Advice from the Trenches: Stepping Off the Mommy Track

Dear C and Dr. B;

I am 50 years old and have worked from home part time for the last 16 years to raise my child and be available for her as she grew. Now that she is 16, I find myself with a dilemma. My daughter is pretty much self-sufficient and I‘d like to get a more meaningful full time job with my master’s degree. The problem is that the career I specialized in has become very limited and there are a lot of very overqualified people who are unemployed and all applying for the same few jobs. I get interviews but no job offers. My age, the competition and the advancement of technology over the last 16 years  are all working against me. I am at a loss as to what I should do. I am secure in my current work, but I am bored to death and feel I am not being challenged or stimulated. My job has served its purpose; it allowed me to raise my daughter. But where do I go from here?

Stymied Sue

Dr. B: What do you picture yourself doing when you retire? Find a way to do that now. Teach? Travel? See if there’s a way you can get paid for it as well. It is never too early to retire and manifest a new you. Can you do this while you continue with your current position? Can you start something at the same time as what you are doing now, and can they enhance each other? Not putting all your eggs in one basket is a way to split meaningful experiences. As long as the layers of your life enhance each other rather than distract from or conflict with each other, you can do both. This can make 50 the new 26!

C: No wonder you are bored, Sue – you’ve been stuck in the house 16 years! This might be a good time for a vacation, but don’t take too long. You don’t want to still be working at 70 because you can’t afford to retire. As a woman who had to figure out a new way to support herself at your age, I’d like to inject a little reality here: 50 is not the new 26. At that age, even if we’ve stayed in shape, none of us still have the unthinking physical stamina of youth. We are also carrying far more overhead. Sue, if you’ve been a single mom who supported a daughter while working part time from home, I doubt if you have any savings. You’ll have to support yourself for at least another 12 years, probably more. You need to make some practical decisions, now. 

If you really do want to compete for your degree job, you’ve got to upgrade your technical skills. Find out what it will take to do that. You can probably enroll in classes at night or online. New skills will build your confidence – something you don’t have now, but seriously, Sue – you should. The fact that you raised a daughter by yourself shows that you are capable of making a commitment and doing the hard work to pull it through. This is a quality that most younger people have yet to acquire or prove. With new technical skills and new contacts and resources, job possibilities could open up that you hadn’t thought of before. It’s a changing world. If you can’t afford classes, look into grants and scholarships. You may be surprised at how many funding opportunities there are for older single women who want to further their education. 

Are alumni services offered at your alma mater? Some career counseling might be a really good idea right now. Decide what you want – you know yourself by now. Are you an entrepreneur? I know people who work freelance as consultants or start their own businesses. But it takes a while to establish yourself in any business or venture. If you don’t like uncertainty and risk, it makes much more sense to go for the framework of a steady job. Just make sure that whatever you do, walk into it prepared, with a sense of strength, not defeat. As a veteran of the re-invention process, I can tell you that there are far more avenues out there than you could ever imagine while trapped in your house. Once you start looking, you will find them. You go, girl.

You can visit Dr. B’s blog at drbrilliantcliche.wordpress.com