How Did I Get Here? My WAHM Story

Lately, I’ve seen a huge upswing in traffic around here. Not totally sure what it’s all from, but hey, I’ll take all the love I can get. I figured some of my new friends (and old ones who don’t know my history) might want to know a little more about me, so I thought I’d share the story of how I came to be a WAHM.

From the time I had my oldest, when I was 17, I worked a couple of different retail jobs. The last of which was for Casual Corner. By the time my wedding to dh rolled around, I was pretty secure in my job and was about to be promoted to store manager, after holding the lead assistant position for a couple of years. I figured with job security, we were safe to start trying to have a baby.

Our wedding was in April and I stopped my birth control as soon as that cycle was finished. By June, I was already pregnant with K, my now almost-3-yr-old. Right before my promotion, in early July, our district manager summoned us all to a mandatory conference call. Whatever she had to say was so major, I was asked to contact a neighboring store manager whose site I was watching while she was on vacation, to tell her to take the call. What they had to tell us was basically that our days were numbered. The company was up for sale and if no buyer was found, we’d be going out of business.

Wasn’t that just the news a newly-pregnant mama wants to hear?! Long story short, no buyer was ever found and I spent my entire pregnancy dealing with a store liquidation. Not the most relaxing task, especially in the 3rd trimester. I worked right up until the day that we locked the doors for the last time and I handed the keys over to mall management. That was January 28, 2006. On February 9, K was born.

I spent the next several months living off my severance pay, then filed for unemployment. I was hoping that a dream job would show up that would be a regular 9-to-5, so daycare wouldn’t be a major hassle. After years of shiftwork, I was ready for a change. Then in August, we had a little surprise that threw a wrench into my job search. My trusty little pills had failed and I was pregnant again. Just what you want to tell a potential employer – I want a job, but will need maternity leave in a few months.

I hemmed and hawed for a couple of months, trying to decide what I wanted to do. Should I take something temporary and look for a permanent job after the new baby gets here? Look for a ‘real’ job now and hope they’re okay with a maternity leave so soon after being hired? Finally, I decided to start seeing if there were ways to actually make money from home.

One of the first places that I found the day I started my search was WAHM.com. I checked out their forums and was immediately drawn to a section that was for WAHMs who write. I decided to see what was going on in there, since my mom had always told me that I should be a writer. Evidently, she was right. I went in, introduced myself, gave a brief background of what I was looking to do and within an hour had a private message that resulted in my first client.

That company is no longer in business, but I have worked for many other clients since then. I now work for a couple of content companies, as well as some private clients, plus all of my “fun” gigs like Type-A Mom and Blissfully Domestic.

I count myself so blessed to have been given the opportunity so early on in my search to actually earn money. I think that helped to give me the drive I needed to stay in the game and build my business. Though there are sometimes ups and downs and struggles, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything!