When Your Feelings About Work Change After Maternity Leave

Transcript

If you're going back to work after maternity leave and you're realizing that your feelings about work have changed, I want to normalize that. A lot of parents expect to return and kind of pick up where they left off with the same motivation, the same priorities, the same drive. And when that doesn't happen, it can feel really confusing or even scary. If you're not wanting to work as hard or you're caring less about certain things at work, that doesn't mean that you're unmotivated or you're failing, sometimes that shift in priorities is your values expanding and life holding more meaning now. I think that can be the beauty of motherhood. So you've taken on new emotional responsibilities, a new mental load, a new identity. So of course, the way that you relate to work is going to feel different. This doesn't mean that you don't care about your job or you're never going to get to that place in your work again. And it doesn't mean that you need to make any big decisions right now. It means that you are integrating who you are now with who you were before. You're not doing work wrong. You're just in a transition and that takes time.