I Left My Stable Job … And I’m Better For It
I shattered the glass ceiling by fighting for myself
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I recently “celebrated” my one-year anniversary of leaving my nine-to-five magazine job to go work for myself. I celebrated by giving myself a proverbial pat on the back and then falling, exhausted, into my sheets after a long day of marketing myself, completing work for clients, and, most importantly, being a hands-on mother to my two year old.
By far the latter job—mom—has been the most difficult, and most rewarding, work of my life. But I can’t escape the adrenaline rush of writing a compelling piece or editing a complicated article. It’s my passion and I’m grateful for the hard lessons I’ve had to learn getting here.
I remember when I told my aforementioned company that I was pregnant and when I was due. My boss was happy for me, but insisted, endlessly (and sometimes unlawfully), that after I had my son I might not want to come back to work, or that I may not be ready and capable for the next levels of success I’d worked so hard to achieve. I’d been promised these advancements after years of loyalty, hard work, and my think-outside-of-the-box attitude that had improved some of our most valuable assets. And yet there was an assumption that becoming a mother would make me soft or less forward-thinking?
But I knew—and still know—myself. I would argue that women know themselves more deeply and securely than their male counterparts. Why society doesn’t trust women to know the complexities of their psyche or to faithfully vouch for their desires has been long debated. And I was finally faced with the same unsettling truth: the power dynamic is so unbalanced and the gender bias so great that at long last I was confronting it at my stable, happy, and successful job.
And yet, at the end of my maternity leave I came back to work itching to prove myself. I would work myself to the bone to write the most in-depth feature or the most captivating cover in an effort to show that “I am woman, hear me roar.” I dragged my breast pump to a convention center before my leave ended so I could conduct an interview in person. I made myself available too often and said “yes” to too much.
