The Roads We Don’t Go Back To: Midlife, Motherhood, Work and Reinvention
The Roads We Don’t Go Back To: Midlife, Motherhood, Work and Reinvention
Some roads close behind us. Others simply lead somewhere we never expected to go.
Today I went out for a walk and noticed the road the caterpillar and excavator had cut into the hillside.
The property has been cleared now, ready for the builders. What caught my attention was the rich topsoil exposed beneath all that vegetation. The gardener in me immediately wondered why the owners would plant grass lawns when they could plant vegetables.
That is how my mind works. Give me a freshly cleared piece of earth and I start imagining what could grow there.
As I looked at that road cut into the hillside, I thought about some of the roads I once imagined taking.
A road I left for later
Looking back, I laugh at myself - but only a little.
I used to think I could go back to school when my children didn't need so much attention after school.
It was a slightly ridiculous plan.
School-aged children may eventually stop needing after-school care, but they don't stop needing you. Someone still has to be there. Someone has to listen to the day's stories, notice when something isn't right, make dinner, solve problems and simply be present.
So that road was left for later.
And later became another kind of life.
I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize. I've accepted that.
As for earning an academic degree, I'm not sure I need to fit that road into the life I have now. The world of work has changed considerably. People are building businesses around skills, ideas, creativity and audiences rather than following one traditional path from school to degree to career.
I've had to learn some of those skills myself.
I'm learning digital skills, web development, design and marketing - not because those things were part of my original plan, but because books aren't going to sell themselves.
Writing became a road I could take.
Roads we don't go back to
There are other roads I know I won't be traveling again.
The traditional 9-to-5 job is one of them.
So is the long commute.
I remember the effect of that daily routine on me - the rushing, the driving, the pressure of trying to get somewhere on time, and the dangers of speeding when you are already running late.
Eventually, I understood something important:
I needed to create employment for myself.
People were already seeking me out for help with filling out forms, preparing grant applications, creating online accounts and occasionally accompanying them to one local department or another to transact business.
There was a need for what I could do.
What I didn't yet have was enough clients, a sustainable income or the kind of home office setup that would allow me to turn those small opportunities into something bigger.
So that road remained unfinished too.
Perhaps not every unfinished road is a failure.
Perhaps some roads simply show us where we have been.
Roads that keep you out
There is another kind of road we don't always talk about - the roads that circumstances quietly close.
I married young because I wanted to raise a family. Later, I became a single mother. Divorce changed the shape of my life, but it didn't change the way I felt about my children.
I believed children were a blessing.
But raising children on your own can make you very aware of how far money has to stretch. Sometimes you love the children you have and also learn to love the children you will never have because circumstances made that decision for you.
I had thought about this long ago. I never wanted to be "pregnant and barefoot" - raising children with nothing but hope and an empty pocket.
Life has a way of making some decisions for us before we realize we are making them.
There are roads we don't take because we don't want to.
And there are roads we don't take because life puts a barrier across them.
Those two things are not the same.
A road I have not chosen
There is one road I still refuse to take:
Underselling myself.
Being only what other people expect me to be.
Allowing my environment, my age, my past or my circumstances to determine the size of my future.
Even when I was raising children as a single mother, I had to do some things my own way, even when the school system disagreed. I felt responsible for the lives that had been placed in my care.
That responsibility shaped me.
It also taught me that other people's definitions of success don't necessarily fit your life.
A person can look successful from the outside and have sacrificed things you were never willing to sacrifice.
If you are willing to sacrifice what they sacrificed, perhaps you can have what they have.
But if you aren't, that doesn't automatically mean you failed.
It may simply mean you chose a different road.
The road I'm on now
My road now is writing. Creating. Learning.
Helping other middle-aged people - especially women - see their worth and their potential after years of putting themselves somewhere near the bottom of the list.
This is the road that led me to write Finding My Way Around Midlife, Time and Tide: Reflections, Family Care: Navigating Elder Care With Compassion and Wisdom, and State of the Union: Working At It – Midlife Edition.
In different ways, those books grew out of the same question:
What do you do with the life you actually have?
Not the life you imagined at twenty.
Not the life someone else thinks you should have.
Not the life you see on social media.
The life that is standing in front of you now.
Maybe you are caring for an aging parent.
Maybe you are trying to return to work after years away.
Maybe your children have grown and you are wondering what comes next.
Maybe you are rebuilding financially.
Maybe you are simply tired of measuring yourself against people whose roads look nothing like yours.
There is still time to grow something.
Back to the hillside
When I turned back toward home, I looked again at the road cut into the hillside.
In a few years, the property will probably blend into the neighborhood. The house will have its own shape and color. The residents will have their own ideas about what makes a home.
I won't remember the raw, exposed hillside.
Time does that. It covers things. It softens edges. It allows new growth to hide the scars left by construction.
And perhaps time does something similar to us.
One day, will I look back at these years of trying, learning, and figuring things out and barely remember how difficult they felt?
Will I eventually become an established author who writes about writing?
I don't know.
For now, I'm still walking. Still learning. Still building. Still planting.
And perhaps that's the real lesson of the roads we don't go back to:
You don't have to return to an old road to prove that your life was successful.
Sometimes you just have to keep going until the road you're on begins to feel like home.
Read more
If you enjoyed this reflection, you may also enjoy my book Time and Tide: Reflections, a collection of thoughts on living simply, navigating midlife, and finding meaning in the ordinary.
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