Rhett and I started our new jobs today. We had realized that Rhett's job at DSS was just not a job he could keep and still be a parent. He had dangerous clients who had threatened his life and even tracked down where we live, and that scared me. Also, in the two years he has worked there, Rhett has worked between 60-80 hours each week, gained a lot of weight (from eating on the go, not having time for exercise, and getting too little sleep), and gotten quite burned out. We wanted him to be an active presence in the life of our child, so DSS had to go.
In order for him to leave DSS, we really both needed to start making an income. I've been in law school full time since we were married, and we've done a great job of living frugally on just one, social work (small) salary. But babies are expensive and we'd like to let go of some of our money worries, so I decided to join him in work as an in-home family therapist with a wonderful agency called "Carolina Outreach." In this job, we work from home and we set our own schedules. We'll each be responsible for billing 25 hours a week, which we can easily do by staggering which one of us works, and which of us stays with the baby. That was the goal: no daycare!
We did need to find some care for Daniel this week, though, since both Rhett and I had to go to training. We've been going to training each day this week, and I can't speak highly enough for this agency. There just aren't very many social work jobs that are invested in helping employees have healthy, happy family lives, but they are absolutely bending over backwards to make our transition into work go as smoothly as possible. There's a meeting next week that both Rhett and I need to go to, and we won't have childcare lined up for it, so they said to just bring Daniel along.
I admit, I've been a little nervous about returning to work, but I went out on a visit to shadow one of the other therapists last night, and all of my remaining jitters went away. While visiting with the family, I remembered the feelings of confidence and fulfillment that I used to have doing mitigation. It's been such a long time since I've felt that way. Law school had really stripped me of that. This is so clearly where my natural gifts lie. I may still choose to use the law degree at some point, but this feeling of being in the right place is really precious for now. I have also been surprised that as C.O. makes it more and more clear that they understand that Rhett's and my first priority is, and is RiGHTLY the care of our child, I feel more and more okay about it when we have needed to leave Daniel with my sister each morning in order to go to training. Knowing that C.O. cares about us enough to ensure that we are able to give Daniel the care he deserves makes it easier to make space for fulfilling work.
POSTED BY EMILIE BROWN AT 7:36 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment