I got pregnant thinking I would return to work at the job I loved and went back to school for, despite all the women who left after having kids. Let me tell you, it’s so hard to leave an infant at 12 weeks- no way I could do it. I had an hour commute and I could never pump properly to leave the baby with enough milk for so long. Some moms I know continued to work- I was lucky enough my husband’s job allowed me to be a Stay At Home Mom. I did some phone supervision but I never returned to work. I was a SAHM until my kids entered school and I picked up little jobs doing private art therapy, teaching homeschool art classes, and teaching preschool art classes for a few years.

Like I said, our patriarchal society doesn’t make it easy for women to have children and return to work. Day care is astronomical and would have cost more than my paycheck- it was more economical for me to stay home and care for my children than pay for childcare and work. By the time my kids entered school, my art therapy degree also required a license and many states didn’t have licensure yet for art therapy so many of my friends went back to school for counseling degrees. I was done with school (couldn’t afford another loan) and didn’t even want to do private practice (licensure means you can accept and collect from insurance companies) so going back for a licensed degree was not an option for me.

I fell into running art classes for a nonprofit serving people with disabilities, using my art therapy background but without the treatment planning and formal therapy elements- just teaching at a community arts organization. The director (who also had an art therapy degree) had to move when her husband got a job transfer and she asked me to apply to be the director of the visual arts program while my kids were in school. I’ve been doing it part time and growing the program for 8 years and having a great time. I also started taking pottery classes for fun.

The last few years, I also started teaching pottery classes and workshops for the local clay studios. I’ve been teaching pottery in the evenings as my kids have gotten older and am starting to exhibit and sell. I feel another change is in the wind as my focus changes and my kids reach new stages. The community art organization changed board members and they want to change everything including the arts program I’ve run and it’s become a stressor instead of a joy. I am reassessing and my oldest kid started college and my youngest is going to start high school next year. There’s never enough time to work in the studio, so I think I need to do some rearranging and maybe pivot again towards my own business and an LLC as my priorities shift. We shall see!

Maybe time to explore Psychology as well

Math, though, was a different story. I failed it in grades 10, 11, and 12. Somehow scraped through the 12th boards, enough to get selected for an Actuarial Science course, but it needed advanced math I just didn’t have. I joined IGNOU (open university), studying mostly alone since in-person classes weren’t accessible. YouTube became my lifeline—PatrickJMT (Texas), DonyLee (Singapore), MIT open courses, even Russian and German teachers. I finally earned my BA in Math (Hons) in 2013. By then, a job offer from a Toastmasters friend (in 2010) had already slipped away.

Toastmasters itself had become my anchor. I joined in December 2006, gave my first 10 speeches by 2009 (forgetting half of them, fumbling through). From 2009 onward I kept competing without wins—until 2023, when I finally placed 3rd in the District-level Table Topics (impromptu speaking) contest.

Meanwhile, NLP came into my life. I got certified in 2016, trained further, and in 2018 helped wake a coma patient. I’ve resolved hundreds of migraines, helped failing students triple their scores, and worked with thousands in groups and one-on-one. At one point, I even received a government appreciation letter for my work. Between 2020–2022, I trained under John Grinder, the co-creator of NLP himself.

And as if life wasn’t already full of pivots, in 2024 I went deep into Vedic astrology, numerology, and vastu (the Indian science of balancing home energy). I’ve consulted across India, Poland, NYC, and Australia, with clients seeing results that had eluded them for decades.

Still, despite working with over 200,000 people in groups and 1,500+ one-on-one, despite these recognitions, I feel invisible. The business side—websites, selling, negotiations—has never been my strength. But give me chaos, give me people stuck for decades, and I thrive. That much I know.
And yet I carry on, still having to prove my worth. Maybe that’s just life.

Oh, and I changed careers at 40! Don’t be afraid people!