Returning to work, mommy guilt and what I like to call: Mums that hustle

Today is my first workday of 2022 and as I type this, I can still feel the weirdness of it. Another year has passed… and quite a strange one. A year lived, battled, enjoyed, grown, struggled, cried, laugh, longed, survived and hustled. Because when it’s part of your nature, no matter what is going on in the world, you hustle. So, when things get tough, or you are not sure what to do with yourself, you start something, you study, you plan, you reorganize, rearrange, or you go out and find work. That is the nature of us: natural born hustlers. And this exact mentality, paired up with a very long lockdown, a good dose of baby blues and the need for a new challenge was what got me out the door and up the street with an envelope full of resumés and the determination to find a simple job that would get me up and help us out.

Before I was a mum… and what feels like ages ago, I use to say that I wouldn’t mind being a “working mum”: going out, developing myself, growing, staying active, doing my thing. And because words become actions, actions become destiny, and the past COVID year presented itself full of challenges, I found myself six months post-partum, in a foreign country, between two very long lockdowns, and extremely excited to sign a seasonal contract in a store near my house. 

That is how I became a “working mum”. Such a loaded word, isn’t it? Just as I say it out loud, I can feel the weight of it. Sense the array of connotations it carries. Working mum, I repeat to myself, and it almost sounds like a mythical thing: a sacrificed creature who must be pitied by everyone else, especially the “free and non-working” ones.

Am I this creature? I ask myself. Is working, hustling and being a mum enough to earn the title? And, more importantly, do I even want it? Most people have a couple of comforting words for you when they hear you are a mum who works, but I am not sure that we, the ones doing the work and attempting the mothering, feel the same way about it. Definitely not sorry about ourselves, anyways.

Tired? Yes, incredibly so. Guilty? Some days, especially when workdays are long, bubba is sick or I just long to feel his little hands between mine because I am painfully aware of how fast he is growing. But I also feel very darn proud of myself, active, happy, engaged, and aware that work has given me time to breath, socialize, to get out and clear my head, and to be able to go out and come back to him having had time to really miss and appreciate us.

So when I am standing quietly in the shop with two hundred pants in front of me ready to be folded, I take a deep breath and enjoy the repetitiveness of an act that allows me to think, to plan, to drift away in family plans and to refresh myself so that in the evening I can come back to him refreshed, re-in-love, crazy to see him and hold him.

And of course, it feels different every day, and probably feels different for everyone. So much, that some days I still doubt if I should feel sorry for myself or raise my tired head in pride. But something within me knows that there is a silver lining in everything. Aware that I have been the master of my own destiny for many years (which has been lucky enough), now I am trying to find balance between this new identity I’ve been born into: motherhood, my previous self, and my constant changing curiosities and desires.

Working to make some money, practicing being present with my son, attempting to keep a decent home (at which I fail constantly), kinda´ starting a tiny toy shop in Australia, supporting my beautiful notebook business in Mexico, finishing my fourth novel, keeping my more than a hundred plants, son, and cat alive... All of which makes me, if not a working mum: A mum who really hustles. A better term, I believe. One I will forever wear proud around my neck, sleave or wherever it lands: a mum who is in the go. Constantly. Because that is not only the mum I am now a days, but the woman I have always been.

And in a way, as I always suspected when I was young, staying true to myself, looking for me in the depths of confusion and the first months of motherhood and carving the time to go after my own adventures is what has and will always keep me sane, exploring life, happy, dancing, being the woman, I have enjoyed being all this time.

So today, that I must go back to work for eight uninterrupted hours… and then again tomorrow and almost every single day until the 19 of January that my own mum will finally be able to come and meet her grandson for the very first time, I feel grateful. And yes, sometimes guilty, sometimes bored, sometimes sad and all the time tired. But I know that when I get another opportunity, when I get a chance to stop folding pants and hopefully work with words, images, design, or people, I will still take work, every single time, before nothing, bed rest, or a good movie.

There is guilt, don’t get me wrong, loads of it. Especially when little Mr. R is sick or cries his eyes out watching me leave the house. But by now I’ve come to understand that mum guilt is something that will forever be present in some form or another (and I have to work hard to tame it). Working or not, I will miss beautiful moments with my son that will never come back, I will miss whole afternoons that I would give everything to live again when he is sixteen and he doesn’t want to hug me in public anymore. But I also know that if anything, I want to free myself from this unwarranted and unfair feeling of guilt.

I am working hard for him, for us, and especially for me. Because this is who I am, and this is the life I can and want to model for him. These are the values and the joys I’ve learned through life. So, when I come battered from work and choose to go out in the garden with him to do my plants and let him run around me soaking the sun or cloudy skies, we share, and I get to show him how I live my life and he gets to explore and decide how he wants to live his.

So, when I think of us, mum’s who hustle, I understand it is not always our decision, the best thing in the word, or what we would choose to do if we didn´t have to. But I also know it’s not all gloomy and not pity deserving. It is just us, strong powerful dreamy women that became mothers, and are trying to still be themselves, ourselves, whatever that means to us, while working hard towards the life we want to live and mirror for our children.

PS: I want to acknowledge that throughout these months I have been lucky enough to have my partners full support and his presence at home. I am aware that in some years, we will be able to see, how lucky we were to alternate these roles for a while giving Mr. Rio the opportunity to spend so much time with his papa in his first year of life. And me, I’ve been able to stay sane, to have some time for myself, to grow, and to be apart so that we can be together.