I used to be supporting cast. Then I gave birth to my daughter.
in response to Andrew Boryga's thoughtful essay on fatherhood, ego, writing, and fulfillment
“Mama!” she yelled. “You’re done working!”
When I opened the door, she was standing there in the hallway waiting for me with a grin that stretched from one side of her face to the other. My daughter was three years old, a smiling ball of sunshine in an otherwise gray and heavy day in November 2021. Yes, I was done working for the day, but I was anything but happy. I was depressed, so much that I had to cold-breathe through tears before I’d opened that door. I was frazzled, anxious, and buzzing like a bad electrical connection. At the end of that particular workday and just before opening my office door, I’d received an email from human resources that felt like a gut-punch and would ultimately lead to termination if I didn’t resign first.
Choice weighed heavy on me.
Link to Andrew’s inspirational essay:
The American Dream, to my former embittered self, was a story people used to tell themselves and certainly wasn’t available to the tired masses working themselves to the bone for bottom scrapings, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve carried that supporting-cast outlook, put out that supporting-cast energy.
Even after divorcing my dreams-hating ex and finding support in true partnership, I didn’t know how to be anything but the support system. Perhaps it’s because I was the first-born grandchild in my family, always responsible for helping out with the little ones, but I never had a lot of faith in myself and what I wanted from life.
Back when my friends and I were first testing the word “college” when discussing our futures, I had resolved not to attend a formal degree program. I wanted to be a hair dresser. There was a technical program nearby, and I could graduate with a certificate in about 18 months. But peer pressure took that career path from me.
Between guidance counselors, teachers, and friends who just couldn’t understand why I would choose not to go to a four-year university program (thanks, public school system indictrination), what I wanted fell to the wayside. I ended up enrolling in a Bachelor’s degree program at a local private college, accepting the six-figure price tag and the decade of debt that came with it, and following The Way.
After college, I began moonlighting as a freelance editor, a passion I found while poring myself into English literature and philosophy studies. But when family members and friends asked when I was going to get a Real Job, I caved to the pressure again, hung up my freelance dreams, and found a nine-to-five job pushing paper at a non-profit health insurance company, where my soul festered.
Fast forward to late 2017 when I learned I was pregnant. The joy — oh, the sheer rapture! — I felt knowing I was carrying my daughter (Yes, I knew untuitively I was carrying a little girl well before our growth scan.); the responsibility I felt knowing she was carrying my potential future grandchildren. While pregnant, I learned a lot about my body and its needs, and during those months, I began eating for my daughter’s health. She was going to need a robust microbiome, after all, and I could support her.
Then 2020 happened.
In March that year, my partner lost his job and became a full-time stay-home dad out of necessity, and I was sent to work from home. Two weeks, they said, We’ll all be back in the office before April. I laughed out loud at the “two weeks” messaging, knowing full well that’s not how disease spread works (remember, I worked alongside medical professionals in the non-profit health insurance industry and have since learned to question the entire field of virology), but I dutifully packed up my desk and drove my office home to support my colleagues.
Being home full time from March 2020 was a gift I never knew to ask for.
By April of 2020, after working remotely for roughly a month, I felt newly awake and alive. Something in me had shifted with the decrease in workload and commuter stress, and though I was still technically working full-time, in some ways the decreased load felt a little like a sabbatical.
Without the commute or daycare pickups, I suddenly had an additional twelve hours each week back in my schedule.
I started our first kitchen garden in the backyard and began looking ahead to what I now know are our rewilding efforts to preserve Vermont’s magnificent greenery and native habitats. We hope to certify our suburban yard as a wildlife habitat later this year.
As I learned more about food and some really gross food additives, I began baking my family’s bread and learned how to boil and bake deliciously chewy bagels, something I still do weekly to support my family’s well-being. (Our six-ingredient bagels are far healthier than the 30+-ingredient varieties available in most grocery stores.) I also learned to preserve the food we grew ourselves.
I’d also started working on my novel in progress, one that had been bonking around my noodler in various forms for about a decade and was finally ready to come out, and I was making plans to start building my author career online.
In fact, from the spring of 2020 to the early months of 2021, I felt better about myself, my family, and our future than I think I ever had before then. And I know my daughter had ushered in that change, unbeknownst to her. I couldn’t be on the sidelines when she needed a protector and advocate. I wouldn’t remain in the background when she needed a wolf to stand beside her.
And donning my wolfishness I was, though I wouldn’t realize it until that terrible day in November 2021 when I received a life-changing email from my employer’s human resources department:
Get the COVID-19 vaccine on or before December 31, 2021 or be terminated.
If you’ve ever been asked to compromise your values or receive consequences, you know that choice with coercion is not choice at all. You are also probably familiar with that white-hot cold that spreads over the skin, prickling, when your head and your heart are unaligned.
I was a young mother with a stay-home partner and a young daughter, both of whom relied on my paycheck. Yet, I would not have that damn experimental slurry pushed into my body. To accept that hypodermic juice was to accept the murder of my personhood, and I knew what I had to do, despite the roil in my belly.
So when my daughter yelled, “Mama! You’re done working!” I picked her up, squeezed her tightly and told her, “Yes, honey. Mama is done working.”
But the words meant something bigger than they had any other day.
After resigning from that terrible job that paid the bills but left me feeling spiritually impoverished, I decided working for someone else just wasn’t for me anymore, and I threw myself into the world of freelancing, the only thing I’ve wanted since I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree 16 years ago. Frankly, it was time to see what I was made of: If not now, when?
And when I saw my daughter that day in November 2021, I knew that I needed to protect her in a way nobody had protected me—by preserving her dreams.
Children rarely listen to what we say, but they model how we behave, how we carry ourselves, what we accept, and what we don’t accept. If I wasn’t willing to unabashedly pursue my dreams, I knew I could never really urge my daughter to pursue hers, not in a way that would sound like anything but hypocrisy or the wistful musings of an aging parent out of touch with the “real world.” But independence is the real world; we must all stand on our own feet because nobody is coming to save us. Freelancing highlights the need for fierce independence.
I won’t lie and pretend working for myself has been easy. It’s been exhausting, depressing at times, and downright scary. My partner and I have paid bills late and worried about food, have little set aside for emergencies, and just keep on keepin’ on. Yet, no matter what challenge has come our way, we’ve managed to navigate it, managed to find enough cash just to cover what we needed to cover. With all the risks that freelancing comes with, the rewards are sweet, and the tenacity with which my partner and I must now operate has extended into our personal lives.
Editing full time means I perform paid work or administrative tasks that lead to paid work for about 30 hours a week. Those extra ten hours each week, plus the lack of commute, amounts to about 20 hours of unused time back in my schedule, time I’m using to pursue creativity in my life, time I can give to my partner for his creative pursuits.
My partner is learning the finer details of American Traditional art style, working hard to replicate common forms. He’s also expanding his musical pursuits and adding vocals to his strings repertoire. Plus, he’s become an adept homeschool parent during the workday when I’m noodling over authors’ manuscripts.
I’m writing my novel now and have submitted the first chapter to a writing contest for consideration. And I’m learning how to play drums, starting with just five songs I can listen to on repeat for days. I’ve even began sharing original drawings with folks via MetaStellar’s Writing Advice of the Week column.
But the biggest change I’ve seen has been in myself, for which I have my daughter to thank.
Moving from a supporting cast member to the main character of your own story isn’t fun and isn’t easy. Just like the move to freelance work, stepping into your main-characterhood is exhausting, frustrating, depressing at times, and can be downright scary. But it’s also exciting, and the world opens at your feet.
Parenting my daughter, sharing with her how important our dreams and aspirations are—so important that to deny them is to deny humanity—has given me a refreshed outlook on my own life, my own dreams.
I’m not willing to engage in spiritual death to follow The Way any longer.
Instead, I’m now the main character of my own story, and I get to decide which road I take to acheivement.
I'm so proud of you. Your bravery and dedication to yourself and your family is inspiring!