When I got pregnant with my twins in 2009 I was working full time and climbing the corporate ladder.  Fresh off a new promotion, I was aimed full speed ahead.  My expanding midsection didn’t initially interfere with business travel and new account brainstorm sessions, client calls and a growing team.  I often walked the 30 minutes home along the Hudson River until one day when I had to stop on a park bench.  I was lightheaded and shaky.  I was also not a stop-on-a-park-bench kind of person.  I was a push-past-the-park-bench kind of person.  It was uncomfortable on several levels.  But babies have their hands on the wheel when you’re pregnant and usually, eventually, they pull to the side of the road.  I had no choice but to put it in park.  It was the first time I felt worried that my go-go-go would negatively affect someone else.   Outside of myself, I had no choice but to look within.  I started slowing down.  I took the advice of two friends of friends who had become twin mom sounding boards and let my office know that I would be leaving at the sixth month of my pregnancy.  My doctor supported this decision, telling me that when you’re carrying twins, the sixth month is equivalent to carrying a single baby to full term.  She could have kept that to herself.  But it did help my overreaching brain in the end.  It was the smart thing to do, even if it wasn’t the furthest, most, best.  I knew, without evidence that many many many women before me had carried twins to their delivery date while working, running, achieving beyond me.

I was so fortunate to be able to make the decision to leave early.  So many people have to trudge on, apparently until their water breaks in the middle of the office.  Once I left work, I fell into a quiet rhythm at home.  I would get up just as my husband was leaving for work, in the minutes before 7am.  Always an early riser and growing bigger and bigger every week, “sleeping in” wasn’t exactly an option.  I would grab something to eat, for grumbling stomach that seemed to never fill and yet never have room to fill.  Then get dressed in something comfortable and stretchy, to head out for a walk along the river.  All in, the route was probably two miles.  Over the weeks that late Summer turned to Fall, I noticed that while the distance never changed, the time it took stretched like my skin, further and further.  In the slow down, I noticed the boats in the harbor, some gigantic and filled with uniformed deck hands, others bobbing nervously in their shadows.  The high school gym class that filled up the entire walkway in front of me with rollerbladers, both showing off and wobbling terrified.  I saw the street vendors selling coffee and commuters hopping off Jersey City boats, headed to Wall Street firms.  I smiled at other pregnant women and new parents pushing strollers.  I watched in slow motion as my coziest white hoodie unzipped itself over my growing form without any help from me.

I came home and had breakfast.  Yogurt and granola, an egg sandwich, a smoothie.  Then a long, hot shower, where I’d sing to my girls, praying that they would get their father’s Italian skin and my sense of rhythm.  All of this followed by an hour nap.  And then lunch.  Never vegetables.  Sometimes ice cream.  The big food realization being that I never craved anything new.  Just what I really wanted to eat all the time and usually didn’t.  A green light for ice cream at lunch.

It was a slow and simple time.  An insane luxury.  I tried not to feel guilty, which was sometimes hard.   I washed and folded baby clothes, bought and addressed birthday and anniversary cards for events that would take place right after my girls were expected to arrive.  I took my over organized self and let her do her thing, but gave her time to nap and stretch and dream in between.  I did what made me feel good because it felt like doing what I thought made the babies feel good.  I was planning to stay home when they were born.  I wasn’t just building a nest.  I was planning to occupy it.

It was the first, sleepy stretch of time that I was anticipating a big, life altering, uncontrollable change and I took care of myself as it happened.  I almost couldn’t believe it either.

After graduating from college in 2002, the first post-9/11 graduates, I knew a total of 5 people with job offers.  Everyone else was headed to grad school or home, to figure things out.  I ended up in North Carolina, living with my newly wed sister and brother-in-law.  I sent resume after resume after resume and waited tables and refed volleyball matches in between.  Everyone, everyone, told me to enjoy the time.  That I would never get it again.  It was a gift, they told me.  I was young and untethered and would have the rest of my life to work.  All I felt was, “you suck, you jobless infant.  Why are you such a loser?”  I came as close to depression as I ever have.  I enjoyed very little of the unknown, like every other time I had not enjoyed the unknown.  I was supposed to be starting my adult life.  And I was failing.

Just as quickly as my daughters arrived, I started to rev the engine again.  It was easy to blame it on having twins, which required twice the energy and focus and attention but if I’m being honest, my mind raced as if they were four babies instead of two.  I definitely definitely cherished tiny moments.  I stored away memories of quiet, middle of the night feedings where my daughter Rachel would fall back to sleep instantly, and my daughter Claire would stare at me for a full 60 minutes before going back to sleep herself.  Sometimes it made me mad or frustrated or anxious that I couldn’t find a way to get her to sleep faster.  But other times, I would sit there and laugh.  “You know exactly what you’re doing, little Bear.  Don’t you?”  But I also raced through tasks, worried about their schedule, and panicked if I didn’t get outside enough.  I know it’s no revelation.  Harried new mom.  But the stark comparison to pre-delivery me and post-delivery me left me feeling like I had failed in a different way.  I tried not to think of her, but I knew the me of pre-delivery was a better me.  I took nothing from the rest and time away from the go-go-go.  I spat it out, unfulfilled.  I thought that I needed the hype and the race and the urgency.  The panic and pressure.  The expectations that I had always over set.  But I didn’t like how it felt.  So, there was that.

Over 18 months, I made homemade baby food and took my daughters to the park.  We went to music classes and doctor’s appointment and when they could stand (ok, long before) we’d have loud and crazy dance parties to top 40 hits in between Elmo and Big Bird.  I taught them their letters and numbers and colors and shapes and the lyrics to “I Like to Move It”.  I told them jokes they didn’t understand and made-up stories they hung to like glue.  We’d play games and read stories and I’d laugh at their independent personalities and sisterhood.  I stood outside of their bedroom door and whispered, “I wish I were back at work” when they refused to take the nap I desperately needed them to take.  I clung to my new mom friends who whispered their own version of wanting to run away to me.  I went out alone and cherished the ice-cold winter wind that blasted me awake.  I wrote a children’s book and learned everything about publishing and got rejection letters that assured me that I hadn’t learned enough.  I took my daughters for a walk every day.  I loved it and still longed for something else.  But I refused to admit it. 

After 18 months, one of my new mom friends asked me, after a playdate, to start a children’s food company with her.  It was literally as insane as it sounds.  Without saying yes, we met the next day and it launched me into the greatest 10 year adventure I could imagine.  It was everything I didn’t know I wanted.  It was big and messy and new and ours and was a beating heart outside of my chest.  In the early days of working every second that my husband was home, I was in our bedroom/office when he peaked his head in and asked, “so, are you just going to work every second that I’m home?”  I hadn’t even seen that I went from harried to obsessed.  This was supposed to fill the void of what I felt was missing.  Not bring down the house.  I decided to change.

It would be too easy and perfect to say that it happened quickly.  But I started to become intentional about what I was doing when I wasn’t a mom.  When I wasn’t a wife.  When I wasn’t a business owner.  I stumbled and fled and yelled and criedBut in between, I went to therapy, I meditated, I journaled, and I slowed down from within.  Even when I couldn’t slow down as much outside.

The business, the partnership is the biggest risk and greatest triumph I’ve experienced.  It came from nothing and healed me from the inside out.  It allowed me to take my kids to school in the morning and find part time babysitters for everything in between.  It kept me connected to my girls but driven enough to grow and travel around the country.  It moved me beyond my comfort zone and forced me to dream even bigger dreams.  It fine tuned my humility and compassion and grit.  It left me worried and exhausted and depleted with not knowing what would come next.  Just as we felt the moment grow and the pace quicken and the rocket start to take off, covid hit.  We were up 400% over our previous year’s sales when everything shuddered to a halt.  It was like the hollowness I felt miscarrying a child.  It was two years of trying to survive and ultimately a long exhale in admitting that we couldn’t hold on.

There we were, two December’s later, closing our business.  It was all holiday buzz and peppermint lattes on the outside and we felt icy cold winter within.  A blizzard in the middle of March.  I wanted the goodness of December to be gooey and drip and the reality of the business to blow away in the wind.  If only.

Right away, I was “without anything to do”.  I was asked immediately and constantly what I would do.  What I thought I would do.  What I wanted to do.  What I thought about my business partner doing her thing already and me not having anything to bounce off of it.  It felt like I needed a break.  It took effort, but I didn’t relent.  My answer was meek at first, then gained strength as I practiced.  “I don’t know.”

Terrifying.

But “I don’t know” turned into “let’s see” as the calendar turned to a fresh January.  I saw an ad in a church bulletin and reached out to join a women’s group that apparently had been serving children in our community for years.  I shook off the guilt of not being involved earlier and joined in.  I was asked to head up committees and run programs instantly.  I physically sat on my hands in one meeting because I knew myself.  And I knew that I would say yes even if I meant no.  I volunteered in other ways around the community.  I loved helping and not running the show.  I joined a Wednesday golf group.  I went on walks with friends and somehow convinced them to let me organize their pantries and kitchens.  Something I later admitted to doing to my friend’s bedrooms in elementary school.  I started writing.  This.  Here. 

And then one day, my sister sent me a marketing presentation and asked me what I thought.  It was a friend’s presentation for a new business he had started.  I had notes.  I shared them.  She thanked me.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about the presentation.  The marketing.  The new business.  A week later, I woke up at 6am and created a brand-new marketing presentation, filled with what I thought the business owner was trying to say.  Adding things I thought would help.  Taking away things I felt didn’t.  I worked for an hour.  Maybe two.  I sent it to my sister, saying, “I have no idea what I’m doing or why I did this or who this person is that I probably just offended in taking such a heavy-handed approach at a redraft.”  But it was so much fun.  And I had gotten into the 9-month habit of doing whatever sounded fun to me.  I had even gotten good at sitting on the couch and watching a movie.  In the middle of the day.  Who was I?

Fast forward a week or so and I found myself on the phone with the business owner.  We talked for two hours and somewhere in the middle he told me that he really hoped I would consider working with him to grow his business.  That he needed someone like me.  I had no response because it turns out it’s not that easy to know if you want a job when you’re not looking for a job. 

I knew I was drawn to the work like nothing so far in the previous nine months.  I knew that I loved the startup culture even though I had to show the scars I accumulated from my own experience.  I knew that time and rest would bring something new when I was ready.  I knew I was ready.

It only just occurred to me, as I began to dive into the work that exactly nine months has passed since we closed the company.  Nine months of growing and discomfort.  Nine months taking care of myself.  Without the ice cream for lunch.  It only just occurred to me that even though it’s sometimes hard for me to rest, I keep getting the chance to try.  I learned to love it and still want something else.  And this time, I didn’t have to whisper that I was ready to go back to work.