Checking in with your career after becoming a parent
Photo Credit: Unsplash
In my previous blog post , I’ve already written about matrescence, the transition that women go through when they become mothers. Just like adolescence, mothers go through a big change in their lives, in part due to hormones, that might fundamentally shift their whole being, who they are and who they want to be.
We often don’t know about this transition or simply don’t have the time to acknowledge it because we need to go back to work shortly after our baby is born or because we are caring for the child 24/7 and don’t really get a break to think. However taking a moment to reflect after becoming a mother - and this can be months or even years after the birth if you haven’t had the chance to do this earlier! - is such an important task in defining who you are as a mother and who you want to be.
It’s only once the baby is born and we’ve had some time to get to know them that we can actually grasp who this tiny human is and how we can/want to shape our lives with them. We might have wild expectations during pregnancy, dreams to travel or the desire to go back to work full-time - but this can shift once we hold the baby in our arms or depending on the personality of the child.
While I did not want to give up on travel after having children, our way of travelling has changed and it did take me several months after giving birth to my second son to even feel remotely ready to brave a 5h car ride with two kids to visit my parents in Luxembourg - a safe environment that I know inside out! Exhaustion was definitely a big factor in this decision, along with the fact that my second son absolutely hated the car seat and would scream non-stop after at the most 5 minutes. We never know how we feel or how our kids are until we actually meet them.
With all these shifts, it’s natural to also reflect on our career. When I talk about career, I mean this in the larger sense of the term: it might mean continuing on the path that we have been on, maybe pursuing a promotion to a managerial position; it might mean staying where we are at or reducing our work hours; it might mean changing jobs to find a position that is truly adapted to our current needs as a mother and family; it might mean deciding to stay at home and not going back to paid employment.
Whatever your choice is, it’s a valid choice! It’s a decision based on what’s best for you and your family, and no one can tell you that this is the wrong choice.
However often we simply don’t have the time to reflect on this, because life is so busy with a baby and we often some space for ourselves. If this is you and you’ve been a mom for a few days, a few months or even a few years, let me share some tools that I find very helpful in this situation and that I like to use with my clients.
Defining your values
Knowing what your values are is the basis of everything in life. It allows you to define what is important for you and to take decisions in alignment with this. For a long time, I thought I knew what was important for me, but it’s only by sitting down and actually reflecting on them that I’ve found clarity and felt more confident in taking big decisions in my life.
If you’ve never done a values exercise, there are different options. I like taking this quiz as I find it quite simple and easy to do. It’ll tell you your top 5 values at the end - and it’ll be up to you to decide if these are the right ones that resonate with one.
Another possibility is to go through a list of values (you can find a whole bunch of them online) and define those that are most important to you, that resonate the most. Repeat the process until you have managed to narrow it down to 5.
The best possible self visualisation
In this exercise, you’ll visualise yourself in 3, 5, 10 years (whatever time frame feels right to you) and you’ll imagine that everything went exactly how you’d like it to go. It can be very powerful to take some time and really imagine where you are at in your life, where you want to be as a woman, a wife, a mother, in your career. It’ll help you figure out what your next steps are and how you want to move forward.
I really love the work of Sophie Cliff so I’ll link you her webpage with the details of the visualisation. If you’d like to have an audio recording that I did a while ago, just leave me a message and I’ll send it over to you!
Your WHY?
One thing that helps me especially in times of doubt or frustration is thinking about my WHY. Why am I doing what I am doing? For me, my why is my two boys. I want to show them to follow their dreams and work for them, but I also want to build a business so I have the flexibility to work whenever feels right for me so I can look after them when they need me and later spend the school holidays with them.
What is your why? Why are you doing the job you are doing? It can be many reasons, some practical (to pay the bills), some closer to the heart (it’s your passion, you love your job and/or the people you work with). Mental health can play a factor too. As a highly sensitive person, I would find it very difficult to be at home full-time with my kids so having a few days a week where I get to do something else helps me feel more stable and grounded, and thus show up more patiently for my kids. At the same time, I have the strong desire to spend more time with them than just two days on the weekend, which is why I chose to go back to work part-time.
Just like with the previous exercises, there are no right or wrong answers here. When you are facing challenging times, either in your job or at home, it can be very helpful to come back to your WHY and remind yourself why you are doing this job. If you feel like this is not strong enough to keep you going, it might be time to reflect on what you’d really like to do and take a step towards this.
A few questions to reflect on
Sometimes just sitting down with a pen and paper (or just taking the time to really think) can be helpful to realise what it is that you want from your career. Here are some questions for you to reflect on:
On a scale from 1-10 how satisfied am I currently with my work situation?
What can I do to move it one figure up?
What do I want from my career?
What is the ideal balance between work, family life, personal needs and couple’s time for me?
What can I do today to move a step closer to this?
If you’d like to have some support while working through these exercises, I offer 90-min deep dive coaching sessions which are perfect to look at where you are at right now and go a bit deeper into where you’d like to be and how to get there. Find out more here and drop me a message if you have any questions or if you’d like to book an appointment.