My Career Break Came With an Identity Loss. Here’s How I Coped.
By Emily Edlynn
I sat behind the wheel of my parked minivan and cried, encased by the gloomy, drizzly skies outside. I had just finished an ordinary dental appointment on a Thursday morning. I remember checking in with myself, “Am I depressed?” As a psychologist, I wouldn’t want to miss my own warning signs. No, I concluded, these crying spells come and go in what feels like random patterns
Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t see it. As a grief specialist myself, I didn’t recognize my own brand of grief: the loss of a professional identity, and along with it, a sense of purpose. The ability to go to the dentist on a Thursday morning reminded me just how much I no longer had.
As a grief specialist, I didn’t recognize my own brand of grief: the loss of a professional identity, and along with it, a sense of purpose.
My ambition to become a child psychologist bloomed at age 10. This unusual clarity and intensity of future goals at a young age may help explain why I felt so lost 30 years later.
I had always known. I knew my career goals. I knew the steps to take to reach my goals, the markers along the long path of education and training. After officially clearing all the hurdles to be a licensed clinical psychologist, my next well-marked academic medicine pathway began. Working in large children’s hospitals affiliated with major universities, I ground away at the academic lifeline to promotion: clinical work, research, and teaching.
With the same intensity, however, I dreamed of being a mother from a young age. My maternal drive started young and strong, and I could not imagine a life without motherhood.
It wasn’t until I had both the career and motherhood of my dreams that I suffered their collision in reality. In those days of having both at full throttle, a trip to the dentist was the one time in months I could breathe and not be in charge of anyone or anything. Laying down on those leather cushions with a cable TV show entertaining me from the wall was my sad form of relaxation.
When I knew it was time for a career break
When our family relocated cities for my husband’s career opportunity, this move offered me a chance to re-set my priorities. If I continued my same career path, working at the academically affiliated children’s hospital would mean a long commute, not enough pay, and missing a lot of morning and evening time with my three children, then ages 2, 5, and 7. I had a moment of clarity that this sacrifice was no longer worth it—worth the toll on feeling close and connected to my children, nor the toll on my well-being. At that crossroads, it seemed I picked motherhood over career, and the identity shake-up followed.
I picked motherhood over career, and the identity shake-up followed.
Mother-of-two in Connecticut, Barbara Jandasek, PhD, has made her own transition from a full-speed-ahead, ambitious career path to increasing time and space for motherhood. In her first change from a medical setting to a school, including summers off, Jandasek reflects, “I felt really displaced and isolated. It told me how important the kind of social and community setting of work is too. It’s not just career identity, it’s larger than that.” Loss of a job meant a loss of belonging.
Jandasek recalibrated again in pursuit of a better balancing act, returning to her previous position, but part-time, which helped. Yet, she continues to struggle with feeling unanchored and uncertain when it comes to what her choices mean for her future: “I’m not completely in that world and I’m not completely in this world. I feel like I’m floating in terms of making progress with my career.”
When new parenthood brings on a wave of grief
When we put on the lens of grief in parenthood, we can see losses everywhere. We experience loss of our former way of being in the world when we first become a mother. We experience loss of our toddler’s innocence or school age child’s reliance on us when they accelerate through their seasons of development. We experience loss when any big shifts happen for our families, whether it’s our choosing or not. But when we feel grief around a decision we made, it can be especially disorienting.
Current grief can also layer with grief history, like an echo chamber whose echoes resonate louder with each new phase. Be mindful of how previous losses may be vibrating into the current experience of loss, whether it’s via an internal shift (like identity) or external changes, like a new house or town.
Expert advice for managing grief
Emily Edlynn, PhD is a clinical psychologist specializing in children, adolescents, and families. Below, Dr. Edlynn offers advice for navigating the major identity shift that comes with new parenthood.
When it comes to identity shifts related to motherhood, we are often holding what seems like incompatible emotional experiences: “Working part-time is better for my family and me; I do not regret the decision” and “I miss the sense of purpose and accomplishment I had in the profession or job I left.” Both can be true.
The simple step of acknowledging an emotional experience as a grief process can help prepare you to more fully connect with the grief in order to work through it. Science-backed mindfulness strategies that can be applied to identify grief include:
Naming the painful emotions, and allowing yourself to feel instead of escape them: “I feel guilty I am not being productive.” You can do this through a meditation practice or by sitting quietly for a few minutes without reaching for a distraction (hello, trusty phone).
Practicing self-compassion. If you struggle with guilt about feeling a certain way, or hear a self-critical voice, speak to yourself as you would your best friend: “Allowing rest helps me be more who I want to be for my work and family.”
Avoiding judgment. When you notice an unpleasant emotion or negative thought (let’s say about your children), observe the emotion or thought, and visualize it passing through your mind. “It’s just a thought, or just a feeling; I can have it and still be a loving mother.”
Making meaning. Depending on where you are in your grief, it may or may not be the right time to add meaning to your experience. When it is the right time, though, seeing how an experience of loss made way for other gifts and possibilities can be a key piece of transforming the pain of grief into growth.
Five years after our family relocation and my professional identity shake-up, I was recently asked to apply for a faculty position at a nationally prestigious institution. I didn’t think twice about graciously declining.
I have officially moved on to a life that I love more, and to being a person and mother I like more. As messy and dark as that first year of grief-filled transition may have been, it turned out to be a time of transformation that has ultimately led me to a more satisfying life as a psychologist, writer, and mother. It turns out this trifecta truly fulfills what I dreamed of from age 10. Not to mention, going to the dentist is no longer my greatest form of relaxation.
Read More:
Answering ‘What Do You Do?’ During Your Career Pause
Emily Edlynn, PhD is a clinical psychologist specializing in children, adolescents, and families, currently working in a private practice in Oak Park, Illinois. She is a mother of three and writes about parenting on her blog, The Art and Science of Mom, and for various national outlets. She also pens a regular advice column for Parents.com.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in November 2021.
