Have I still got what it takes?

thalia pellegrini - 7 Sep 17

According to Woman’s Hour, I have a name: I am a Returner. That sounds much grander than it feels.

This week wasn’t just the start of term for my two little boys – this autumn marks a new beginning for me too. I am attempting the long slow path back to the world of work.

Seven years ago, 37 weeks pregnant and the size of a pygmy hippo, I waddled away from a great job and a hard-earned career without a backwards glance.  Seven years later, I marvel at how nonchalant I was. My career as it was is over, I’ve long accepted that. It’s the prospect of carving out another from scratch that I find overwhelming.

I am in awe of women who go back to work after a year or less. I could not have done that. My first baby barely slept, day or night, and my chronic exhaustion left me in tiny pieces. Most days I felt like a crumpled piece of paper. I was barely capable of getting myself dressed, let alone step out each day into a world which would require me to be articulate and productive. Then came another baby – 2 in two years – and the swimming through mud existence continued.

For some women, it’s economic imperative that takes them back to work, for others it is the desire to return. I am lucky – I wanted to be home full time and my husband and I have made this work. It has not always been easy financially but we’ve managed.

Should I have gone back sooner? I think so, yes. I am one of the last of my friends to return to work. I’ve watched their challenges and frustrations, listened with sympathy about the glares from Millennial colleagues as they dash out the door at 5; I’ve watched their children in the playground and seen what they miss but I’ve also seen how liberating it is for them to be more than just ‘mummy’.

Motherhood is an extraordinary thing. It is a privilege and a joy, absolutely; it can be infuriating, monotonous and exhausting – and it changes you. Somewhere in the midst of potty training, 5am Peppa Pig marathons and singing Wind the Bobbin up for the gazillionth time, I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise the person looking back. I had lost my drive and pep and any number of other adjectives that might have gotten me out the door and back to work. So, I didn’t –  and stewed in my secret self-loathing and watched as friends managed what I had not.

For a long time, being with my sons was all I wanted to do, then it was all I could do and then it was all I thought I was capable of doing.  Sitting here right now, basking in the joy of school-day silence, I know I have plenty to offer. While I have lost the shiny self-belief of my twenties and the happy buoyancy of my pre-mummy 30s, I now realise I have also changed for the better in these intervening years. It’s true that my brain has taken a hit and finishing sentences is a challenge more than once a day (this morning I couldn’t remember the word ‘funnel’), but I have learnt humility and greater empathy and I can organise the arse off anything. True, I do not tweet and am not on Instagram (I’ll get there…), but surely I can relearn all the stuff that’s fallen out of my head.

I’m now in my 40s. Nothing is the same – true, my confidence headed south, along with my boobs, some years back, but I’ll find it again. The fact that I’m ready to try is exciting.

I’ve allowed myself to become defined by motherhood. Still, I’m standing on this precipice and I am wholeheartedly ready to chuck myself into the unknown.

I am not alone in this, I know. So really this is one Returner, saying to others, let’s jump.

thalia pellegrini

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