We woke up this morning to a maggot infestation in our apartment. They were literally everywhere and it took us a good couple of hours to clean them up. Joe; “not a great way to start the day” and no, it was a DISGUSTING way to start the day but apparently it was a good time to have (cue foreboding music)… ‘The Conversation’. The conversation that’s continuously popped up in the back of our heads since we left our jobs last September. Occasionally (regularly) my anxiety has tried to instigate said conversation and Joe has sensibly told me to put it back in the drawer for another time… “What are we going to do”?!
True to form we had set dates for ‘The Big Chat’. But like with everything, you have no control over the perfect time, it will happen when it needs to happen. And for us, that perfect moment was Maggot Gate.
For context we have booked our flights home. We literally did a jump up and down hug once we’d booked them, a mixture of excitement and relief. It had taken 6 months to get to a point of planning and admin where we could pinpoint a day and location for our departure. We couldn’t book the flight until we knew what city we’d be in, we didn’t know what city we’d be in until we knew what country we’d be in, we didn’t know what country we’d be in until we knew where I’d be working, we didn’t know where I’d be working until I secured some jobs, etc. etc. you get the gist.
Anyway, they’re finally booked! *scream, cry, vomit*
I talked about how I am obviously bursting at the seams with excitement and joy and love and all the rest of it to see my people. My heart aches when I think about hugging everyone again. Spending a year away from your loved ones is not going on my list of things to do again, like ever! We’re going home just in time for Christmas and we intend to enjoy every moment of Christmas cheer that comes our way. This will mean we can line up our inevitable impending doom with everyone’s January misery, making it the perfect depression sandwich, can’t wait.
I imagine coming home like a human pile on, with us at the bottom. Other people’s needs thrown on one after the other. Followed swiftly by the never ending list of things to be achieved. The pile gets heavier and heavier. The pressure and expectation to be ‘back’ and geared up for the next thing. And I just wiggle a lil peace sign out from the bottom of the pile – hey guys✌🏽.
It sounds cliché but this experience has been everything it should have been. I came in wanting mental clarity and to open my world. Tick and tick. Deciding I wanted to be a midwife at 14 and manufacturing my life around that, and only that, meant that when I left midwifery, I felt like I had also lost my identity. This experience has given me space to understand that isn’t the case.
Leaving the rat race and the inescapable NHS shift life (read: hell) has changed my future life’s trajectory, surprising even me! I now understand how it feels to be me without midwifery. I feel like I understand my drivers and values more holistically. Being a midwife, my work became my life. My passion (still there by the way) for midwifery and women’s health was the driving force behind every decision I was making and although it definitely still is, I feel like I have diluted it into a much more manageable load. I now realise I’ve got options, choices to make and to continue making. That I can take risks, that I can change my mind. That just because I love being a midwife doesn’t mean not working as one takes that away from me. I’ve realised I actually do still love the women’s health space, after not being sure I even liked it anymore when I left.
Life doesn’t have to look like whatever your bubble or society makes you feel like it should. I’ve met people in the past 12 months that have shown me there’s other roads to feeling fulfilled. The goals and standards by which success is measured in one sense doesn’t have to apply to me and how I run my life. I’ve realised I can do whatever the fuck I want.
I have revelled in the ability to make a decision – be that to move to a new location, visit a different city, work in a different way – and to actually act on it. So freeing! I know how I feel as someone who is happy in their present. Our year hasn’t been sunshine and roses, we waded through some real shit along the way but I think it was all necessary to push through and to grow.
Right now I’ve got an angel and a devil on each shoulder. Competing trains of thought; both ending with things I want. The angel has desires, goals, big dreams and ideas about my personal and professional growth. About taking my life to a place where I can still have the feeling that I’ve had this past year of freedom but also reach my constant ideal of influencing change in the corners of the world that I am passionate about, without sacrificing my own happiness and sanity; balance ⚖️
The devil says you need money bitch. You have a key, a big key, to easily accessible security. That means mortgage, that means financial stability, that means MONEY HONEY! The devil is spitting facts, I won’t lie. I need money. Of course I do, I like things! I’m an experienced midwife. I could go back to that NHS life and be on a decent salary (massively under what it should be (don’t get me started)) for the rest of my life. I’d get all the bells and whistles like maternity pay, holiday and sick pay and a pension. The devil says you are fucking stupid if you don’t do that, why wouldn’t you use the trump card that you worked for 10 years to achieve?!
But, as Joe reminded me whilst picking up a stray maggot, I wasn’t happy doing that. That’s why we’re here. “What was all of this for if it’s to run back to a place of safety that inevitably makes you miserable”?
The angel says, you have got this. You’re a boss (bitch I’m a BOWSS). Look at what you’ve achieved in this last year. With no plan you’ve travelled to 6 countries and over 44 different locations. You have thrived. You’ve got a whole host of skills and knowledge and you CAN break down the wall and build your own security, paint your own picture and create the life that fills your cup. The cup from which you will pour into your friends and family and one day your children.
I want to pour from a happy cup not a cup full of money and misery.
So the maggot conversation went a little something like that, an outpouring of our current inner thoughts and feelings (obviously only mine shared here) about what’s to come. I cried, obviously, love a lil cry. But I’m excited for the next phase.
One thing – of many things- I love about working with Midwives is that the conversation is often deep, personal and emotional. We don’t have time for chit chat. It’s always straight into so how do you *actually* feel therapy-esk chats. I love it. The other night, in a conversation like that, I was reminded that people don’t wish they worked harder or earned more money when they’re on their death beds. They wish they’d taken the risks, travelled, spent more time with loved ones and lived their finite lives. Whether I go back to working as a midwife or whether I start growing and selling my own water cress (could work?), all I know is what I do have in my backpack now – well always did have but now I remember packing it – is autonomy over my choices.
So what’s my plan now then? Well first I’m going to enjoy squeezing every person I’ve been missing this year. Then, I’m going to take a chance on myself, knowing that I am yet to fail her.
K byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.