My journey to becoming a working mom.
I’m coming up on one month of being a working mom after being a stay-at-home mom for the first 18 months of my son’s life. I’ve never been much of a goal setter (because I hate the idea of not achieving a goal, but that’s a blogpost for another day), so you can imagine my surprise when I got a message in my LinkedIn inbox the first week of January from a recruiter for GitHub, asking if I would be interested in a Partner Engineering role at their company. I decided right then that it would be my goal (whether it be this job or not) to try to re-enter the tech industry sometime in 2021.
While I was excited for this job opportunity (and wildly flattered considering my LinkedIn inbox had gone cold back in 2018), I genuinely believed that it would take me a few months to relearn the ropes, maybe try building something to get my hands and brain thinking programmatically again. I was trying to do dishes and laundry, workout and shower, then maybe relearn Ruby and Javascript syntax and algorithms in the 2.5 mayyyybe 3 hours that my son would nap in the afternoon.
It’s been a little over three years since I last worked in tech, and if I learned anything from my time in the industry, it’s that things change at a rapid pace that’s nearly impossible to keep up with when you’re in it, let alone when you’ve taken a significant hiatus. New coding languages have come into popularity, trends have changed from monoliths to micro-services, and there are hundreds more technologies available that all do similar things than there were five years ago. So I was shocked that I made it through nine interviews over the course of two months when all of my ‘training’ happened in 1-1.5 hour daily increments.
Before I became a mom, I had bought into a vision of the stay-at-home mom life, one that would be the culmination of all my hopes and dreams. I worked because I didn’t have a reason not to, but I dreamt of the day when I could stay at home and take care of my kids and cook and clean and have my husband walk in after a long day of work thrilled that there was a home-cooked meal lovingly prepared for him and a wife ready to welcome him into her arms and hear about his day.
And while the woman I’ve become now cringes at my 1950s fantasy, I can’t deny that the whole time I was trying to prepare myself to re-enter the workforce, it felt easier to slip back into our simple routine and only allow my dreams to be as big as what we were going to eat for dinner that week or if we would walk to the park or the beach that day. There were many times when I wanted to give up because it felt too hard to try to take care of a baby full-time and relearn a quickly changing industry and ecosystem during a pandemic.
Prior to the start of this year, I had attempted passion projects like writing, illustrating and self-publishing my San Francisco Alphabet Book, creating a graphic and logo design business ( only 3 months after Luke was born! ), and even becoming a Beautycounter consultant. If I had been able to be better attuned to my needs back in the fall of 2019, maybe I would have noticed and listened to my hunger and drive to work outside the home, and how that was a need just as strong as wanting to be a mom.
Maybe I would have believed that listening to that need was okay.
It took me awhile to realize, let alone admit, that while I was contributing to our family in valuable, meaningful ways by caring for our son, there was a part of me that wanted a tangible, more visible way to contribute too. I missed being able to point to a consistent paycheck or complete a project and say, “This. This is what I’m contributing to my family, my job, my team.” While I’m not a dedicated goal-setter, I found that it was really challenging for me to invest so much time and energy into raising a kid without knowing if what I was doing was ‘working’ and living in that uncertainty for at least another 10-18 years.
I felt ashamed that I wanted to work, that caring for Luke wasn’t the “enough” that I had thought it would be. I felt embarrassed that I had been so committed to this but that once thrown into the fire of parenting 24/7, it had proved to be more difficult and taxing than I had anticipated. It took time for me to come to peace with the overwhelming guilt I had for wanting to have time away from the son that I loved so deeply.
Was I a bad mom for not wanting to sacrifice it all for him?
Of course, there is a part of me that wonders what role the Covid-19 pandemic has played in my desire to go back to work. We moved from San Francisco about three months into the pandemic to a new city, and the lack of opportunities to meet other moms (or people in general!) made for one of the loneliest and isolating times of my life. When I was a SAHM in San Francisco in the months leading up to the pandemic, I had been able to push strollers around the zoo with other moms, go to a mid-day book club every week for 2.5 hours (with free childcare!) and have lunch playdates at friends’ homes. Even if we had stayed in San Francisco, all of those options would have dried up, leaving me alone again, trying to keep our 10 month old quiet for my husband’s calls in our 1,000 square foot apartment.
I began my job almost a month ago and Luke has been in daycare for almost two months. And to my surprise, it has been one of the best things for all of us. Of course, I did spend the first month that he was in daycare fearing the worst and obsessing over every interaction that he or I had with his new caretakers (shout out to the local mamas I’ve met who talked me down from the tree every time I texted with a new fear/overreaction about our daycare experience). In the weeks leading up to my start date, I must have researched and contacted 20+ daycares and took like 10 virtual or in-person tours to try to find the “right” fit.
But as we’ve settled into the new daycare/job rhythm, I have realized a few things:
I will always be first and foremost, Luke’s mom. No daycare provider, nanny or other human will ever fill that role like I can.
I’m actually a better mom with more patience and love to give when I’ve had a break from caring for him every day. And I’m a better wife because I don’t feel so touched out and exhausted all the time.
The social interaction for Luke has been huge. He has lived more life during the pandemic than out of it and as a result, his social interaction has been extremely limited. Being able to be with and learn from other kids has helped him bloom even more in his vocabulary and ability.
Having childcare and a flexible work schedule means I can go on coffee walks with friends in the morning or have a lunch date or go for a run with my husband during the day. And those things fill me up and give me so much life!
Taking care of myself and filling up my cup is what makes me the best mom for my son, rather than sacrificing to the point where I don’t exist anymore. I used to believe that pouring yourself out was the best way to love another person, but now I see that loving, honoring and valuing my needs is what shows my son how to show up for himself in healthy and empowering ways. We both thrive when I take responsibility for taking care of myself.
There are days when I feel really overwhelmed by all of the new-to-me words and acronyms I hear flying around on partner meetings. The imposter voice in my head tries to spread doubt about my qualifications and tells me I should just go back to reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar a hundred times. And while this learning curve is steep and hard, I’m grateful to be on it. I’m grateful because it’s teaching me more than just the latest technology trends. It’s teaching me that I can grow and learn, make mistakes and try again. It’s teaching me that for me, being a working mom is actually what helps me be a better mom. And ultimately, it’s teaching me that that is okay. I no longer believe the cultural lie that the moms who stay home love their kids the most while the ones who work don’t. Or vice versa. I believe that the moms that listen to their hearts, that do the thing that empowers them to show up the best for their littles - they’re the ones that love their kids the most because they love themselves too.
