When I quit my job, it wasn’t a rushed decision. It was intentional, calculated and in many ways a move grounded in love and logic, for our daughter, our family and for the kind of life we wanted to build together. We knew the system was not working for us.

But what no one prepared me for was how deeply it would unravel parts of me I didn’t even know existed. How they would open up and get wounded in ways I couldn’t have imagined. On the surface, it looks like a huge privilage. A chance to take a pause, to breathe and to parent more consicously. To be able to function as a single income household.

But what it also became quietly and without any warning, was a slow erosion of the self I had spent so many years building. Where I come from, patriarchy still runs deep. In many families, girls are still seen as a burden, married off young, or expected to become “homemakers” by default. Flourishing careers aren’t always expected or encouraged. Some women are even told that working is just a way to pass time, not a path to independence or ambition.

So in many ways, choosing to leave my job without a plan B felt like stepping right into a narrative I had spent my whole life trying to rewrite.

I didn’t just leave a job. I left behind a validation.
Honestly, I often feel like I have dissapointed women who fought so hard for us to have this choice and freedom.

In return, I walked into a space that felt painfully thankless.

This is not to diminish the weight of being a SAHM. This chapter of staying home came from a place of love.

However, for me it also came with grief.

Grief for the old me. For the dreams that needed to be parked for now. For the version of me that once walked into a room with purpose and a voice.

The transition one some days feels like a quiet heartbreak.
And some days, it feels like I traded one identity for another and got lost somewhere in between.

And yet, here I am.
Still showing up.
Still mothering.
Still trying to find bits of myself in the cracks of a day filled with chaos, crumbs, and cuddles.