Tethered to myself – Celebrating the Woman in Me

Almost a year into my job as the advisor to the CEO of my organization, I found myself pregnant. A female colleague quipped- I hope you are not like other women who invest heavily in their careers just to quit when they have a baby…

I was young, 28 years old, leading the SAP implementation for the entire organization. I interacted with the CEO and the board on a regular basis and travelled around the world. Yet, I was absolutely like those “other” women.

No education in the world had taught me to traverse these strikingly contrasting worlds.

One world required me to be ruthlessly ambitious and the other world  was compassion driven.

One world told me to put my needs and me above everything else and the other world wanted me to put my needs behind everything else..

This one world had my sense of “Me” defined by things external to me and this other world annihilated the external and defined “Me” by things internal to me.

This one world gave lots of meaning to external appearances while the other world wanted me to bare myself naked.

And like many women in my shoes, I was split apart. No education ever prepared me to be a mother and I found my feminist ideals on shaky grounds.

Colleagues at work were surprised when I decided to take a sabbatical to take care of my young one. To quit work and to spend time with your child is directly at odds with the social pressures we were made to grow with. Yet, for me it was the right thing to do. If I expected unflinching standards for myself at work, I expected the same unflinching standards of myself as a mother.

I broke down the pillars that my life stood on and rebuilt them on entirely new ones. Pillars that centered around changing nappies, cooing, singing nursery rhymes, park play dates, bedtime stories…. It was a totally new world I now delved in and I walked into the company of many others who stood as naked as I did. – other mothers who had left their own careers to be with their little ones.

Time away from the job gave me an opportunity to explore myriad aspects of myself. Parts of me that got sucked into the whirlpool called the “corporation”.  I took tennis classes, started running, read books, wrote blogs and travelled. I grew as a person outside of who the corporate setting told me to grow into. From a mass-manufactured adult, I turned into a home-grown one.  

As my daughter grew, we travelled together and out of that love grew Culture Curry, a travel based blog covering India and its myriad culture. We travelled mostly around North India and together we discovered the untraveled India. We explored Delhi and covered the unexplored in Delhi. We traveled to the remote villages of Uttarakhand and discovered the joy of being a local, eating fresh farm food, driving in a jeep through the jungle waiting for the prowling tiger, heard ghost stories and ending the day staring at stars on a clear night. We recommended itineraries to people here in the US looking at India as their travel destination and looking for a local experience. I learnt new lessons in entrepreneurship, marketing, branding and most importantly, selling.

I realized, entrepreneurship is not a career or a destination; it’s a way of living your life. Much like motherhood, it has its trials and tribulations and the results are always bitter sweet. Many a times, it takes a while to get tangibles but the intangibles enrich your life every single day.

As we moved along Culture Curry, my second baby came along. This time the choice seemed easier. My life was not bogged down by what society expected of me but was enhanced by what I could achieve myself. I knew hitting the brakes temporarily would only enrich my life further and make me a better person. I took my second sabbatical and put a break on travel. I channelized my energy into writing about my children and I am now putting all of it together into a book.

During this period, I also met Ruchit Garg of 9Slides who was looking for a content writer for his company. We met through TheRodinhoods and our dearest Asha and viola, I am not charting into the hitherto unknown territory of learning and development and doing freelance blogging for 9Slides.

I am now a freelance content writer and at the same time a mother, a Bollywood dancer and a half marathoner. The entrepreneurship bug stays intact and I will get back to it in time.

I am thankful to everything I have in my life for it allowed me to make these choices. Many in my position don’t have the luxury for they have to fend for their families and I respect them with all my heart.

However, to those who have the choice, I say – be a person of choice and not a person by design. Let “you” lead your choices and don’t let your choices lead you. Dig deeper to find yourself and don’t look for yourself in the salary slip or the fake designation or in the performance management systems. Let yourself be tethered to “you” for that’s where freedom begins. For you are a woman and nothing is invincible for you.

 Happy Woman’s Day!!