Direkt zum Hauptbereich

When work frightens a child

She was just two and a half years old when I had to make the first hard choice of our lives: left her behind, under the care of my mother, in order to go for a job with good perspectives, which was 3.500km away from my home town. And so I did.

Every day I used to call home and talk to my little daughter, asked how she was doing at the kindergarten, and every day I said: "mom is working, and I will soon come to pick you up to live here with me". But this "soon" was not exactly a true statement, it could take around one year until I got a house from the company and could bring her to live with me.

Ten months later I received the house, but I could only fly home on my vacations, so I still had to wait two months to pick her up to me. This one year apart was way too hard, and I counted anxiously the days and hours to bring her to our new home.

In order to make an easier transition, I brought my mother to stay with us for some time and help her to adapt to her new life. We arrived on a Friday, then spent the weekend together exploring our house and the local places. On Monday morning I took her to her new school, where she immediately felt comfortable, saying hello to all colleagues she crossed on the way to the entrance. Up to that moment, there were no worries, she was fine.

At my lunch break, I picked her up at school and went home. My lunch break was long enough to have lunch together at home and still play before I went back to work. We even had time to do the homework together.

When I told her I had to go back to work, she clung on my neck and started to cry, asking me not to go, as if I were going to disappear again for a long time. "Work" had been engraved in her subconscious as something very bad, which took her mama away from her for a too long time, and she did not want it to happen again.

It broke my heart to notice the damage that the word "work" had made in her. I put her tenderly on my lap and tried to explain in simple words that I would be back at the end of the afternoon, and that I would be like that every day. Even though she cried desperately when I left. My mother told me in the evening that she only got a little bit calm when it was time to take a nap. And after waking up, she used to ask every five minutes "When does mom come back?".

At school, she was fine since the first day, but it took almost a week until she understood our new routine and did not cry anymore when I left to work after lunch.  

This was only the first emotional scar on her in our lives full of meetings and farewells. As the only breadwinner, I made my choices thinking about what would be better for us in the long run. No place for regrets, time flows and the pain goes.

More stories are to come. And feel free to comment and tell your story. You are not alone in this journey.

#singlemotherlife
#singleworkingmoms
#singleprofesionalmother
#powerwomen
#supportivewomen
#getsupport
#singlemotherincorporateworld

Kommentare

Kommentar veröffentlichen

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

The worst week of my life

It was a Sunday in March 2001. As usual, she came into my room early, because she woke up according to her biological clock and wanted to play. I wanted to sleep longer and used to kick her out of my bedroom. So many times I did this, so many times she came back shortly afterward with my breakfast, arranged in her own way, on a tray. But that morning she did not return. And I did not even miss her, because I slept again. When I got up, I saw her prostrated on the sofa, burning with fever. There was a slight reddish swelling behind her ear, and I immediately took her to the hospital. They gave her medicine to lower the fever and said it seemed to be mumps, but the strange thing was that she was already immunized against it. How could it be? We went home and stayed quiet for the rest of the day. On Monday morning she was feeling better, then I took her to school and went to work. But at lunchtime when I picked her up at school, she was feverish again, the edema behind her ear ha
Kommentar veröffentlichen
Mehr anzeigen

MAMA NON LAVORA!*

*Mom does not work I worked as a nanny for an Italian family in Munich. Papà was an engineer and had a very good job. Mama was an event promoter and self-employed, she had her own company and worked from home, organizing and promoting events in her town in Italy. Every morning she was pretty busy with conference calls, budgets, emails, and planning, but when the day of the events came, she had to be there in Italy, to conduct them personally. They had a son, the little Pietro. He was not yet two years old and used to fly to Italy with Mama when she needed to be there for work – his grandma was always happy to have him around. But this one time it happened that Pietro had to stay in Munich. I came in the afternoon to take care of him until Papà arrived from work. Mama told him she had to go to work, Papà was coming soon and that I would be there to play with him meanwhile.  When he noticed that Mama was really leaving, he started to cry, clung around her neck and shouted “Mama non
Kommentar veröffentlichen
Mehr anzeigen

100% priority

In the text about if it is possible to be a perfect mother and at the same time an outstanding professional, I said I would be back to the topic. Not only because this was a very hard thing for me, leaving me guilty for not being “a good mama” for my daughter, but also because I see it is a topic that still concerns mothers all around the globe. Recently I was sitting at a table surrounded by wonderful engaged women and suddenly I heard some of them talking about single motherhood. And how hard and tough are the demands of society on single mothers. Even worse when single working mothers. Then I mentioned what I wrote here in my blog, which was a big dilemma for a long time in my life. I told these enlightened women that I no longer felt guilty because now I knew I did the best that I could at every moment of my life. I knew I might have failed in some moments as a mother, in other as a professional, but I was aware, I had done all I could. One of the women, also a single
Kommentar veröffentlichen
Mehr anzeigen