A Career in Motherhood

A few months of careful thought, extensive badgering of friends and not an undue amount of anxiety will be drawing to an end very soon.  I've cleaned my desk in order to write this, so there can be no more distractions, because committing it to this post makes it all the more real and long-lasting.  I am leaving my job - my career - as a GDP to raise the children wholeheartedly and wholemindedly.  Many mothers must go through the same anguish and learn how to give and take what they want from both roles, but I find I cannot.  Strangely, for the first time in my life, I feel I have a choice and the freedom this imparts is nothing less than exhilarating.  The decisions I've made that have brought me to this position were not all freely made because so much of what we do is what is expected of us, what is dictated by middle class values and then, in my particular case, a sense of obligation that I ought to achieve something worthwhile to compensate for the low points in earlier periods of family disharmony when growing up.

I love my job, but I guess I love my children more and consider them a risk worth taking for my own future.  My mother often wants to help me, maybe not always in the way I need it in that moment, but often in momentous ways.  In receiving, I, in turn, want to pass on to them by giving of myself and my time.

I do still crave moments to myself, and fortunately because I have a very supportive husband, I can have a few minutes here and there!  William and Aruna are only very young once, then they will just be young and I can read a whole chapter, instead of just the same paragraph twice with interruptions, and then they won't want me around so much and I guess I'll be left to miss their physical presence next to me.  At that point, some might say I will then want back what I have given up, but somehow, I don't feel daunted by that.  Having explored the possibilities more than once before, I am sure I will find something I can put my hand to.  The personal and spiritual rewards are now that much more important than merely the material and practical rewards that come with a 'good' job, even if it means living a little more simply in the present.