Adversity Is the Fuel of Greatness, Making the best out of the pandemic — Empowerment
Adversity is one of the most powerful forces in life. It can bring out your best or your worst. Ultimately, it is up to you, how much you are willing to reach-out and ask for help, how much you want to take a chance?
When challenges come along there’s always 2 options; to escape and not to deal with it, or to accept it and make the best out of it. I’m taking you into my journey how I tried to make the best out of the pandemic, is it worth it?
I was in my mid thirties, I really wanted career growth and grow my family. The system doesn’t make it easy to do both, isn’t it? mothers have to choose their priority between career or family sometimes. I had my share of doubts what to do. But I believe women shouldn’t have to choose, they should be able to do thrive at work and raise a family if they choose to at the same time.
I made an important decision throughout my career, that whenever I’m challenged I will choose both not one. And I was put to the challenge, in the process of assessment then interview for software position job I was after with the BBC, I realized I was pregnant! Of course my impulse was to just withdraw the application, I didn’t know anyone who did that. But I thought since I believe women shouldn’t have to choose, they should be able to do thrive at work and raise a family, this is my chance to prove that it is possible.
I joined the BBC as software engineer and pregnant, I was thinking that I would be working there for at least 5 years, then after that I would think about giving more time to my start up. My plan was to grow in my career in software development. So I wast thinking to take only 5 months maternity leave, and my husband would take a long paternity leave by the time I would be going back to work.
Never knowing it would be a national pandemic. I gave birth in the start of the lockdown. It questioned my return date, with nurseries being closed or having limited numbers I really didn’t know what to do. My husband’s pharmacy was going through a phase of assessing possible closure, then that turned into a definite closure, that meant he would have a new contract more hours, different location and that meant the cancellation of paternity leave.
Both of use felt drained, out of our depth here we are in the middle of the pandemic with an infant and a 2 year old, he wanted to keep his job and I wanted to go back to work after 5 months as with software development longer time meant more challenging time when going back to work, both of us felt absolutely drained.
Then we asked ourselves the question, do we really have to suffer that much? there must be something we could do. Of course when I talked to everyone including my husband everyone suggested “how about extending your maternity leave?” I thought yes it is possible, but I really didn’t want to choose again between family and career, I should be able to do both. We both of us thought it should be me changing the return date, we both should feel equally responsible about solving it together.
I made an important decision again, I decided not to change the return date to work and instead I suggested to do 2 things: to explore options and to ask for help.
We explored our options, we had been working on our video game startup for a few years. We never given it the chance to actually do it full time. So we thought how about we ask for funds for the projects. So we went ahead to explore and apply for different funds.
Meanwhile I reached out to friends with children, then I was recommended to think about a nanny, I also reached out to my manager and explained to him what was happening and he assured there would be all the support I needed if I go back to work.
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey ~Kenji Miyazawa
In September, 6 months after the start of the pandemic in England, also a year after starting with the BBC, I returned to work. I also hired the most amazing nanny who I had met a couple of years ago in children singing class.
It wasn’t easy but so rewarding to be able to go back to work, I made sure I reached out and communicated with my teammates and they were so supportive and helpful which made me feel so much more empowered to do my work.
However me and my husband were still very exhausted, there was still uncertainty about his job, I still had days where I felt it was too much to breastfeed an infant and look after 2 year old while going through the pandemic. We both started to entertain the idea that maybe we need to think about me taking a career break and husband asking to reduce his hours, so we both went ahead and explored the options together, we both felt equally responsible for the family.
Unfortunately there was no positive support from my husband’s work, the system didn’t support fathers who are willing to participate in raising their family.
We both thought we shouldn’t really struggle that much there must be a better way, we thought to give our startup a chance and raise our children until the pandemic is over. He went with the option of taking redundancy and I was thinking to go ahead to ask for career break. Just a week after that we got a decision from Canadian funds to say that we were accepted for their generous funds.
It was lockdown in England in January 2021 and it was the time we started to wrap up and just went on a new adventure. I never thought that I would end up leaving my lovely job and felt so nervous about taking a big risk like this. I say the pandemic made me feel closer to so many people because we go through the challenge together, also the pandemic was an opportunity to rethink my priorities and accelerated 5 years of my life.
Take adversity as an opportunity for a change. When challenges come along there’s always 2 options; to escape and not to deal with it, or to accept it and make the best out of it. Challenges can be an opportunity to make the change that you’ve always wanted. It might be an opportunity for inner or outer transformation. I’m in Canada while it’s going through lockdown till now and working on startup with my husband, and I got to work with so many amazing people. It’s still hard going through the pandemic, I still don’t know what I’m doing sometimes, I’m still exhausted but I’m really satisfied. Is it worth it? it’s absolutely worth the try. If you don’t try and take a chance you will never know…
