The Beginning & The End (Part 1)

A two part series chronicling my journey to creating Dear Beti, a platform dedicated to sharing my stories about motherhood and life.

CELEBRATING TWO

The news arrived on a Monday morning.

H and I had taken the Friday off work for V1’s second birthday. Although his concept of birthday was mostly about getting balloons, it was the last year we would celebrate as just a trio, and given our year of turbulence, the milestone demanded a day of pause and presence. It was the weekend before Halloween, with my clunky camera and snacks in tow, we drove an hour north of the city to the best farm we could find. Free of the weekend crowds, we roamed every acre of the grounds, basked in the last sun of the season, indulged in obligatory trailer fries, and filled the memory card up as V1 meandered through miles of pumpkins. It was just what the doctor had ordered.

I sat there after the call ended staring at my closed laptop. I rested a hand on my small bump while slowly sipping my coffee, tepid and separating. For the first time in a long time, everything was silent.

Almost exactly a year ago I sat in the same chair, nervous to start my first day of work post maternity leave. Despite having a short tenure prior to my leave, I left on a high note: a solid 3-month review, notable accolades with leadership and my key clients, and the beginnings of establishing relationships beyond cooler talk. It was enough of a foundation to ensure in my year off I wouldn’t be completely forgotten.

In the time between leaving and returning, the company went fully remote and local teams were replaced with global groups made up from folks across countries and continents. Everyone from my former office was assigned to different groups, each with its own leadership team and set of clients. While some colleagues remained with their managers, I was put into a group with a new set of colleagues, managers and clients, a majority in another time zone. I returned to an entirely different version of the company I joined just a year ago.

When I was recruited to interview, I was 3 months into my pregnancy. Excited about the job prospect, I went through a few rounds curious to see where it might go. When an offer was made eight weeks later, I knew I wanted to take the role, but before I could respond to it, I needed to deliver the news about my start date…and end date.

I wrestled between what I wanted to do versus what the right thing to do was. The people pleaser in me said to decline the offer, in a client facing business, introducing, and training me on a client’s business only to have to repeat the process again in a few months felt unfair to my manager. The expectant mom in me said to accept the offer, being the default child bearer shouldn’t prevent me or any woman, from accepting an opportunity to further their career that is rightfully earned and deserved.

After aligning on all the offer details, I got on a video call with the HR team. Holding back tears I delivered my 5-minute rehearsed monologue about how grateful I was for the opportunity but also how important starting a family was to me. In their brief silence I started to doubt my decision, should I have said something about returning to work sooner (even though it was not my ideal case)? Had I jeopardized a future in this company?

When they congratulated me and told me how much they loved babies, as well as all the benefits I would be entitled to as a part of their team, I knew I was in the right place, and I had made the right choice. At 5 months pregnant, I signed the contract.

Now, 5 months pregnant again, I was reviewing their severance offer. I called H who was working on the bottom floor of the house to share the news. He came up to the third floor: “Can they do that”? The short of it is, yes, they can. Any corporation, without cause, can lay you off pregnant or not, whether they should and what you can do about it, are separate questions.

VISITING M

With a short timeline before my remaining insurable benefits expired, I spent the next few weeks in health and wellness appointments, including a visit to see my therapist, M.

When I started seeing M just before returning to work, I didn’t know how I felt about her, but I was in desperate need of a third-party confidante. Unlike my former therapists, I didn’t get a rush of warm fuzzies after our sessions, and we didn’t have a standing cadence of pre-booked future appointments. She wasn’t an obvious choice for my therapist but I kept seeing her because there were a lot of things that aligned: she was a woman of colour, a mother, close to home, and most importantly I could see her on short notice to readily get support when I most needed of it.

Throughout the year of seeing her periodically, our relationship grew. I came to appreciate things about her that I hadn’t known I needed in a therapist. Instead of spending my hour with her rambling as I was previously accustomed to in my past therapy, she forced a balance between being a sound board while coaching me to adapt healthy behaviours in navigating the on-going guilt I experienced as a new mom in a demanding work environment.

When I came to see M to tell her about being laid off and expecting V2, she let me ramble and grieve, and ramble some more about all the things that hadn’t come up in earlier sessions. She listened, empathized, and shared her similar vulnerable experiences. In our 1-hour session we covered a lot, but of all the things she said to me, it was this guidance that largely defined how I spent the next 12 months: Re-write your narrative and have empathy for yourself.

THE RE-WRITE

I started writing from a young age. Journals were the rare things in my life that were exclusively mine, free from the restrictions and judgements I experienced everywhere else. It was a place of safety. Writing consistently up until my early twenties, the content evolved from a documentation of my life to an interrogation, specifically about the tensions I experienced as a first generation, brown-skinned, Gujarati woman, trying to thrive in spaces pre-dominantly defined by whiteness.

In exploring my identity, I decided to launch a public facing blog as a way of starting to show up authentically, and be seen in a world I didn’t always feel seen in. The power that came with expressing myself unapologetically for, perhaps, the first time, was intoxicating. Blogging opened a different world up to me, one that made me consider taking this hobby I nurtured for over a decade, more seriously.

After completing my undergrad and starting a full-time job, I continued to blog. A few years into working, I decided to take a 6-month sabbatical to travel and spend time reflecting on my long-term career ambitions. On return, I made the bold move to pursue a career in journalism, full-time. I enrolled in evening editing and writing courses, contributed to web publications, ghostwrote, interviewed for editorial jobs, and applied to back to school for an MFA at one of the best schools in the city.

My efforts were met with a lot of rejection. The feedback I received from potential employers centred around not having enough writing experience and/or an underdeveloped voice. One teacher gave me the advice to not pursue a career in writing unless I was willing to do it for pennies. The resistance I faced in trying to progress down a non-typical career path amongst my family and community, was my sign to put an end to chasing after what seemed like a pipe dream.

Outside a few one-off instances I stopped writing. I convinced myself that leaving this part of my life behind and focusing on a corporate career was the smart, responsible thing to do. In some ways it was, financially supporting myself was critical. In other ways it wasn’t, silencing my writing voice permeated into internalizing things. I lost the courage to be vocal in the many instances I experienced or was witness to mistreatment in professional and personal settings. My relationships suffered and l didn’t know how to show up in the world anymore in a way that felt genuine.

NEW YEAR

V2 was due to arrive mid Q1 and being laid off in mid Q4 meant I had time and space to return to the place I left my narrative behind.

Initially, the words poured out of me. All the pent-up emotions of the past year especially, made it easy to accomplish my self-imposed mandate of writing at least once a day. When the raw emotions were out, it then became imposing discipline and writing even when all I could write about was how much I didn’t want to write. Most of it was bad…really bad. It wasn’t like getting back on bike where the rhythmical movement of your legs returns with a little peddling, this felt more like trying to re-habilitate a fractured bone. There was the healing part that required sitting and acknowledging all the information swirling in my brain and then there was the mobility part which required patience, commitment, and various forms of nurture.

The path to healing wasn’t linear (or a finite destination), but as the weeks went on, I started to feel moments of joy. Being back in a space ­– even privately – where I was free to express the thoughts that had been running through my mind for months, helped slowly recalibrate my focus away from dwelling on the past and towards looking forward for what was to come.

Outside midwife appointments, domestic tasks, and the days V1 was sent home from school, I filled my time writing, taking masterclasses and better educating myself on race and privilege. In pursuit of pushing myself to start using my voice again I enrolled in a weekly BIPOC writing class in the evenings where I could share my work in a safe and supportive space. With every small step forward, I was rewarded with an increased sense of confidence to re-write my narrative.

As I was finishing up a few tasks in preparation for V1’s 3-week holiday from school and had only a short runway from there before V2 was due, the call arrived. It was my midwife, J, who only called if there was something important to discuss about my pregnancy.

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