Me in a Clown Suit

by Mindy

I was combing through my email folders today, weeding out things I no longer needed, and found several items about a speaker that came to our organization some time ago to talk about work/family balance and renewal. I visited the web site again, and found two things struck me:

The first was a list of 4 simple questions I wish I had asked myself on a quarterly basis over the last few years, and will try to ask periodically from now on:

1. Who in my life would suffer most if I weren't there?
2. Am I climbing the right mountain? What fascinates me, outside of my field of work?
3. What would I like my life to be like in 10 years?
4. What am I afraid of?

The second was a page called Juggler's Tales. This is a page on the site that features blurbs about people who have made changes either to their practices or their expectations that have enabled them to find a sort of balance. I recognized the story there with a jolt: it was mine! This shouldn't have been a surprise, for obvious reasons, but it was, because I have a memory like a sieve these days. Still, it did me some good to see that I recognized the good in my life at that particular moment, and even if I squint and pretend it was written by a total stranger, it still helps me feel better! Here it is:

JUGGLER'S TALE:

Initially, our family's renewal was forced upon us. My husband lost his high-tech job after years in the industry. We unexpectedly added another child to our family for a full complement of three kids under age five. As the one with a job, I had to go back to work 11 weeks after giving birth via c-section and still suffering post-partum depression. My employer offered six-month new-parent leave, but we wouldn't have been able to live on partial pay. Soon after I returned my organization downsized and we all took on extra responsibilities. Needless to say, our family life also underwent a major restructuring!

Two years later, my husband is still the stay-at-home parent and I'm the sole wage-earner. Lots of anguish, disappointment, humiliation, resentment, worry, fear and hope underlie that simple statement. We swallowed our pride, restructured our debt, and accepted my parents' help to buy a bigger car. We also sought counselling, though it nearly broke our marriage to do so.

Our apparent misfortune has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me (can't speak for my husband) -- we fell into exactly the setup we'd always dreamed of. Our children are positively blooming -- they are in pig heaven with Daddy at home, and I feel wonderful knowing that they have a parent to teach them, love them and look out for them. If none of this had happened, we would still be a two-income family, complete with a nanny, lots of stress, and lonely, possibly insecure children. It took us a year or so to recognize our blessing for what it is -- it was tough to shake our traditional role expectations and personal visions of how it SHOULD work rather than how it COULD work. I have never been so happy about the life we've created.