Paralyzed: The Life of the Mid-Level Career Woman (Part I in a Five Part Series, or until I feel like stopping)

My sister Julie called me today. She didn’t have much to say; I think she just wanted to hear my voice. The voice of someone less encumbered and who doesn’t have it all.

“How’s it going out there?” I asked her. I live on the opposite coast.

“Fine,” she said, unconvincingly. “Making it work.”

“That’s great. I knew you would.”

“We can always find a way to make everything work,” Julie said, trailing off. She’s exhausted and I can hear the apprehension in her voice. “I guess I just never expected this.”

“Expected what?”

“My situation.”

What was she talking about? My sister’s life has been on a tremendous uptick. After years of graduate school and living like a pauper in pursuit of a Ph.D. in history, and after years of low-paying adjunct positions and interviewing at universities in towns you can’t find on a map, she’s found a position with a respectable degree of prestige, pay, and, yes, tenure.

Granted, her husband is firmly entrenched at his law firm in Boston, and her new job is in New York, but she understands the need to sacrifice, at least a little while longer, and endure the long commute. Granted, they’d just bought a house outside of Boston the week before my sister was offered the position, but family has offered to help out by providing my sister with a place to stay in New York three nights a week so they won’t have to sell the house.

There’s just that other niggling detail, the real sticking point—her one year old.

“I miss my daughter,” she said.

This, said by the same woman who once excused herself from Christmas dinner to finish her dissertation; who finished her undergrad in two years and got her first Master’s at age 21. Now I’m listening to her tell me how she can’t sleep when she’s away from her child, and she can’t get any work done when she’s with her.

“I just like watching her,” Julie said.

Everything that my sister has said she would do she has done: Doctorate—check. Husband—check. House—check. Child—check. Tenure-track job—check. Everything in her life has been planned.

But Julie never planned to succumb to that aspect of motherhood, that force that makes women with advanced degrees do crazy things like quit their jobs and think of new ways to make mushy broccoli taste good.

My initial thought was, “Can’t she ever be happy?” But it occurred to me, it’s not that she’s incapable of being content, she’s just finding out that the life she’s carved out for herself is plagued with miscalculations.

My sister busted her butt in her 20s because she believed that there would be an end to the work, the striving, and a point where she would have racked up enough accomplishments that she would have reserves to last her throughout her child’s early upbringing. Now, in her 30s, she sees that this is an illusion; she won’t suddenly be told she’s done; she’ll continue to be asked to sacrifice. The only way she will be happy is by making a choice and sticking with it, and accepting the decision; not pretending that in a few months, semesters, or years, it will all magically work itself out.