Insights from the Couch - Mental Health at Midlife

Ep.31: The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger than Ever

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 3 • Episode 31

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In today’s episode of Insights from the Couch, we discuss the evolving conversation around work, family, and redefining what it means to take a career pause. Joined by Neha Ruch, founder of the platform Mother Untitled, we explore the insights from her upcoming book, The Power Pause, and how it encourages women to embrace career downshifts or pauses with confidence and purpose. Neha shares her journey of moving from corporate ambition to an intentional family-focused life, challenging outdated beliefs that staying at home and career ambitions are mutually exclusive.

Together, we explore the fluidity in women’s career choices, discuss the economic and social shifts that allow flexibility in work-family balance, and the importance of owning your unique journey without shame or fear. 

 

Episode Highlights:
[0:00] – Introduction to the episode and welcoming Neha Ruch, founder of Mother Untitled.
[1:34] – Neha shares her journey from corporate life to embracing a career pause.
[4:47] – Discussing the cultural expectations and shifting narratives around motherhood and career.
[7:26] – The pandemic’s impact on work-life balance and caregiving in America.[11:16] – The real financial considerations in choosing to stay at home or pause a career.
[13:36] – Maximizing a career pause: Personal growth and keeping the door open for future work.
[18:15] – Why developing an “expansive identity” during family life stages can lead to a stronger career reentry.
[23:10] – Addressing fears about a “resume gap” and reframing it as a “career portfolio.”
[27:02] – What America can learn from other countries about family leave and healthcare.
[29:23] – The role of social media in supporting flexible work and women-owned businesses.
[32:08] – Tips for finding flexible work options that align with your family’s needs.

 

Resources:

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Colette Fehr:

Welcome back, everyone, and thanks for joining us for another great episode of insights from the couch mental health at midlife, we have a fantastic guest today, Neha Rus. We are so excited to have you here. Neha is the founder of Mother Untitled, the leading platform for ambitious women, leaning into family life, a thought leader, influencer and sought after speaker focusing on women, work, parenting and identity. Nae has transformative insights and reframes resonate with the hundreds of 1000s of women in the mother untitled community and beyond. Through mother Untitled, she has sparked meaningful, supportive conversations, catalyzing a shift in how society views stay at home motherhood. Her book The Power pause, how to plan a career break after kids and come back stronger than ever. Yes, will be published by Putnam in January of 2025 Welcome and thank you so much for being here.

Neha Ruch:

Oh, thank you, Colette, that is so kind. I'm thrilled. Yeah, we're

Colette Fehr:

thrilled to have you, and we have so many questions for you, and just want to dig into it all. You're really re conceptualizing the modern view of the landscape for women between career and family life and balancing all of that. Got this great book coming out, and you've built this beautiful community take us into a little bit of like, what set you off on this journey, and why was this a passion for you?

Neha Ruch:

Well, you know, I spent the better part of my 20s and early 30s really getting a lot of worth and joy from what I did for paid work, like so many women in this generation, right, and so many parents in this country, and when I first had my child, I felt differently. I think it made me re examine what I wanted in the moment, I really found probably a level of sort of inner peace that I'd been looking for for a while. I had been climbing that ladder for a while, and it sort of put that into perspective. And I chose, initially, to downshift my career, meaning I went into consulting two days a week, and the rest of the week I was at home. And this was the height of the lean in movement and the girl boss era, right? So this was around 2016 and I had just graduated Stanford Business School. I'd landed what on paper was my dream job. And I started hearing from everyone, my peers, family, friends, are you giving up? Are you giving up on your ambition? Are you giving up on your feminism? Are you giving up on your possibility, and I, meanwhile, felt fairly clear, a in my choice for that moment, but B in my potential down the line. I really did see this as one chapter that I wanted to shift my focus, and I wanted to see how I might be able to grow alongside my kids. I did not see this as a career ender, and I was meeting incredible women in my neighborhood, which was at Nomad New York. And I would meet these other women in baby groups and baby classes and on the playground that were reflecting that back to me in their own ways. Right? They were either pausing their careers and thinking about what might come next, or they were down shifting or shifting into more flexible arrangements, and none of it matched the stereotype of the June Cleaver archetype that I knew was fueling a lot of the stigmas that I was feeling. And as I was looking around, there was tremendous content elevating the traditional working parent, but it was leaving behind women like myself out of the conversation. So I eventually paused in 2017 and started mother untitled as initially a project chronicling both my own experience, navigating the gray area, featuring women I was meeting that were changing the perception and and re examining a lot of and researching where this all came from. It's

Laura Bowman:

so interesting because, I mean, I'm Colette, and I are a little older, and I firmly grew up with, like, the message of when you have kids, and I maybe this was just my family, because I don't think this was everybody in the 80s. Of like, your kids are your first priority. And it was very much like a false choice. You either stayed home and, like, really were a great parent, or you went to work, but you really sacrificed something, and what it sounds like to me is like you're completely rejecting that, and that you're able to like think very dialectically, you can hold space for your own ambition and be the parent you want to be, and that those are not at odds with each other, is that what your mission is here kind of to give that vision to women. That's right.

Neha Ruch:

I think we have a very black and white idea of working family. Yeah. And a lot of that was sort of left over from if you look back in time, right in the 1970s post World War II. Women were starting to go back to, you know, to recognize their capacity and potential in the workforce. In the 1970s we started to say, Wait a second, we have so much opportunity there that we have capacity for but what we did was we sort of left The Stay At Home mother back in the 1970s defending tradition, right? And so in the 80s, we started to see these sort of camps of the quote, unquote, stay at home and working mother. We started to see the rise the Mommy Wars, which was something like, truly a fiction from media. But we started pitting women against each other in these very polar opposites. And what we didn't catch up to was the new narrative, which is the reality that we want to present right, which is that we are more alike than we are different. Now, more of us are actually existing in between than ever before, because we have access to digital technology that allows us to be able to exist in between. We're looking at women having children much later than they did prior. So they've already accrued work and education experience before entering into parenthood, the more equitable relationships with their partners than ever before, right? So these aren't women teetering around in heels and aprons like serving cocktails at the end of the day. Their husbands, in the case of two parent households, are actually spending three times the amount of time with their children than the generation prior, right? And so for all these reasons, we're due for a rebrand, yes, of the stay at home mother, but I would argue, really rethinking this horrible construct of stay at home and working, really thinking about us all sort of on a spectrum that is constantly fluid, and we're we're sort of dialing up and dialing down, making positive shifts sprints, and knowing that it is ultimately A long game, because among all of those other data data points, the age of retirement has changed, so we're looking at a much longer career than before. I

Colette Fehr:

love the way you're describing the fluidity of it that this is not a fixed thing, because we have in modern times, women. You know, just even for our audience of women at midlife. We have women who are in their 40s, many of them who are having their first kids at 41 and 42 and beyond. Along those lines, I'm curious, how do you see the cultural zeitgeist about motherhood and career right now like, what do you think the prevailing narratives are, both the good ones and maybe the limiting ones?

Neha Ruch:

I think what it had been was a really challenging trope that motherhood and work were at odds with one another, and to be in the workforce, we had to suppress our motherhood to exist fully in motherhood. We had to really rethink our relationship to work. And the reality, I think, that we've seen post pandemic, is that when people could no longer hide their family life, right, when they when everyone got on Zoom, it really Challenged America to re examine caregiving and how much work it actually is. And I think one of the best things that came of it was that it ignited a real conversation about how to make work work for family, and not the other way around. And so that's what I'm really seeing, is just a cultural re examination of our value of work, how it takes away from the real value around family and life and health. And so I think it's, you know, when culture is ripe for re examination, it gives us a lot of opportunity to start getting really vocal about what our needs are. And so what we're seeing is women really take back the power and say, Wait a second, we do have needs. And motherhood is really a tremendous work. And motherhood, by the way, does actually make me a stronger leader. And what are the various ways in which we can start to make work support us in that role more? And you know, the goal with my work is to say there are so many options, and we need to start validating one option, which is to pause or downshift for a chapter and be able to look at that option with real respect and possibilities, so that women can be supported and respected during that stage, and also supported and respected when they decide they want to dial up work on the other side. How

Laura Bowman:

much do you think the pandemic actually provided so much space and like, talk about a pause, a moment where people are at home in their family lives and realizing, like, the traditional office type life is just not what they want. I mean, is that really something that accelerated this whole process? Yeah,

Neha Ruch:

100% I think it really challenged people to assign real value to caregiving in a way that we never had before, right? It was just something that happened, and when you were actually there taking care of the day to day of family administration and taking care of the health and education of your kids, you start you came face to face with. What parents do? And I think, you know, there used to be this question of like, well, what do stay at home parents do all day anyways? And that no one could ask that question anymore, because you were looking at it. And then combine that with, you know, the rise of mental health issues, the rise of technology, and some of the issues that we're coming up with between tech and teens, a lot of these issues that took a different level of intellectual and emotional in family life, that I think started to shine a light on weight. We need more capacity and head space for that as well. And so a combination of different issues combined with opportunities, right? I think flexible and remote work really started to accelerate. I think women started to say, Wait, this remote work thing is actually really interesting, and it lets me be an efficient worker and lets me be a pickup. I And I would argue that men did too. We're seeing the rates of men pausing their careers accelerating. We right now, one in five stay at home parents are actually dads. And I think I remember, yeah, is ticking upward. And I think when it stops being a gendered issue, I think it becomes really interesting as well, right? When we start to see both men and women say, Wait, family life is a value, and we really need to advocate for this together, right?

Colette Fehr:

It's about saying explicitly that family life is valuable and worthy and important, and then making work work for us, not that work is the centerpiece that controls your life, and you're, you know, swirling around in it with no control, that you can really chart your own course. So I'm curious if you see this as I mean, obviously everybody's got different circumstances and certain limitations, but do you see downshift in your career taking a pause as something that is accessible or realistic for most women?

Neha Ruch:

So it's so interesting. You asked that because I think one of the tropes around stay at home motherhood for so long was that it's a luxury, and when we deem one thing to be a luxury, I think we as a culture, just write it off as something that doesn't really need a warrant support or examination. And what we know now in the data is that actually one in three stay at home parents are choosing to pause because of the cost of childcare. 60% would say it's a financial consideration combined with other needs and wants, right? And so whether you're staying at home, or whether you're working out of the home, or whether you're existing in between, the privilege is to get to choose. So if you get to choose it, that is the inherent privilege. If you are forced into any of those decisions because you can't offset the cost of childcare, or you can't forego that side of your household income. That's where it is. It is ultimately much more, you know, challenging, because you're forced into a non choice that said, you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting right now is, if a pause is not financially accessible, what is the ability within your industry or within your company to figure out other ways in which to create boundaries around your work, whether that's about flexibility, whether that's about I've seen women and men take not necessarily demotions, but lateral moves where they don't have as much managerial responsibility, so that they don't have to afford As much headspace and stress. There's lots of ways to make room for family life, right? For some people, it's time, and for some people it's headspace, and for some people it's flexibility. And I think figuring out what is available to you isn't exactly as black and white as pausing or not pausing. So take

Laura Bowman:

us into like this traditional down shift slash pause, where a woman may not see the real opportunity she has to make the most of that time period.

Neha Ruch:

You know, a lot of this is the work of the power pause is to help ignite women to think, not only can I step into this with a little bit more confidence, but also the knowing that this is a career pause and it's not a life pause, right? We are going to continue to grow and learn, and that is a really important mindset to have, not only when you step into the decision, but even how you resign when you're leaving the workforce. Can you sort of nurture your network on your way out, so that you're actually preserving and nurturing those relationships with the intention to be able to drop on that network. Ultimately, when you transition back to the workforce, or transition back into work of meaning to you in a different capacity, I think setting up your day to day, giving yourself permission to have goals of your own, is so important, right? I think so often we see, and we saw this in our American mothers on pause Research survey that we commissioned that women were too often when they step into chapters of stay at home, parenthood or down shifted careers, they'll say, Well, now that my success metric is no longer my salary or my promotions, my success metric is that my children's behavior, which is obviously like a true trap. Or the success of my marriage also challenging, right? Well, how can we encourage women to actually hold space for their own personal and professional goals during this stage of life? Because ultimately, we want to set up their day to day. That not only does it have to be about the kids growing, but maybe, how can they think about ways in which to ask their family for help, their partners for help, their neighbors for help. They're maybe a paid babysitter or a mother's helper or a drop off child care, so that they're investing some time back into themselves. And that goal doesn't have to be, oh, I want to take, you know, online certification classes and SEO Marketing. That goal could be, you know, patience has been a real area of growth for me, and maybe this is the time where I invest into therapy or invest into meditation or invest into figuring out where those triggers come from. And it can be personal development, and huge personal development. And then ultimately, we want to use this time when they're ready to also figure out, how can I explore and experiment in new ways? There's nothing like time at home where you've already checked your ego of the traditional workforce, you've already said, like, I'm leaving that like, fancy title, well, maybe now is the time to say, like, Oh, I've always wanted to tinker with that idea. Now is my time to use Instagram to do that, or use Squarespace to do that, or volunteer at my local school to figure out, like maybe events is really interesting to me. And so all to say, we want to guide women to know that they are getting to grow and explore alongside their kids. And if we can chart a course to do that, by the time they do feel that motivation or interest in returning to work in some capacity, they have more of a foundation of personal development, self discovery and exploration to draw from. I

Colette Fehr:

love that, because developing yourself and raising your kids should not and is not mutually exclusive, exactly right. So you really continuing to grow and invest in yourself, whether it's in your career in some new capacity at whatever level works for you, or it's personal development that you know you're continuing to grow and feel engaged and alive and invigorated, and so when and if or how you choose to return, you haven't stagnated, and you're not stuck back where you were. Because I think Laura and I as therapists, we see a lot of women who, you know, whatever the choice, I respect, all the choices, whether it's to stay home, to keep working, to take a pause, but there are women who have chosen to stop working, or some never to work in the first place, and a lot of them, at The point when they get to empty nest, would really like something that brings meaning and purpose, and they just feel feels overwhelming to start from scratch, and many times it's because they have invested everything exclusively in their children and their children's development. And they will come into therapy and sit and talk really only about their children, right? It's like they their lost self has been she, you know, shelved off so long ago. They're so cleaved from their their true self and their own growth.

Neha Ruch:

And I think one of the things I, you know, start the book off with is this, so much of our identity is tied to what we do for work, right? And when we part with our formal title, it can feel like, oh, I now. I'm a nobody. I don't fit, or I'm just, quote, unquote, just a month. But what if you use this stage of life to figure out a more expansive identity, right? That actually includes what lights you up, what you care about what doesn't light you up. You know when you when you create that expansive identity, actually when you return, you are stronger, because you have more to draw upon feeling like a whole person, and you bring all of those sides of you into the workforce. I think it is a real sort of untapped potential right now, because women are looking for permission to allow themselves that space. I think the number one block for women is feeling like they deserve that space for themselves. If you were to ask me, what is the part that is the saddest or hardest part of this work, and I think it's women pause work for pay. They believe they no longer deserve help. No one should work. 24/7, without breaks. A lot of this work is to say to women, look, here's not only here's your value, here's how you are actually continuing to contribute to your households, your scripts to continue to feel financially dignified. But then later on, as you're finding your footing in this chapter, remember that it benefits your entire household for you to be healthy and supported. So investing in care or support, or outsourcing Whatever it looks like, or trading off with morning wake ups with your partner, whatever that those breaks look like for you, that is actually an investment in this whole household and not just in your. And I think giving women that knowledge that they are allowed to have that space, that they need to have that space they're worthy of that space, then allows them to think, Okay, well, what do I do with that space once I have it, and how can I can I use it to sort of grow in ways that will continue to build my story and my sense of sense of fullness, yeah, and be creative

Colette Fehr:

with it and curious about yourself. And it doesn't have to look one particular way along those lines of giving yourself permission to get help, permission to down shift. What other typical fears do you hear from women around doing some of this, either because they're still stuck in a culturally imposed should or just fears about their own finances or viability when they try to return. And do you hear much of that? Still? I

Neha Ruch:

do. I think chapter by chapter, I sort of bring up the common tropes and then dismantle them, and then I sort of your speech a number of experts who and real mothers on how they navigated it. And then sort of end with a way in which women can sort of rewrite that narrative. So the first one, being around identity that somehow I'm giving up on my ambition and feminism. The second, being around being a financial dependent, and I challenge that with actually your household is interdependent, right? The parent working out of the home for pay is equally dependent on you. So what can we do to scaffold you so that you feel supported? Is that writing out a formal contract, like a post nup, or is it just making sure you're having ongoing conversations? And by the way, if it's a rocky marriage, maybe now is not the time to pause. But what might you want to consider instead? I think a big one is this idea that if you're resigning, that you're giving up on your career in entirety. I think shifting that mindset is really empowering, and then figuring out like because I think that sets you up to enjoy the chapter in a different way. This myth that sort of your success is now your children's success, I think, is really important. Permission to help, get help is, is a big one. I think the last few I would say is that, you know, there's this myth that your network dries up in motherhood. I would actually challenge that it can actually expand in the most incredibly authentic of ways. And then it's just about, how do you strategically use that more network in sort of different ways than, like, exchanging strollers? I think this idea that your creativity and your hobbies dry up, like, actually we see in the data that they expand in a big way. So how can you use this time to explore meaningfully? And ultimately, I think the biggest fear is, like, I won't be able to get back in and, you know, with a resume, quote, unquote gap, and I offer the idea that actually, instead of a resume, like linear resume, what if we think about it as a career portfolio, right? That you have your traditional experience that you had in the workforce, and now you're building upon it all these non traditional experiences, right? And maybe that's advising your partner or me or a friend on their business. Maybe it's navigating really complicated health circumstances for a child, or managing a relocation or a family, or volunteering, but all of those things are sub bullets to your career break that add to a really powerful confidence story.

Laura Bowman:

I love that. I mean, I can see how transformational your work will be like for that woman that Colette and I are talking about, that we see a lot in our practice who have put their career down, put all their energy into their kids, if they had had somebody along the way saying, hey, look how you can grow your network, and how important this is right now, and how much you can be doing, how you can invest in your personal growth, how you can really get confidence out of Some of these, like navigating a child with health issues that's like intense work that women don't give themselves credit for how hard that is, but like reframing that and giving the scaffolding for that, I think this is, this is much needed for women. Laura, so I'm so happy you're doing

Neha Ruch:

this. I really appreciate that

Colette Fehr:

this is transformational, and it's where society is now and needs to be. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your family the whole way America works. You know, with like not giving people paid postpartum time, the healthcare childcare. I mean, my brother's 10 years younger than I am. So he and his wife are like 41 they live in California. She is a ICU nurse and can make a lot of money and even have some flexibility. But even with that, they decided, because she would like to be working somewhat, but the cost of childcare is so expensive and impossible. She's like, it's like, I'm gonna be using basically my salary to pay someone. And she's like, I'd rather be with my kids, so I'm gonna wait until she starts school. Like, even, you know, pre K kind of stuff, you know. And why not, if it's gonna cost. Me exactly what I earn, why I'd rather be the one who's home with my child, and that's some people don't feel that way, you know, but we our culture, is so unfriendly to this whole prospect, and it's not where we are as a society anymore. I

Neha Ruch:

really see a big shift in the next decade happening, which is so exciting, and we've seen it. I mean, I say it all the time, I don't think I would have been able to put this book out there when I started this work in 2017 I don't think we were ready. We were still sort of on the lean in train. And then we got to the I think we all leaned in, and then the pandemic happened, and everyone had this, like, moment of recalibration and, and I think, you know, it's a wonderful, wonderful silver lining to to that 2020, years that it really called into question, like, what's really working or not working for this country right now? And we have to, we have a long way to go, but we have a lot of models to draw from, like, you know, Canada, say what you want about it, but they've figured out the paid family leave they have. What

Colette Fehr:

do they do there? What do you see? I don't know. They have a year.

Neha Ruch:

And then you Oh, wow, they can. You can extend a year and a half. Now, I think the best recommendation like, what any family policy expert would say, like, if we can get to six months, that would be a real win. Because six months, if you can return to work and you're fully healed and you sort of figured out a childcare infrastructure, and that's around the time when children can, like, enter a daycare system with a little bit more ease. I mean, six months would feel like a win in this country, but you're looking at a country like Canada that, not only I, I think that, not to get too far into policy, but it's not just about paid family leave, but it's the universal health care. Because when you have universal health care, forcing a boom of women building their own businesses, and the reason they're building their own businesses is because they want that flexibility, and so they're more able to do that with healthcare?

Colette Fehr:

No, that's huge, and I'm glad you're mentioning this, because, you know, Laura and I both run our own businesses as therapists, and if I were not married, and I actually had a period of time between my two marriages as a therapist where I had to pay for my own private healthcare and it was outrageously expensive to get really shitty care, and it's just something is so broken. I don't know what the answers are, but the fact that Canada gives the universal health care and a year off to me, that is somehow I wish we could find a way to get there that made economical sense and can be managed properly. I don't know that that'll ever happen, but I agree, six months would be a win. Your kids sitting up right there, close to crawling, right you some of those hormones. For many people have settled. When I look back at my first daughter, she's 23 now, you know, I almost died during delivery. We really should have sued the hospital. She didn't breathe. It was very traumatic. I was really young, I think, like, 26 years old, which is insane on so many levels, especially that I have a 23 year old daughter. I'm like, don't do what I did. Yeah, yeah, even though you're so great and I love you. But I was not okay for a long time, and I didn't even really realize how not okay I was. And we all react so differently, even if you have all the resources and support in the world, it's a huge change in your body and a huge adjustment, especially as a first time parent. So I really hope we gravitate toward more support, not only for career, but just like launching into motherhood, it's hard,

Laura Bowman:

absolutely, to all those points. And I think you're right. As a culture, we're shifting, and hopefully it's going to look really different in the next decade. But let's shift, give gears into, like, what is the whole social media doing for like, women's entrepreneurial journeys? I mean, even Colette and I, you know, at this phase of life, we've had, like brick and mortar businesses, but like the whole idea of wanting a more flexible work world through the internet and doing podcasts and owning your own business, or being an influence this, women are starting to get creative and having a Bigger imagination for what their work life could look like.

Neha Ruch:

You know, I really think this concept of women sort of building our own economy at this point, because not only are those women starting small businesses or remote businesses or virtual businesses, they're then hiring other women in freelance and contract roles, right? And so we're creating a flexible workplace. And so I actually think one of the gifts of social media, obviously, there's a lot going on right now in figuring out the impact of social media on young people, but I think the impact it's had on women has been tremendous, right? I think it's allowed women to be able to build a new and create. Of ways. It's allowed ease of access to ongoing learning and exploration. And so, you know, one of the tips I often give women when they're like, Well, what do I do next? Or like, I don't have a hobby, is look at your social media. Look at the content you're consuming. It leaves clues for what you're interested in. Are you following a lot of family policy accounts? Are you following a lot of interior design accounts? Or, you know, there's so many ways just use social media to learn about yourself, to experiment and explore the shift towards the boom of women owned small businesses and entrepreneurship and the freelance gig economy is significant. I think it's not going anywhere. And I also think just going back to sort of the premise of this conversation. It is a huge deal for the women and work movement, because what it does is it expands what I call the Vasque area between stay at home and working. It allows women to exist in between and dial up and dial down without shame or penalty, because we're actually all sort of in navigating and in between. And it gives us more autonomy to do that. Yes,

Colette Fehr:

it's amazing, actually, because there are things available to us now that weren't in the past. This is the positive of all this online stuff. So are there any tips you have in general for somebody, let's say, and maybe there aren't. Maybe everything's just very, very niche. But what if somebody has a career that they're they think, all right, I don't want to be completely out of the workforce. I do want to do I want to downshift, but I want to keep working in some capacity, because that's important for me. Like, I realize I was not supposed to be a stay at home mom for many reasons. Like, it was a mistake. I was a stay at home mom for a period, but it wasn't really good for me. I need to keep myself doing challenging things, or I don't I'm not my highest, best self. But what about somebody who says I want to do that, but I need something more flexible, and my job or my career doesn't allow me to like work part time. Are there ways or tips to look for flexible work? You know, if it's maybe something different than you've done before? A few

Neha Ruch:

things, I think industries are broadening their sense of what's possible from a part time and flexible basis. I would say, before you throw in the towel on flexibility, look outside of your company for other parents at other like minded organizations or similar industries, and see if you can find anyone who does have a flexible role, and gain insight from the you know. Call them up, ask them how it's worked. Ideally, talk to more than one person, figure out what worked, and create a plan that you can present to your manager. It's a great suggestion. I have now talked to, obviously, hundreds of women, but what I'm always struck by is the women at historically very rigid industries like finance, who did actually go to their manager with, like, a written down plan, and it is on off in often in those settings, they're not going to, like, put it up on a silver plate and say here like you can come back two days a week, or you can work. You know you can work remotely completely, but you may be able to craft plans yourself. Look online, look on LinkedIn, look in your parent community and group and ask for those connections and suggestions. So that's number one. Number two is to then think about other arenas where you may be able to lend your expertise. So say you're in law or finance. I'm just picking really, like, historically, more traditional work environments. You might then look at nonprofits and see, like, Would I be able to transition into a more or small business, by the way. So like we were talking about oftentimes, what we're seeing now is small businesses employ a lot of fractional workers where they may have previously been stuck to full time workers. Now they're realizing, Wait a second, it's actually cost sensitive for us to only hire like really good talent two days a week. So if you cannot find the role that you're looking for within the existing company or a similar environment, then look at some of these non traditional environments, like a nonprofit or a small business to seek out fractional opportunities. And then there's this other side, which is okay if we do choose to downshift and we really want flexible work to PA either keep income or keep ourselves relevant and connected. Can I look outside to related industries so something that, like, say, I was a lawyer, could I then step into more policy advocacy, right, and so that I'm building my story strategically, and it's on my own terms, but I'm not taking my foot off the gas and then, like, bottom line, one last thing is, if you are in law, keep up your bar. Like, even if you're planning on taking a two year, five year break, like, just keep your bar up. The same applies to nursing or medicine, teaching your

Colette Fehr:

license, whatever

Laura Bowman:

licenses you get, keep them well, you're

Neha Ruch:

one. To do is keep your optionality available to you, even in a full pause. There are ways to continue to do that in really strategic ways. And I think that option was just ever expanding, but it is, you know, as much as we're talking about how so much is changing in a positive way, I think it's still on us to own our stories, advocate for what might be possible and look for the ways to tell our story moving forward,

Laura Bowman:

I love it. I love that you're giving so much permission for creativity and, you know, imaginative ways forward, and that's what we really need to encourage. There's a way to do everything right so and women need support and help and sometimes a little guidance with that, but it pays huge dividends. And

Colette Fehr:

permission. Permission. We're now finally giving people permission that it doesn't have to look the old way, and you don't have to make this, you know, very rigid, all in all, out choice anymore. So exciting.

Neha Ruch:

I think it is true, yeah,

Colette Fehr:

and it's exciting. I'm a mom of two daughters. It makes me excited for my kids that they're both in college and finishing up this year, and, you know, in their early 20s, and it's just exciting to think about the way they can develop a family and a career path that wasn't an option. You know, a few decades ago, I love that. I

Neha Ruch:

you know, I say that all the time, whenever I think about like, what's my why? I think for my daughter and my son, they will grow up, and this idea of stay at home and working mother will seem so antiquated to them, like they will. They'll just know that they can make sort of the right choices for right now and continue to shift and evolve. Yeah,

Colette Fehr:

and I, and that's the goal for all of us. Whatever career path you're on is always to keep growing, and you never know where you're going to go. I mean, Laura and I a couple years ago, I don't think we knew we were going to have a podcast, you know. So there's all this stuff that can pop up at any stage of life, which is also exciting. You can have a whole new career plan at 60, if you want to. That is possible now.

Neha Ruch:

Very much. So, so

Colette Fehr:

cool. It's so cool. Thank you so much for all of this, and I want to, before we let you go, give us an idea of how we can connect with you. Of course, everything will be in the show notes, but what do you want people to know about getting in touch with you? The book, all that good stuff.

Neha Ruch:

Oh, thank you for all your support and your enthusiasm. It really means the world. If this work resonates with you, if there's someone in your life for whom it might resonate, I really ask anyone to pre order you can go to mother on title.com/the, power pause. Not only is it sort of a first of its kind guide for women to walk through this stage of life with confidence, but it also is a call to action to validate this choice and open up more choices for women. So that's one thing. If you do pre order, you can access the first chapter, which is all about identity, and so that's a fun one, and the history of how we got here and why it looks a lot different moving forward. AND you can subscribe on motherontitle.com to the our weekly newsletter or follow on mother on title that on Instagram. Wonderful.

Colette Fehr:

Well, I'm sure our listeners are going to want to grab this book and join the community. I'm excited to read it. I can't wait. And we're so grateful that you were here and for this really important conversation. It makes me excited for all of us, women and our children. So thank you definitely. Thanks so much, and thanks everyone for listening. If you like what you heard today, and we hope you do. Please don't forget to share with your friends. Leave us a review, and we'll see you next time on insights from the couch. Bye, everyone you