Find Your Way Home!
What is keeping YOU from coming home to your family? Are you a working parent looking for a way to leave the paid workforce to become a stay-at-home parent? Or, are you a stay-at-home parent looking for a way to successfully maintain your home-based lifestyle? Whether you are currently at home, or in the process of looking for a way to come home, this is the book for you. Finding Your Way Home offers comprehensive step-by-step strategies to help you plan and implement an exit from the workforce, and create a sustainable life at home with your family. In this book, you will:
· Learn why a stay-at-home parent is so beneficial to children of all ages.
· Discover how having a parent at home can improve your health, marriage, family life, and yes, even your budget!
· Analyze your options for working: full-time, part-time, home-based business, free-lance, or stay-at-home parenting full-time.
· Learn how to cut household expenses.
· Create a new one-income household budget.
· Conquer fear and turn in your resignation!
· Maintain your self-esteem and overcome resistance once at home.
· Create new home-based routines and become a successful household manager.
· Create a safe haven: a relaxed, secure, and sustainable home-based lifestyle for the whole family!
Based on the author’s extensive research, interviews with dozens of parents and her highly personal account of her own struggle to find her way home, this book offers everything a parent needs to come home successfully. Finding Your Way Home will be referred to again and again as you transition to the calmer, less hurried, and family-focused lifestyle of your dreams.
Lucynda Koesters worked as a marketing specialist for The Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky for eight years before finding her way home to her family. She is now self-employed as a free-lance writer, concentrating on families, children and one-income living. She is available to speak on the subject of finding your way home, and also for private consultations. She lives in a log home in the rolling hills of southern Indiana with her husband, three children, and a toy rat terrier. She would love to hear from readers. Contact her via email at: lkoestrs@venus.net.
Welcome to the Rat Race
How did my life come to this? I asked myself this question one evening years ago as I sank, utterly exhausted, into a tub of warm bubbles. As I relaxed into the soothing water, I let my mind wander over the fast-paced events of my day. I was a thirty-year-old first-time mother of a five-month old baby boy. I was a college-educated advertising professional, with seven years’ work experience. My husband, Willi, eight years my senior, was a commercial photographer with an engineering background. We both put in long hours on our jobs and had been married for two years.
I thought back to how this particular day had gone.
6:30 a.m. The alarm went off and we were up and running – showers, breakfast and a quick perusal of the newspaper before the baby awakened.
7:30 a.m. The baby was stirring. I delightedly scooped him up from his crib, but with no time to play, dressed him immediately and fed him his bottle.
8:00 a.m. The mad rush was on to get everything ready for the baby’s day at the daycare center and our day at the office. I placed filled and sterilized bottles, diapers, medicines and changes of clothes for the baby in the diaper bag; and set out lunches and briefcases. Willi grabbed his lunch and with a hurried kiss to the baby and me, was off to work. I got the baby’s coat, hat, gloves, and booties and loaded him into the infant car carrier seat. I grabbed his diaper bag, my lunch and briefcase, and, after making two trips to the car with all our gear, raced off to the day care center.
8:30 a.m. I arrived at the day care center with the baby. We rushed in; the baby still buckled in his car carrier. I signed in and hurried down the hall to the infant room. As usual, I was running late for work, so I asked the caregiver to please take care of getting the baby out of the carrier and his winter gear. I placed a quick kiss on my sleepy infant’s forehead, and with a lump in my throat promised to return at lunch. I said a quick prayer of thanks that his center was located just one block from my office.
9:00 a.m. I arrived at work choking back tears. I felt bewildered to still have these feelings of guilt, grief and remorse over leaving my new infant in full-time day care. I had thought that by now, the awful feelings would dissipate; after all, I had been back to work for three months.
12:00 p.m. I raced to the day care center for lunch with the baby. I spent a bittersweet half-hour playing with him in the nursery’s “fun box.” I was again thankful for the opportunity to be close enough to the center to visit during the day, but I still dreaded having to tear myself away from him when it was time to return to the office.
12:30 p.m. I returned to my office desk, choking back tears again. I ate half of a sandwich brought from home and drank a cup of coffee.
1:55 p.m. I arrived five minutes early for a staff meeting. My colleagues asked about the baby. “Oh, he’s fine,” I had said, “probably napping, right now.” I would have loved to have talked more about him, but I was interrupted by a male co-worker who joked, “Yeah, I wish I could be napping right about now.” Everyone laughed as the boss strolled in to begin the meeting. I fought the lump in my throat and tried to pay attention. My mind wandered back again to the baby. I worried about whether or not he was getting a good nap. He had been so cranky at night, lately. It was so noisy at the center, with babies on all kinds of schedules, crying all the time, and the preschoolers across the hall making all kinds of ruckus, how could anyone sleep?