I attended an inaugural conference this past weekend in Orem, Utah for something called Elavare, a new organization designed to help moms re-enter the workforce after raising kids. It was well put together and the entire event is available online, so I wanted to share it here on the blog. (The $25 donation goes towards offering scholarships to single mothers, but can be viewed for free if you don’t have funds available to contribute.)

Since attending I’ve been thinking about my own journey as a stay-at-home mom, now wanting to re-enter the workforce but feeling totally stuck. I know I’m not unique.

I grew up in Utah with a stay-at-home mom myself. I think she would’ve been much happier in the workforce, but she was obedient to the prophet and stayed home to have two babies – my sister and then myself. (Then in an act of self autonomy, used birth control during a time it was still heavily discouraged.) She recently passed away, and in her last months someone visited her who mentioned a place she’d worked back in the 1970s. Even though we’re approaching half a century since she worked there, she wanted to tell them all about it. Her working years were a highlight of her life. 

Growing up I watched women in my ward and usually thought their lives looked unfulfilling, so much so that I felt a sense of dread when I considered becoming like them. They complained about how babies had ruined their bodies and looked frazzled, chasing kids and trying to clean up after everyone. Pregnancy, babies, drudgery and housework all day did not appeal to me.

And yet, I had a burning testimony of the church. I believed the prophet spoke for God and my priesthood leaders would guide me to the best possible life I could have. 

I’m happy for the women who say they didn’t experience pressure to be stay-at-home moms or get married young, or who felt the pressure but easily resisted it. Maybe in a slightly different world I could’ve been one of them, too. I was also smart, capable, motivated and ambitious – and it wasn’t enough.

I went to BYU with one hopeful goal – to graduate from college and move away from Utah before I got married. I figured that was the best way to avoid the dull looking lives of women in my ward, because I’d still probably end up a mom, but at least I could do it somewhere cooler than where I’d already lived.

It didn’t happen. I got married at 21 to my husband who already had an established career in Utah so I ended up living here. I also remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at my wedding luncheon when a family member stood up and gave us strongly worded advice to not postpone having children. 

It took me a while to get pregnant (over a year off of birth control), and I was secretly relieved. I thought Heavenly Father was blessing me for being so obedient by giving me more time. I was working at a job where I was very successful, and when I got a positive pregnancy test my heart sank. Everyone assumed I was excited, but I wasn’t. My husband was also deployed for 18 months to Kuwait and I was alone and pregnant and terrified. I remember talking to a friend at work right before giving birth and asking him, “Shouldn’t I be feeling excited by this point? Instead I wish I could reverse all of this, but it’s way too late now!” He was LDS, older and had four kids and a stay-at-home wife of his own. He told me not to worry because it would all kick in once the baby arrived. Women are designed for exactly this, he explained. It’s in our DNA.

Unfortunately, women aren’t robots with identical programming that makes us all want to do exactly the same thing with our lives. We are unique human beings, just like men. Unlike men though, we aren’t always granted the freedom to choose what we do with our lives.

Two decades later, I have three kids. I love my kids. I think it’s fine to love your kids but not love stay-at-home motherhood, or wish you had waited until you were older to start a family. Complicated feelings are totally okay to have when you were pushed into marriage and parenthood before you were ready.

I’ve accomplished a lot of things over the years. I’ve stayed very busy between motherhood, volunteer work and running my own business managing rental properties. I have a lot of things I can translate onto a resume as job skills, yet I still feel extremely stuck because my family’s lives revolve around me being available for everything, 24/7. I’m so sad that I missed out on all these years of having colleagues and work friends, career advancements, out of town work conferences that I’m paid to travel to, networking, business lunches at nice restaurants, bonuses and appreciation, and opportunities to use my many talents for paid work. I know I would have thrived as a career woman and it’s so hard to see all of the things my husband has experienced in his two careers (both military and civilian) because I’ve stayed at home and made it all possible for him. I went to this Elavare conference on Saturday and thought it was great, but today he’s in Arizona at a Linkedin conference listening to Mel Robbins speak live (and getting paid to do it). Our lives are so radically different and his world feels so much more expansive than mine. He’s traveled the globe and presented to CEOs and military generals while I’ve shopped at Walmart and folded a lot of laundry.

But back to the Elavare conference! If you are a mom interested in returning to the workforce at any point, I highly recommend checking this organization out and viewing the recorded event online. The speakers were inspirational and informative. How do you find your purpose, write a resume if you’ve been a mom for twenty years, interview, and interact with employers when you’ve never done it before? They covered it all! Whether you’re looking for work immediately or wanting to ease back into the workforce slowly, this will be helpful to you.

Follow them on Instagram and sign up for more information and future events. And if you are a woman entering mid-life feeling all the feelings I described above, know that you are hardly alone. The men who told us we had to live this prescribed life are all dead (or… almost dead), and I don’t want their legacy to continue past us. I wish I knew where exactly my life is headed next, but I’m very grateful for women like the ones at Elavare for reaching back and helping those of us still stuck to move forward.

I took this photo above at the conference from my unobstructed third row seat of speaker Sharlene Wells (a childhood idol of mine who won the Miss America pageant when I was 4 years old). Sheri Dew wrote her biography at Deseret Book, my sister once introduced her as a speaker at a youth fireside in my stake, and she’s had a career on television and in Washington D.C. with the Department of Defense. She’s also the mom of four who earned a master’s degree one class at a time, recently divorced, and has had to recreate herself and her career multiple times (including now, as a VP at Mountain America Credit Union). She’s the first speaker you’ll hear if you watch the conference.

(main image from unsplash.com and Sai De Silva)

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