“‘You don’t want to throw your career away!’
Excuse me?
My blood began to boil as the woman across from me spoke these words.
I mentioned my oldest child would be in kindergarten in two years, and I was contemplating how a shift from daycare to school might change my career path.
She immediately jumped to ‘throwing my career away.’
And I was mad.
Big mad.
Because the very idea of ‘throwing something away’ doesn’t sit right with me.
We all make choices in this life as life changes.
Choices we think through for years, and choices we make at the moment when we’re tossed a curveball.
When it comes to career and parenthood, perhaps we make a choice to work less to accommodate school hours.
Or maybe we use our expertise and build our own businesses.
We could make the choice to push for a promotion to make more money to support our family.
Or we could make a choice to change careers to find more fulfillment and show our kids that loving your job can be real.
And we may choose to stop earning an income and invest our talents in the work at home, saving our families thousands of dollars.
Maybe we’ll make all of these choices at different times because life happens.
Our interests change.
What matters to us can shift and evolve with circumstance, age, and growth.
We need to honor that, be flexible, and be true to ourselves.
That doesn’t mean throwing something you’ve worked hard for into the trash.
Regardless of your next career move, no one can take your past experience away from you.
And therefore, you will always be starting from experience, and never starting from scratch.
So please remember – every day you’re making the best decisions you can for yourself and your family.
No one else can tell you what’s best, what should be valued, or what you should/could/or want to ‘throw away.’
Maybe you need to put part of yourself on a shelf for a little while and wait for the right moment to bring it back down.
Maybe you re-prioritize, reduce, realign, or reconsider.
Maybe you push, pull, prepare, or pause.
But as long as you know who you are and what’s important to you, you are not, at any time and in any way, throwing ANYTHING away.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Becca Carnahan. You can follow her journey on Instagram and her website. Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube for our best videos.
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