After maternity leave, every new mom needs to decide if they will return to work.
Some women know with 100% certainty they want to go back and others have a harder time knowing what they want.
Most, however, feel they MUST return to work. There is no choice.
But the question lingers in the back of many working moms head…would I be happier if I was a stay-at-home-mom? Or would I miss working?
Would life be easier?
Would I get bored?
Could we handle living on one income?
Would I regret it?
Julie was asking herself these questions when we first started working together.
To be a stay-at-home-mom or not be a stay-at-home mom…that was the question.
Julie had 3 kiddos and she was the breadwinner.
She was excelling in her job and her employer really wanted to keep her around. She had lots of flexibility and when she asked to work part-time, they said yes.
But…it wasn’t enough.
The question still nagged at her. Should she just step away for a while?
Our kids are only young once, right? That is what we hear a lot….and yet, most women don’t have the courage to leave their full-time employment, even if they really want to.
Deep down this is what Julie really wanted…but how do you muster up the courage?
By definition, courage is doing something that frightens you. It is doing something, even if you are not 100% confident it will work out. It is doing something despite what others may think.
But I actually don’t think courage is what Julie needed.
She needed trust.
🔥She needed to trust in herself, her judgements, her desires and her needs.
🔥She needed to trust that if she left her job and it didn’t work out (either she didn’t like it or they couldn’t make it work financially) she would get right back on track in her career.
🔥She needed to trust that she is and would be valuable to any employer despite a “gap” in her resume.
In coaching, I helped Julie learn to trust herself and after 4 months…she left her job to stay home with her kids. She called it a sabbatical.
Here is what she has to say about it, “We are without insurance for the moment and it feels scary at times, but the benefits of getting more time with our kids and to just be me sooo outweighs any ‘what ifs’ that creep into my mind.”
Julie finally did it.
And it was the best decision she could have ever made.
