Getting Real with Kira Hazledine
My career hit a hard pause when I had to do a quick turnaround on adulting and move back in with my parents. Then I met my now husband and three years later I have two kids and no semblance of a career that once stood promisingly before me. As an Ivy League graduate, I had high expectations for myself. Wtf happened? I don’t even have a hobby.
Life. Life happened, and it’s still a shit show. I don’t believe the mid-life crisis is real, because my entire life is its own reality tv show. There’s no discerning from one moment of crisis to the next, so might as well roll with it and consider it normal.
I knew that I wanted to prioritize a family, but I thought that I would be done with school first. I attended college with several “nontraditional students” and assumed it would never be me. I’d have my shit squared (not that they didn’t) but I thought I knew what I wanted.
Turns out I was as naïve about my life goals as I was about parenting. Let’s all laugh together.
So, as a mother of two, I feel more unsure about my next steps at 28 than how I felt at 18. Maybe it’s because back then I was full of hope and the economy wasn’t as dire. Maybe I was just ignorant. Regardless, I feel like I’m starting from the ground up. With $100k in student loans, I can’t promise I’ll be buying a house anytime soon.
Although this life isn’t what I had anticipated, it’s certainly not anything I would trade. Now, I get to show my children that shit happens, and it doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you don’t stop trying. That message is way better than some script of go to school, get a job, and settle down. Life is too unpredictable for all of that, and I never want my children to hesitate when it comes to following their dreams. I never want my children to feel like they can’t call me because they’re embarrassed they messed up.
There is no road map. There’s no set of instructions. If my kids take anything away from me and their father, it’s that when you throw caution to the wind magical things happen. All I ask of them is that they take the risk. They make that leap when everything looks questionable, as long as they have faith in trying and reassurance that failure means they can simply start over. Eventually I will go back to school and start a career. I will pick up where I left off, even if I’m not going in the direction I had originally intended.
As moms we are under pressure to do it all. As parents we feel pressure to know it all and be a shining example. For me, all it matters that my kids are loved and inspired to do things differently. It’s important to me that they realize I don’t know everything, so that they don’t expect themselves to have all the answers either. All they need to know is that everything is worth a shot.
