Planning for the next phase

I'm in the throes of a "next-phase-in-life" crisis. I tend to have these periods of profound introspection, which, thankfully, tend to propel me forward in a positive direction. The process can be painstaking - piecing together interests with possibilities, testing waters and retreating or moving forward. At the moment, I am working out what to do with my life after weaning my 7.5 month old baby.

See, it started like this:

I started a graduate program and met my husband that same year. We got married and then pregnant by the time I graduated two years later. I earned a masters degree in social work (an AM for those who want to be technical, dang U of C pretentiousness), and passed my licensing exam a few months later. I graduated 7 months pregnant and we decided that I would stay home for at least the first year of the baby's life. I had a job where I was able to work from home as the managing editor for a social work journal focusing on issues related to children for a while, and once Lillian turned one I got a part-time job working in Student Affairs at my undergraduate college. I got pregnant again with Amelia and we moved into our house, which is not close to the school I was working at, so I quit my job there and started over with the stay at home mom gig. She's now almost 8 months old, so it's time for me to start looking for my next endeavor.

I love this job. I am the luckiest person in the world to have my two girls. They are hilarious, beautiful, silly, incredibly diligent at working on their developmental tasks and so, so forgiving. Being home with them has humbled me, surprised me, intrigued me, made me appreciate the small things, allowed me to be silly and reignited my sense of wonder and imagination. Part of me could do this job until they graduate high school. However, I do have that master's degree (and the student loan debt to prove it) and a LOT to offer this world. I'm also going a little bit stir crazy and would love something intellectually stimulating to spend some of my time on - something that does not revolve around food preparation, laundry, poop or other bodily fluids and household chores.

So, my quandary became: now that I've grown up, what do I want to do with my life? Do I want to be a social worker? If so, doing what? If not, then what? I sat for many nights thinking about the last three years of my life and what I've come to understand about myself and what I've learned in general. First thing I can say is that we are done having kids. No more "one year" at home, nursing my baby, establishing healthy attachment, being privileged enough to help them with their developmental milestones, and witness their "firsts" (man, I love this job). It's time for me to move outside of the house a little bit and broaden my horizons. Second, I don't feel like I can just step back in to my role in social work that I left (I was a therapist/intern) without some kind of retraining. In general, I feel unprepared to walk into an agency and ask for a job with any confidence that I could actually help people. Third, I discovered that I want to work with a population that I have no real, formal training working with - babies/children and at-risk and/or young mothers. Imagine that.

After having my first child, Lillian, I suffered terribly. I became obsessive with certain behaviors (I washed my hands until they bled), introverted (wouldn't let people hold her, wouldn't really go anywhere) and I was very, very paranoid. I was crying all the time, my health was bad (I had postpartum thyroiditis, which gave me heart palpitations and made me lose lots of weight fast and feel like everything was spinning), and then, to top it all off, I reinjured what I now know to be two bulging discs in my lumbar spine, rendering me physically incompetent for months and months and months. I was depressed and in severe pain for a very long time. I worked very hard to pull myself back to reality, and did a damned good job of it with the help of my husband and family. I then had my second baby girl, and yet AGAIN reinjured those discs in my spine, and was even more incapacitated having a toddler, a newborn and this severe injury. Luckily, I healed relatively quickly, but there is NO WAY I would have made it through without my amazing husband, awesome mother and equally awesome in-laws. It was about this time I got to thinking - what the heck do people do without this kind of support?? What about mother's who are single, drug addicted, ostracized, dejected, incarcerated, or otherwise unavailable and without resources? I also then understood how desperate, unsupported and uneducated mother's choose to hurt their children. I developed empathy and deep compassion for women without resources. This job is HARD. You have to be utterly unselfish, and "on" at all times. You have to meet the needs of these tiny little babies who can't tell you what they want or need. Some never stop crying, some never sleep, some don't eat well, some cry for no apparent reason. Even the "best" babies need to eat very often at the beginning, leaving the parent(s) to subsist on little sleep and depleted strength. Add these factors to a woman who is playing the game with the cards already stacked against her, and the child or children become very at risk for neglect, abuse or both.

So, I did some research to see how I can get in touch with this population to intervene before babies get hurt, and to provide some support and resources for these mothers. I discovered one fascinating new project that really got my heart racing! Cook County has a new center for pregnant women within their women's jail. If you read this website, you'll get a glimpse of how difficult life is when you're a pregnant woman in prison. The women are non-violent offenders, and could probably use some support and education, don't ya think? I. Want. To. Work. There. or in some program like it.

This got me thinking that I can use my social work degree to work with the women - listen, build relationships, help boost confidence, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and help with life and work skills. But, with my education as it stands I can't help them understand the development of their babies and how to meet their needs without knowing more about child development myself. Thus, I have decided that I need more schooling to support my interests. Without a deep understanding of how babies develop, I can't help the mothers understand how to use their own resources (or how to find them if they're lacking).

I've applied to the Erikson Institute for an M.S. in Child Development. I've chosen this place because it's a natural fit for me, as they are the leader in educating practitioners in the field (child development is ALL they do), and they believe that a person is intrinsically linked to their environment - family, biology, community, etc. Therefore, they take a sort of holistic approach to the discipline, and that's exactly what I'm looking for in a graduate program. The program also doesn't start until the fall, which means that Amelia will be 15 or so months old and, therefore, weaned! That means I don't have to be within an hour of her next feeding! And they're local. Bonus!

I have an interview on February 23rd. I'm SO excited!

I think this post has been helpful for me because I was able to write down a lot of my thoughts, so I can see them. It helps me to understand what I want if I can write it down clearly. As long as this post is, it has really trimmed my own thoughts down a great deal. Yay!!