The age of reinvention
Or: meditations on the ending of maternity leave.
For the past 9 months my life has been exclusively focused on looking after another person, albeit a very small one; next week I must return to being an individual for 8 hours a day, a professional woman with control of several 6-figure budgets, various projects to contribute to, and responsibility for supporting many hundreds of students. Switching off from work and onto motherhood was ridiculously easy, I loved looking after Katy from the first moment, it seemed utterly natural to devote myself to her and I didn’t miss work for a second. Whole seasons have now gone by and my role as mother has changed in many ways as Katy herself has changed and grown, from a helpless babe to a vigorously crawling little person, full of energy and enthusiasm and a cheeky sense of humour. Reinventing myself again, this time as that strange hybrid beast the ‘working mum’ will not be so easy. I have certainly changed too, but have I grown at all?
For the past 9 months my life has been exclusively focused on looking after another person, albeit a very small one; next week I must return to being an individual for 8 hours a day, a professional woman with control of several 6-figure budgets, various projects to contribute to, and responsibility for supporting many hundreds of students. Switching off from work and onto motherhood was ridiculously easy, I loved looking after Katy from the first moment, it seemed utterly natural to devote myself to her and I didn’t miss work for a second. Whole seasons have now gone by and my role as mother has changed in many ways as Katy herself has changed and grown, from a helpless babe to a vigorously crawling little person, full of energy and enthusiasm and a cheeky sense of humour. Reinventing myself again, this time as that strange hybrid beast the ‘working mum’ will not be so easy. I have certainly changed too, but have I grown at all?
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