my curiosity
(who am i kidding, it wasn’t curiosity, it was full-blown sanity-on-the-rocks i-need-to-use-my-brain full-time-unpaid-caregiver burnout)
led me to fill a gap.
I kept my happy face on while COVID sucked the joy out of what was left of my sanity as a full-time unpaid caregiver
When we were hit with a global pandemic, all of this forced “stay-the-fuck-home” family time was just peachy. I was due with #4 (surprise) and we were still living in the one-bedroom apartment that we’d vowed to move out of every year since 2013. School went online for my older 2. Wild-child toddler amped up her game. We did our best that spring and summer: staying indoors, tea parties, painting, blocks, logging in a bit, worksheets, colouring, play dough, outdoor time in wide open spaces, parks when they opened up again…
Babe 4 came [shortly after kids went back to school]. Family and friends from near and far supported us in epic ways. And my husband stepped in — while also opening a new business in the middle of a lockdown — to ensure I could recover. He held down the fort in our tiny space. He slept on a blow-up in the kids’ bedroom to deal with toddler night wakings and early mornings (no joke). I caught up on sleep. Actually. It was mind-blowing.
We did great.
Until we didn’t.
After month 3, hubs was already in burnout mode (new business = baby 5) and when kids went online again due to school closures, our home was nothing short of a shit show. Feeding, rocking, shushing, wiping poop, and more poop, logging kids in. Then out. Then in again. Snacks. Printing worksheets. Tantrums. Lunch. Finding tape. Scissors. Glue. The right shade of blue construction paper. I have no construction paper just use white. Cue meltdown. While wiping poop. Snacks. Dinner prep. Dishes by hand [no dishwasher]. Bath. ok, no bath.
I was literally running all day long. Putting out fires. Calming tears. Making food. Cleaning crumbs & spills. Holding tantrums. Yelling at kids to stop bugging each other. To be quiet for the baby. Screen time. More screen time. Huge guilt. The decibel level that sanity requires was only achieved through screen time. Cue ocean of guilt that robbed any sanity screens offered. All this while baby-wearing baby 4 in-between breastfeeding sessions & more poop. Oh right, yes. Almost forgot about COVID-19…
(and let’s not talk about the loads of laundry my dear husband would haul to the laundromat week after week [no in-suite laundry]… and the pile of folding that greeted me, stuffed inside several massive blue Ikea bags).
Did I mention that fall we lost approx 1/3 of our tiny living space when our landlords came to “fix” our soggy rooftop deck (our only access to outdoors) and left 48 hrs later after slapping roofing material over the entire surface, didn’t replace the railings, and left our patio furniture on the public sidewalk to be stolen by passersby…?
Oh. and we share a paper-thin wall with a neighbour. Like she’s on one side of the house and we are on the other side. The two units are divided with drywall. She hears everything. I cannot tell you how my sanity was tested far beyond all of the above just by knowing that all of this crap hitting the fan wasn’t only happening for me. It was happening for her too. All. day. long. While she tried to work the fuck from home.
I broke down in Feb 2021. Hubs was convinced we needed to move back to my hometown. We applied to rent a home there. didn’t get it. We already knew it was bad timing (and didn’t actually make logical sense given the new business) but in our desperation we’d tried anyway.
Thinking of full-time caregiving for 4 more years in unclear pandemic circumstances was like a bullet to the brain. I just couldn’t even. I was in full-on burnout mode. I needed a break. Something to give me purpose beyond mom (cue my freelance editing business I’d already launched in 2018… but the time I spent to inject into growing it was just as time-consuming as the client gigs themselves … time I didn’t have. I was already working, full-time. remember? just with no paycheque). I kept my happy face on while COVID sucked the joy out of what was left of my sanity as a full-time unpaid caregiver.
I started looking at job postings. I put my younger 2 kids on daycare waitlists. (Fingers crossed my potential income would pay for childcare costs this time … I’d done the math before … and it hadn’t). I started opening & reading LinkedIn messages from recruiters. (I’d been able to fill the employment gap with my freelance business thus wasn’t filtered out of consideration). I whipped up an updated resume and started doing research about re-entering the job market after an extended leave.
What I found was shocking.
The resume gap is a huge hit to job-search success. (Not to mention a huge hit to confidence… so. many. crickets. (aka nada. no call-backs or offers)).
In particular, FTUC moms’ chances of landing a job offer are nil. Literally. The stats are mind-blowingly depressing.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
I decided to do something about it. And joybeforework was born.
Click here to join my webinar, where I’ll share these mind-blowing stats plus tools to fly past and turn your job-search story upside down! [ultimate re-entry job-search checklist lead magnet in the form of free webinar… tell them ALL the STEPS: the what and why… then they enter program to pay for the “HOW”]
[[[Actually. full disclosure: rebecccajoy.com was born. Yup. Three Cs. whoops. so I wrestled with finding my name and nothing was available. I wanted “.com”… So I decided on joybeforework. ]]]
Why “joy” ? I want women to know their worth. Before work. Yes, some of us need to pay the bills, some need to feel “whole” by using brainpower in a career outside the home, some of us have an entrepreneurial spirit and can’t help but put our passion out there (or are terrified of putting it out there but are even more terrified of not ever trying)...
But before work-for-pay (or work for not-pay), I want you to know you are enough. You are worthy. of love. of affirmation. of joy. of peace. of excitement. Just You. as a human who exists in this world. Outside of work. This knowledge will ground/root you in joy.
I didn’t believe that. That’s why I looked to paid work in desperation to somehow fulfill me. I’m not saying work can’t be fulfilling. I absolutely believe it can be. But, I needed to believe that what I’d been doing for the past 8+ years hadn’t been in vain. That it was real work. That it was important work. That, even though it was unpaid, it was worthy of acknowledgement. I also needed to know that my identity couldn’t come from knowing my worth as a mom or caregiver (fully unpaid). It couldn’t come from knowing my worth as a career mom (paid+unpaid). It had to come from knowing that, in my humanity — before work — I was worthy. I was valuable.
Joy in the before work process looks like this: knowing your worth (before work), understanding the landscape/terrain you step into, mastering repurposing your skills/education/experience, finessing your resume/application into the “call-back” pile.
Joy as a mindset.
You bring the joy. you choose joy. you can find joy. you choose to keep the joy. you bring it with you wherever you go.
Joy as confidence.
if there is one thing you get from me (don’t forget to sign up for my free starter kit), please hear this: YOU HAVE VALUE. BEFORE WORK. The fact you exist on this earth makes you valuable. Your mere existence grounds you in joy and brings joy into the world of endless possibilities.
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LinkedIn/Facebook launch post:
This is crazy. I never imagined putting myself out there this way, but this is where life is taking me and I'm all in.
Let's be honest. COVID sucked the life out of what was left of “stay-at-home-mom” joy for me. It's just how the cookie crumbled and I won't pretend it was peachy.
Seven years of full-time unpaid caregiving was followed by #staythefuckhome mandates to compliment a surprise newborn and two kids online and a toddler in the throes of the #terribletwos in a one-bedroom apartment with zero outdoor access, in the meantime my beloved hubs was working 90-hr weeks with "baby5" (new business)...
I was beyond burnt out by Feb 2021.
I thought about what it would look like for me to snag a job, and deeply inhale the very green "working mom" grass on the other side... Up until this point, it hadn't made financial sense for me to work, but my 3rd would be entering kindergarten and for once we could actually afford childcare because we’d be paying for only 1 kid in daycare (at a time) instead of 2.
After doing a bit of research for my own eventual re-entry, there's no way to say it lightly: I found that full-time caregiver mamas are [more often than not] seen as undesirable candidates. The odds are stacked against us.
Multiple studies and surveys between 2018-2022 conclude that bias in the hiring process is real. The info I was sifting through was mind-blowingly depressing.
I started to look for ways to overcome the bias, or "beat the bots" or at least outline a strategy to somehow get eyeballs on my resume for a fighting chance at an interview once I was ready to start applying.
In the process, I came across so. many. gems. that I'm excited to share. So excited, in fact, that I pivoted my job-search path to step into an educator/coaching role for my fellow mamas & caregivers!
I’ve been moonlighting as a copy editor and resume-polisher for over 8 years, so the hiring and talent recruitment sphere isn't new to me. But it was exactly within this context — me having helped clients over the years land call-backs and job offers — that now suddenly feeling doubtful of MY OWN re-entry was a bit, well, messed up.
What about all the other moms out there who don't have a clearly-positioned side-gig to fill the gap?
What about those who have poured heart and soul into caring for Next Generation talent round-the-clock, and when their next chapter / life's season / unique circumstances brings them to gear up to re-enter, they're left in the dust?
I just couldn't.
I'm here to tell you that you're beautiful. You're smart. You're talented.
YOU HAVE VALUE.
And when you're ready to re-enter, we're gonna whip up an application that gets results
Please send all of your mama friends, caregiver friends, stay-at-home dad friends, parent friends, and any other friend with a resume gap my way.
Pass along the link below — email it, DM it, text it… I know you all are thinking of at least one person in your life: friend, sister, cousin, neighbour, old colleague, partner who could use some job-search #soulbalm + powerful strategies that get eyeballs on resumes.
Help me share the joy to your mom & parent friends who might appreciate a lighter, simpler path to re-entry when the time comes. Anyone who is in the thick of a job search, or gearing up to re-enter the workforce — with a gap on their resume — will benefit.
Even if you're still a year away from re-entry (your current reality looks like rocking babe to sleep, Friday-showerday, changing poopy diapers by the hour, and catching a whiff of crusted, half-day-old burp up on your shoulder while hosting play-time to drooling, snotty-nosed, teething tinies as you offer a soon-to-be-cold coffee to your neighbour who's sitting on the floor beside your Cheerio-dust-infused couch) ... give me a follow anyway to learn tips and tricks along the way ... When the time comes to re-enter, you'll thank me for the foresight.
Your job search just got a whole lot lighter!
from nurture:
My "big why" is that I needed to know, for myself, that life seasons are okay. that there was a way to take a full-time childcare path for a season without throwing away [the potential for] stepping into a season of professional paid work.
This past winter was when I decided I wasn’t going to let societal "ish" (bias, historical stats/discrimination/x, x) stand in my way and block me from reaching you to tell you that you're valuable. I wasn’t going to breathe deep, polish my own resume, land a job and then leave my fellow mamas in the trenches. I would find a way to not spend my life wondering what my path would've looked like (where my path would've led me) if I hadn't been able to elevate a caregiving gap with a legit freelance role. so I could actually encourage you to see your worth and embolden you to act on it in the job search.
And you know what? That was my why, and it's what got me through. I ended up learning how to see my value, even before work [as something completely separate and outside of my role, my title, my ___actions/offer]. I could show up with confidence on the daily, for unpaid work or otherwise. I felt encouraged/motivated, more joyful, more capable.
I wasn't so discouraged/down; I wasn't feeling isolated or lonely. I harnessed this spark to make time to do what I love: encouraging other women. Researching and making stats and numbers accessible to you. Advocating for changes to be made in hiring and recruitment / talent acquisition so that we can eliminate bias and work toward a more equitable job search/hiring story. Making our cultural reality relevant to your job-seeking endeavours, flipping the script on the SAHM story, on the "gosh-it-must-be-nice-to-sit-around-and-use-zero-skills-while-at-home" story ... Turning that passion into a business, which is something I never thought would be possible.
