Stay-at-Home Mom

Daily writing prompt

Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

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Fifteen years ago, I resigned from my job as a Student Finance Advisor to be a stay-at-home mom. At the time, my oldest was seven years old and my youngest was two. My oldest had been in the same daycare since she was two and my youngest when she was only three months old. Those were some of the hardest years for me having to leave my kids at such young ages with other children, especially since the daycare was a small business ran by a single mom who also took in foster children. Husband and I tried looking for other daycare centers (small and large), but they were all out of our price range.  

You can imagine my excitement when husband graduated with his doctorate, and I turned in my resignation letter. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job. I loved working with students and my co-workers and had some great memories. I’ve reminded my husband that if I ever return to corporate world, I’d do Student Finance again, but husband and I wanted to raise our kids and not have to worry about something going wrong and not being there for them.

The first day as a stay-at-home-mom was exciting. I was finally relieved of corporate work and was now able to focus on raising my kids. The first few weeks and few months staying home were just wonderful. It felt like I was on a long, wonderful vacation. However, after three months realizing that I didn’t have to go to work anymore, I went into a depression. I didn’t know that I’d miss being greeted by co-workers when I walked into the office, or my boss coming into my office to talk about work things, or HR and department heads scheduling my flights and hotels to other states and locations for training (and scheduling everything for me having to do with all types of training), or the students wanting to talk to me about their life, classes, financial aid stuff, etc. I didn’t know how much I enjoyed that until it wasn’t happening anymore.

What became my life for the next fifteen years was something I wasn’t prepared for and couldn’t really prepare for. I was now the scheduler for my kids. I chauffeured them everywhere: school, school events, after school activities/sports, and other stuff outside of school like going to the park, play-dates, etc. I spent a lot of time cooking, cleaning, and shopping for them and making sure they did well in school, etc. I listened to them talk and helped them through difficult times the best way I knew how. All my energy was spent on raising our kids. I wasn’t anywhere where I could have some personal empowerment or confidence in myself as an individual. It’s really not a big deal. In fact, when I was working and was always bombarded with everyone needing something, I yearned to be left alone, but just the sudden change was crazy. It created a strange reality, one that I was unfamiliar with. I had no idea how to fix this because I didn’t know what it was. I just knew something wasn’t right. Somehow, on the outside, I managed by keeping myself busy taking care of my kids and doing freelance work when I had time to myself (which wasn’t often, so I had to be particular with the type of freelancing I did). I felt almost robotic, like I was just getting things done, but I wasn’t myself. I was on autopilot.

Slowly, things started to make sense. About a decade ago, I realized that I had been depressed the first three years as a stay-at-home mom. But by this time, I had already lost the me I knew or at least forgotten what gave my inner soul joy. So, I began to do some reflecting. I tried to remember things I enjoyed doing before becoming a stay-at-home mom and attempted them, like drawing, painting, and writing. I tried programming too and web designing (yes, I was a freelance web designer for a short time), but the technology had advanced in a way that I really didn’t care for, or I just didn’t understand anymore. I decided to finish my master’s degree in creative writing and graduated in 2018. My kids were still young, and I was doing the mom thing like a breeze…yeah, it was the autopilot. I’m just calling it autopilot because I just knew what to do as a parent. I believe most parents are like this so it’s not exclusive to me.

It was a personal struggle believing all my life that I was going to work for a corporation, make my own money, and provide for my family financially to then be in a position to care for my family and budget finances with money my husband made. It was a whole different way of life from the one I’d imagined it to be when I was younger.

Nowadays, I only have a 17-year-old I’m still raising, but she’s mostly self-sufficient and will graduate high school next year. My 22-year-old will be graduating from university with a Biochem degree this weekend. She’s working full-time and plans to continue to take additional classes for a future career she’s interested in pursuing. With the extra time I have, I’ve been writing and publishing books under pen names. On this blog, I’ve been doing book reviews and sharing my endeavor into gouache painting.

I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom even though this was never a path I’d imagined for myself. My only wish would have been to know the mental and emotional difficulty of the transition from corporate world to a stay-at-home mom so that I didn’t have so much inner struggle during the earlier years.