I find myself at times anxious in every social situation, wondering if someone will ask that question:
“…so what do you do?”
And what do I say if someone does ask?
“I stay at home.”
Ideally at that moment what I would like is to be able to hand them a card that lists why I have not worked outside the home in, yikes, 20 years. I lived in a lot of shame for a while because I didn’t work. But then I started looking at the timeline and saw it differently.
While I didn’t have a typical job outside the home, I definitely worked at raising my kids before they were in school. That covers 12 of the 20 years. Within that time I also had a total of eight surgeries — sounds like a lot, and when I look back over the list of them I realize that, yeah, it really was a lot.
Just after my youngest two finished their first year of school, we moved. Soon after that, Covid hit. The next year I had another surgery, this one being more scary to me because it involved nerves on my brain. Two years later I would have another surgery to remove the plate in my head from the previous procedure.
That last surgery was over three years ago. I don’t know exactly what the future holds, but I will admit I get nervous when I consider “getting back out there” as they say. Time will tell.
