Dear Carolyn: Four years ago, I left my teaching career to care for my son, who needed a great deal of medical care. He has been doing very well and no longer requires my constant attention. I would like to go back to my old career.
My family, both immediate and extended, are not openly supportive of this. Over the years, they have become increasingly reliant on me to take the lead on everything relating to my children. My husband and parents, with good intentions, essentially tell me that I am more valuable outside of my profession.
Every holiday, I listen to aunts and cousins tell me how lucky I am that I don’t “have” to work.
All of this translates into me feeling unsupported. I know I can’t be professionally successful without support.
How do I begin to take steps away from this primary caregiving role? I never intended for this to be a permanent situation.
— Trying To Find Balance
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Help! I'm a middle-aged woman with no life
Dear Trying: You remind your husband that you never intended this arrangement to be permanent, and kindly tell him you’re applying to teach next fall — because you won’t stay in a role that doesn’t fit just because people have gotten comfortable with you in it.
You mentally tell everyone else with an opinion about your value to stuff that opinion someplace dark and remote.
And you notify yourself that you can in fact be professionally successful without your family’s support.
Support is a lovely thing to have — and to give, so don’t get me started on people who think they have a right to withhold it because they prefer to have you waiting on them instead of doing work that fulfills you. But support is not necessary.
The list of necessities for your professional success is short: You need to be qualified, apply, be hired and do your job well.
Good for you for giving your son what he needed, and congratulations on doing your full-time-caretaking job so well that people embraced you in it completely. Resuming your old career won’t strand or displace anyone; you’re just taking that same unselfishness, warmth and competence where your heart says you need to go, as you’re entitled to do.
Possibly some (or most) of the people urging her to be happy in her role as a SAHM think that's what she wants to hear, and don't really have any opinion.
__________________
The Principle of Least Interest: He who cares least about a relationship, controls it.
She is likely doing a lot for a lot of people, and they don't want to lose that. Whenever I take time off work, my DH gets spoiled and wants to make it permanent.
__________________
LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
