For the last three years I’ve been inching toward not working. It’s happened both quickly and with glacial slowness as is the paradox of pandemic time. It was quick in that three years, in the scheme of things, is a blip. It was slow in that the disentangling from a version of myself has been (and continues to be) tedious and painstaking - the same doubts, shame, and cultural conditioning arising on a seemingly endless loop. But I guess, as of yesterday, I do not work. AND - I’m not getting a PhD, either.
There are a whole host of berating narratives that come up for me in writing that sentence: “I do not work.” Some of them are truly silly: what will I say when someone asks me what I do at a dinner party? (As if I attend dinner parties! Lol.) And others are crueler, like a vicious hate comments lobbed by strangers online. Isn’t it odd how easily we can use the made-up judgements of made-up strangers against ourselves? These imagined critics are me poking at my worst fears and they are something bigger. They are a cultural narrative internalized, they are values I’ve absorbed from the larger context, they are familial and societal and collective. Every time I release a “should” I learn that it wasn’t entirely mine to begin with.
One thing that needs saying is that the choice to step away from my professional life is an immense privilege. I don’t take that for granted. Most mothers, parents, people don’t have the freedoms to be confused, to fall out of love with a life-long pursuit, to pause and recalibrate, to try something and decide it’s not working and then to exit. I am very lucky. And, although my relationship with prayer is underdeveloped, I pray that everyone have the resources - material and immaterial - to make choices that support themselves, their families, and the communities they comprise.
On this slow-ass path to being a stay-at-home-mom, a term I hate and don’t identity with at all - I have spent time thinking about paradigms of motherhood. I have wondered about our cultural understanding of motherhood across history: from housewife to momtreprenuer. I’ve noticed, strikingly, that our understanding of mothers is so often built around their relationship to work: the working mom and stay-at-home mom dichotomy. These reductive versions of motherhood often pitted against each other are borne out of patriarchical systems, capitalistic ideals like sacrifice, and a mainstream feminism that obscures the complexity of mothering, and ignores the many intersecting identities of women. Because our culture and our systems don’t understand or support the role of mothering, all the work/mom iterations feel fraught, whether you work, stay home, gig, or work-from-home-stay-at-home (a pandemic special), you might find yourself wondering if you’re doing it wrong. For most people there is not choice, just necessary arrangements, and when you can choose, that choice is shrouded in shame.
As I start to embrace all the quitting, all the inevitable blank space on my resume, I’m reminded that there are innumerable permutations of mothering, many of which one person will live out over the course of their lifetime. A few of which, in my three years as a mom, I already have.
When I was getting my haircut last week, the stylist asked me what I do. The dreaded question. “I’m not working right now,” would have been an appropriate reply. But I unleashed my whole life story, abridged :). “I use to do X, and then I did Y, and grad school, I moved here for work, marriage! A baby! And another one! launching a business. The pandemic, yikes! Burnout, PhD, confusion, who am I?” I mean, she got the whole damn saga. And she was sweet, but dear lord, I need to chill.
And then, the conversation meandered and she shared with me. She said she struggled with the way hair stylists are perceived, she understood her role to be about holding space for people, about affirming them and their identities. She knew that when she told a stranger she did hair it came with preconceptions, an image she didn’t identify with. And that is it. The central human desire, to be seen and held in all our complexity.
Life cannot be reduced, or boiled down, or made static. It’s in motion, taking shape in every moment. The reasons I arrived here - not working - need processing, not explaining. When the hairdresser asks what I do while shampooing my hair, I can tell her the truth, plainly, and leave it there to linger.
With love,
Stephanie
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"For most people there is not choice, just necessary arrangements, and when you can choose, that choice is shrouded in shame."
I really relate to this lately!
What this essay makes very clear: you are a writer. 😉