Working Mother: Stay at Home Mom Goes Back to Work After 10 Years

Two days after I accepted a position teaching on an emergency certificate at Henry County Middle School in northern, central Kentucky, I received a call for a job offer as an editor and reporter for the Flemingsburg newspaper.  I had put in my resume with the career center at Morehead State University where I had graduated just a few weeks before with my Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing.  Both of these offers came from that.  When I turned down the newspaper offer, my heart sank.  I had taken the teaching position because I felt like I had to.  How could I turn down $25,000 a year?  It was more money than we had ever seen.  I might not get any other job leads.  Working at Big Lots furniture department couldn't last forever.  Yet, I had never seen myself as a school teacher.  I come from a family that have devoted their life to education.  I was confident I could do the work, but I didn't really want to from my heart's standpoint.  So, when I told the newspaper I was already employed, I could have cried.  Patience and trust in Universe is a hard lesson to learn.

Teaching middle school taught me a lot of important things.  I also have a $35,000 Master's Degree in Teaching that I'll be paying for the rest of my life.  I won't ever go back to teaching in public education unless it is at the college level.  I could have taken the newspaper job, potentially been happier, and in a lot less debt now.  Hindsight.  It must have not been for me to do right then.

I hadn't planned on being a mother either.  I've written about that before.  Everyone was shocked when I changed my mind and began trying to get pregnant.  When I finally did give birth, I didn't go back to teaching.  I had always thought that if I had children at least one parent should stay home to raise them.  I had always felt like motherhood was a thing only those who are ready to sacrifice everything to be a deeply devoted nurturer should embark upon.  I thought that, for me, it would have to look a very particular way in order to work.  I knew me.  Why have children if you have to pay someone else to raise them?  I've held so many strong ideas as golden.  It's a beautiful thing how life teaches us even when we are mule-headed.

This morning, I got up early as always, did yoga, made breakfast, but when I got dressed, I put on casual wear.  I had to go to Appalshop and meet with WMMT staff to settle the details on a position I applied for and received this month!  I am the new Public Affairs Director at WMMT - Mountain Community Radio!  It's a full time job and the first one I have had in a decade.  I'm wonderfully excited to start.  It is like I am finally getting the opportunity to do what I had always envisioned myself doing when I went to college for an English major.  I'd work in writing and editing.  This really is fulfilling a childhood dream.
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When I was a kid, many of my core group of friends had parents who worked at Appalshop.  Appalshop has been a part of the Whitesburg/Letcher County community for over 40 years and the radio station for 30.  They have done tremendous work documenting, preserving, sharing, and promoting the life, news, arts, and culture of central Appalachia,  I remember thinking as we hung around the building and played under the bridge how everyone seemed engaged and mostly satisfied there.  The building smelled of old books and there were papers, videos, and books covering every desk.  It was a dream like place for a girl like me - bookish and curious.  I have always thought it would be an honor to work there.

That same little girl was always more at peace outside of a child's world.  I didn't play much with toys, choosing books, chemistry sets, long hikes, and arts/crafts instead.  I wanted to hang around the adult table and listen to their stories and talk.  As a mother, I have been present and attentive, but not the mother who sits in the floor and plays for hours with toys or watches many cartoons.  I'm still the me I have always been.  I'm a good mother just as I am.  I have a good relationship with my children.  They know I love them and find my lap home.  They know my words, my food, my stories, and my songs.  My lap and arms will always been their home.  

I still ascribe to the dream of homesteading, homeschooling, and living off the land.  It just isn't doable with small children as a solo project.  So, my plans have had to adjust.  There are so many ways a good life can look.  There are countless forms of good parents.  Each of us are unique and important.  I have to be open to all the possibilities.  I have to be willing to learn and change my ideas based on experience and new information.  I have to see myself and my fulfillment as an important piece of what it takes to be a good mother and a good example of what a woman can do in her life for my daughters.  I am me and I am their mother.  That is fact.

What I also am is a capable, literate, educated, backwoods, mystical, yogi, mountain woman who loves to read, have long and meaningful conversations, philosophize, study the people of the world, and to listen and share stories.  I have a contribution to make and the opportunity to do it with a great group of people in a place dedicated to making sure the stories never die.  Taking this job sets our family on a new path.  I am having to change everything about our life, and that is a little scary.  It is the right decision though.  I am making it from a place of hope and I will not feel failure or guilt for making it.  It is a decision I am making as my heart has opened, come to understand, and forgiven my own mother.  It is a decision I am making in honor of my paternal grandmother who was a proud working mother and reminded me not to martyr myself for an ideal that was not manifesting.  This decision holds in memory my maternal grandmother from whom I first learned the feeling of nurture and who was a single working mother of three.  She was also a working grandmother who provided a roof for many years for five adults and three grandchildren.  They all were good mothers.  They all loved their children and did their best.  That is all we can do.  Give it our all and move forward from a place of love.

​I start full time next week.  I have a lot to do to prepare.  There's a great deal to be excited about.  My efforts will allow us to begin the process of coming off of welfare, get a more reliable vehicle, find a home that has more space for our daughters to come into their own, travel more, not have to worry as much about money, and provide a well rounded education for the girls.   I need to celebrate.