Free to Be...a Housewife

For the past six years I have been juggling.   Juggling motherhood, housewifery and the holy grail of vocations for someone in my situation:  a part-time work-from-home job.  You see, when the opportunity to work at home came calling out of the blue all those years ago, I felt like I'd hit the lottery.  Wasn't that what I was hoping for?  A part-time job to help with the family budget and give me a sense of purpose?  I didn't want to just be a housewife, did I?  

Last week, all my juggling, came up short when I lost my holy grail of a job on Friday.  Mistake #1:  believing that my boss had crossed over into the friend category.  Friends understand and support each other's day-to-day challenges, right?  Friends understand working mothers have to juggle, right?   Mistake #2:  letting that employer/friend see behind the curtain of Oz one too many times. 

As the days pass and I continue to sort through what happened in this parting-of-ways with my boss, I feel that there's less and less I could have done to prevent this from happening.   Business decisions get made. But what frosts me the most is that no matter how hard I worked for that person, collecting my kudos along the way, they ultimately used my motherhood against me so that they could justify the business decision to hire another person with a different skill set. Whoa. 

As the days pass, my anger and sadness are fizzling away.  A sense of relief and new purpose is trickling in.  If I really look underneath the surface, I have to admit I'd not been happy with that job and employer for quite some time -- indentured servitude comes to mind for a number of reasons.   What if I had been more honest with myself and brave enough to pull the plug before the boss.  What had been conditioned in me to keep at a job that at-times made me down-right miserable?   Why did I let my self-worth become damaged from working for someone who seemed to require mind-reading capabilities?  Why did I let that particular job be my sense of purpose?

As a 40-something, I'm learning to accept that my earning potential does not determine my value.  I'm thankful to be in a position where I can take my time and find the next job that is a better fit for me.  I'm seeing I now have time for those housewifey interests I want to explore.  I'm joyful to discover that conflict, drama and change can lead to good things.....in time new opportunities paid or unpaid.  I have more time to clean my house (I enjoy it, really) do the laundry, pack the lunches, cook the dinners, taxi the kids and appreciate those with whom I share my life.  More time to engage in hobbies that make me happy:  Gardening, jewelery making, genealogy, being keeper of the family history and photographs.

Perhaps that boss turned out to be a friend after all.  That person took away my source of income, for now, but in its place gave me the sweet gift of time to gleefully and unreservedly enjoy being a housewife.  No longer a juggler, I'm more a Cinderella who can now say "some day my prince-of-a-job will come" and I'm OK with that.