve that work problem from my hormone-addled brain, and still drinking my smoothie, I failed to avoid a car that had stopped in front of me to make a left turn and I caused quite a commotion.

(I'm avoiding any legal descriptions here although the case has long been settled.)

I was fine, and my baby was fine, but my doctor was not fine.

He suggested that my work was too stressful. I was too distracted. I was lucky the accident wasn't worse.

"You need to leave your job," he admonished.

"No, there is too much for me to do. Now is not a good time."

"Which is more important," he asked. "Your job, or your baby?"

It didn't take much more for me to realize that he was probably right, and I called in with my notice that I would not be coming back, not at least until after the child had made his appearance.

Five and a half years later, I returned.

* * *

We made some changes at home to make my professional hiatus viable. In the months and years of my absence, I always knew I would one day make my triumphant return to the world of the employed, but I didn't know how or when. The time gave me every chance to consider the possibilities.

I swore up and down that I would never go back to doing what I had done. Ambition had fueled my moves through the ranks of the organizations I served, never staying longer than a few years at any one place, and advancing title, salary and the number of staff I managed at each location. By the time I settled into my new role as stay at home mom, I had managed thousands of volunteers and at least a hundred employees.

I was exhausted. I didn't know what to do with myself or how to spend my time, and I had months before my baby was due (and after he had arrived) to think. Alone. It was everything I had wanted, but nothing I knew or understood. I needed to focus and make a plan.

It was a good thing I had a lot of time, because I made a lot of plans.

* * *

First, I was going to go back to school to become a food scientist. I loved food and science, and had done really well in chemistry in high school. It would be great! But then I thought of my life, my interests, my nature, my work habits and decided maybe I wouldn't do well working in a lab.

But I loved food and science and people, and thought I could combine them and build on my counseling background in a different field. So enthralled with nutrition and inspired by the skills of the leaders who helped me lose weight after having my child that I decided I would become a dietitian. Maybe I'd even work at Weight Watchers while I studied. I went to an orientation at the local college and learned about the program (dietetics, not Weight Watchers), then I sat on my new materials for at least a year because I was pregnant again, and wasn't in the right place to be starting school. One day, I felt ready to think about it seriously and called to schedule a time to have my transcripts evaluated. Wouldn't you know it, the program had closed for the summer! I was too late! While I considered my options, I spent some talking with a new friend (with a baby the same age as Ellie) who was a dietitian and decided maybe I didn't want to start in a new field from the very bottom, going back to school, with two kids, and needing to work again fast.

All along (or at least for the two years while I was a new mom, expecting my second child, and President of our local group), I had been writing articles and newsletters for MOMS Club . Around the time when my term was up, I came across an article by Catherine Newman in Wondertime, and decided that this was the kind of work I should be doing - I could be a freelance writer! I sent writing samples to friends in the business, and I started a blog to practice my craft. I read other people's writing, poured over The Writer's Market, polished off my favorite pieces, and didn't submit a single one. Not only was I intimidated, the reality sunk in about the life of a writer - deadlines, topics I might not want to cover, a lot of work and not necessarily a big, reliable paycheck.

If I wanted to bring in an income without starting from nothing I'd have to do something radically predictable, and I decided to go back to doing pretty much what I used to do.

I spent the summer figuring out what it was specifically that I could do and was fortunate enough to have sufficient job offers. If you've been reading along, you'll recall that I went back to work in the fall at the same old place doing a new thing. It has been fine, but not great. It got me back in the game, and got me thinking seriously, and critically, about what it is I really want to do.

And now I know. I know with certainty.

* * *

Patient readers,

Thanks for reading along. It wouldn't make sense to tell you where I'm going if you didn't know where I'd already been.

More soon, I promise.