Why I haven’t returned to paid work yet
Nearly 3 years ago, I said goodbye to a part-time job at the Swiss government because my contract had run out.
When I stepped out of my office of the Federal Chancellery at the end of February 2023, I felt a sense of freedom. While I loved the team and had an amazing, supportive boss, returning to paid employment after my second son was born had been challenging on different levels. For the first time in my life, I stepped into the unknown.
Sure - I was a mother, so I could always say that I stayed at home with my children.
At the same time, I felt a strong desire to support mothers through coaching, particularly as they returned into the workplace.
However, setting up a business takes time and energy. Both of which I didn’t really have as a mother of a baby and a toddler.
Today, I see my business move forward, even if it’s not where I’d like it to be. I see the challenges mothers (maybe women in general) face to commit to something that supports them (like coaching or a workshop) if it means spending money on themselves or being away from their child. I have learned about matrescence and mothers in the workplace. Most of all, I found my way back to writing which has always been my passion.
So why haven’t I returned back to paid work in the past 3 years when I realised that building a business would be hard?
The short, realistic and also very sad answer is that my family has a financial situation that allows me not to earn a lot of money at this point. I’m extremely grateful for this, for being able to go at my pace, look after my mental health as a mother and slowly move forward with a business that I am passionate about. It also makes me sad that truly looking after our mental health as mothers is often only accessible to those who have the financial means to do so. Family support is very scarce here in Switzerland.
At the same time, I return to a paid job last year. For 6 weeks, I went back to embassy work. However, the situation was quite complex from the start. I applied to this job on a whim in October 2023, because I saw the ad and felt that my profile fit really well. I went to a job interview in November and got the job the next day.
This is when an administrative nightmare began. Because of the nature of the work, I needed security clearance, which meant filling in endless forms about my personal life, my finances, previous jobs and habits… In June 2024, I finally received all the papers I needed to start, but with summer holidays around the corner and my boss changing, it didn’t make sense to start anytime before September.
However, in those 11 months between applying for the job and me actually starting, a lot had shifted in my life. My kids had become older (2 and 5), my parents’ health began declining and I felt a massive pressure to support them, while living 400kkm away and looking after my children.
All of this, added to the “usual” exhaustion that comes with raising tiny humans (which seems to have become the norm in our society, even if it doesn’t seem normal to me that we accept that mothers in particular and parents in general are living on the edge of burnout every single day), made that once I actually was able to start the job, I felt overwhelmed and exhausted, even though I hadn’t even begun any actual tasks. I ended up on sick leave on week 3, unable to get out of bed.
Many small things that might seem normal when being employed just seemed unsurmountably challenging to me:
The pressure to be somewhere at a certain time and clock in a certain amount of hours (even if my boss was super flexible) felt too much on top of my responsibilities as a parents
Commuting for 45 minutes one way twice a week
I felt passionate about continuing my work with mothers and wasn’t ready to let it go, but didn’t know how to make time for it while also navigating life with small children, my own needs and supporting my parents.
I started my Mama Rising training at the same time and absolutely loved every moment of it.
The pressure I put onto myself to support my children and my parents, to be the “perfect” mother and daughter.
The lack of sleep because my toddler was still not sleeping great - added to the lack of rest that I felt after having two babies!
Beliefs around having to do it all on my own and struggling to ask for help.
My husband having a demanding job as well as army commitments which resulted in me solo parenting during certain periods each year and feeling absolutely exhausted after that.
I quit my job after 6 weeks, not because I didn’t like it. I was extremely cautious when accepting and as it took them so long to get all the necessary papers, I was able to reflect on what my non-negociables were in a new workplace. The job ticked all the boxes, yet somehow, I simply couldn’t move forward with it.
A few weeks into my Mama Rising training, I learned about “competing devotions”. A term coined by Mary Blair-Loy, mainly referring to mothers in the workplace. It describes mothers who see their career as a calling or purpose, while their family have the same status. They end up feeling torn between both of them. Mary Blair-Loy suggests that work-family balance “hinges on the cultural definition of what makes a meaningful and worthwhile life”.
I realised that I couldn’t do it all - be a present mother to my children, support my parents, be employed, finish my Mama Rising training, build my business. Something had to give - and for me, it was the paid job. My family is my priority and I knew I didn’t want to let go of the matrescence work. I was in the fortunate situation that I didn’t have to earn money. Had we been dependent on a second salary, the situation might have looked very different.
Right now, I’m allowing myself the space to grow, as a mother as well as in my business. I have ideas and plans for the new year. I’m working behind the scenes on different ways to raise awareness about the challenges mothers face throughout their matrescence journey in Western societies that don’t value them and the work they do.
But I’ve also managed to define my next steps. To set a deadline. I am giving myself another 1.5 years. By then, my youngest will be in second kindergarten. He’ll have school every morning, which makes it easier to plan and navigate life. My husband and I will be able to divide childcare during the week equally, with each of us looking after the kids one afternoon. This equality is important to me. I have put my career on hold to look after the children, reducing my work days to 60% even when I was still employed. It wasn’t always easy, but it was the right choice for me and my family. However, I would like to go back to a certain equality, have the same opportunities in terms of my career as my husband. This will be possible in summer 2027. By then, I also would be able to go back to a 80% paid job (which in theory is considered full-time in Switzerland), if I’d like to, which will give me different opportunities than being employed part-time.
Until then, I am working on my business. Finding ways to support mothers and moving forward one tiny step at a time - because my dream is to bring the awareness around matrescence out into the world, to create change one mother at a time and at the same time be able to support myself financially through my business.
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