In August 1985, thirty-five years ago this month, I returned to work after my second (and last) maternity leave. I’d left the office unexpectedly in mid-May, a week earlier than anticipated, when my daughter decided to come into the world two and a half weeks early.
I enjoyed my first day back in the office. Colleagues stopped by to say hello. I still felt the warm glow of being at home with my baby and toddler for three months. I had relished pregnancy and mothering and I dreamed of doing it again some day. I felt like I could have it all—work, marriage, motherhood, and time for myself.
Within days it became apparent I couldn’t have it all.
Most of what I’d left undone was still on my desk when I returned, though another lawyer had finished a motion and brief we needed to get filed in one case. But a good portion of the pretrial work in that case was still mine to do. I jumped back into getting that lawsuit and other cases moving again. Work soon consumed me.
While I’d been gone, a new lawsuit had been filed against my employer that our department needed to defend. It was a nasty case. Another attorney I worked with had told me while I was still on maternity leave that this was a nasty case, and he was right. I won’t describe the facts nor the area of the law it involved. I will simply say it gave rise to a lot of internal corporate politicking. One division pointed the finger at another as to how we ended up in the middle of this lawsuit. Both divisions had made errors, but that wasn’t mine to address. A large part of my job while working on the case was to get these warring factions to work together.
The political sniping was a part of the noxiousness of dealing with this case, but the litigation process itself also contributed. Opposing counsel did everything possible to be a jerk, from filing overly snarky briefs to invading my personal space during depositions. Counsel for a co-defendant had a different philosophy about the case than we did, and our office had to respond to the co-defendant’s maneuvering as well as to the plaintiff’s. What should have been a relatively straight-forward lawsuit mushroomed into World War III.
Within days of my return to work, I was immersed in this new case and all its loathsomeness. I didn’t surface from it for another year, when several even more dreadful cases landed on my desk. I went from being ecstatic after the birth of my second child to overwhelmed and depressed within just a few weeks. That downturn lasted for about four years, until the nasty case and the more dreadful cases were all resolved.
Looking back now, with the hindsight of thirty-five years, I can say that that period of my life taught me a lot. I learned to manage arguing all day with being a wife and mother in the mornings and evenings. (Though my family would say I never learned that lesson well.) I learned to prioritize the most immediate needs both at work and at home and to shuck everything that didn’t have importance in my life. (Though I missed out on some things I enjoyed as a result.) I learned what I valued and that my job was not providing it. (Though it took me years more to extricate myself from that job.)
I learned I couldn’t have it all, and perhaps I didn’t even have what was most important. I learned I had reached my limit.
When in life have you known you’ve reached your limit?
After five years with the Red Cross all over the world, but then promoted to a position that didn’t make sense.