21-07-2025
Don't say I've quit. I'm on a ‘power pause'
It's been a while since we've heard from the #girlboss of the mid-2010s, who hijacked millennial Instagrams with career-centric motivational speeches and lofty work ambitions. We didn't really question where she went — perhaps she joined a cult or married her MacBook — but fear not, she's now been found alive and well. She was just tending to her children at home.
Coined by the American author Neha Ruch, who spent years working in advertising and start-ups, the 'power pause' is a new concept that aims to rebrand the modern spectrum of stay-at-home-motherhood for women choosing to 'downshift' their careers and make more space for family life.
I am apparently in the throes of a power pause, having left a stressful career in fashion. Instead of working nine to nine, I'm now at home every day alternating between parenting, freelance deadlines and the Sisyphean task of tidying the kitchen. I left my previous career for a host of reasons, one being that I was on the precipice of insanity and another being that it didn't allow much time for children. I could have them, of course, I just wouldn't be able to see them during the week.
I probably would have left eventually anyway. It's not very #girlboss to admit that aggressive emails leave me emotionally withered, like a bedridden Victorian, but that's the kind of person I am. And now, post-Covid and pre-AI takeover, freelancing and working from home has never been so easy or socially acceptable.
Some days one child is at nursery, some days they are both with me and some days I have a full ten-hour stretch to focus on projects. I'm able to find fulfilment beyond my family while also being around to make misshapen cupcakes with my daughter, three, on Mondays or take my son, nearly two, to a farm on a Thursday. As far as I can tell, I haven't 'paused' anything, I've just chosen to change my life and work in a way that makes more sense in this life stage.
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Perhaps when they're older I'll crave a high-stress job and crying in an office loo but, as of now, I haven't felt the draw of that siren's call. Maybe I wasn't ever powerful enough for what I'm now doing to be considered a pause, or maybe my pause just lacks power, but regardless, I don't really feel the need to repackage it with a sassy label. I'm just a mother, working from home, praying that no one sends me a rude email.
