Can you find yourself in motherhood…

Or do you lose yourself?

There was a point of no return, maybe, for women like me. I chose to stay home with my daughter after her birth, and not become a “working mother.” I tried to do a part-time, online tutoring job, holding my daughter in my arms while I typed comments on freshman college essays for $11 an hour. It was hard to justify financially, this time spent that really was more to stimulate my mind than provide much actual support for our family. I had the job, plus writing content for businesses for equally as little pay, throughout my pregnancy while on strict bed rest. There was no option to work outside the home with my ailing body trying to hold in a baby.

After awhile, I couldn’t justify the exhaustion I felt for so little reward. I took on less hours. I took less assignments. In terms of my daily routine, it made life easier, but the gaps in work experience are now a sign of sacrifice rather than an educated decision.

How many of millions of women make career adjustments to accommodate parenting? Working certain hours to make sure you can pick up your child from school. Working the night-shift so you can be there during the day. How many women make career sacrifices—gaps of unemployment or underemployment like I experience, and can never make up for in a way than if I hadn’t made the choices I’ve made for motherhood?

Of course, my story is a story of privilege, and to some, envy, not having to leave my child with a babysitter to make ends meet or work a menial or exploitive job to support my family. So those gaps on my resume? It’s evidence of Karen-ness, second wave white feminism complicated by post-feminist grief.

And, yet, society would applaud this “sacrifice” of identity, the belief that parenting—of a certain kind of mothering—is the highest possible purpose. It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t walk into a job in the way an unmarried childless man can who doesn’t have those gaps. I could never catch up with my husband career-wise, a tenured English professor of twenty years, which on the worst days figures into marital power dynamics.

Hasn’t feminism taught women like me anything? To have those gaps, to fall behind career-wise, makes you vulnerable. But are the sacrifices made by some women who are completely financially independent, having to delay child rearing or eschewing it completely, a trade off?

It’s complicated…and it all is based on the myth that there’s a choice about how exactly we mother. We don’t get to pick and choose our circumstances, our emotional and physical gifts and limitations aren’t in our control. Our children’s personalities and needs are not custom ordered. Our partnerships or lack of mates, or our community, aren’t on a menu. It’s the acceptance that we are just overall just doing what we can do to get through the day, with the hope of averaging out to doing our best.