Getting back on the highway with Lea Curtes-Swenson
Don’t Forget to “Be True to You”
Welcome back to the On-Ramp! In my short time as the On-Ramp Genius around here, I’ve had the privilege of speaking to some incredibly inspiring women – all who have successfully made the transition back to work after becoming mothers.
Meet Margarita Cordero, 43, now a married mother of two young children and a bilingual school psychologist for the Denver Public Schools. Her story starts in Mexico City, where she enjoyed a stellar, immensely satisfying career in banking. So how did she get from there to here?
Imagine you are Margarita. After meeting your true love at work, you marry and decide to move to another country. Now your to-do list looks like this:
1. Decide where in the U.S. you want to live and work.
2. Find and purchase a house.
3. Find a new job offering some flexibility in order to raise a family, and utilizing your bilingual skills.
4. Get pregnant.
5. Oh, and you should also probably get acclimated to a brand-new culture, make new friends and speak in a language other than your “mother tongue” nearly all the time.
6. Do all this with your support system located thousands of miles away -- no small feat!
After several months of looking for a house and a job, Margarita discovered she was pregnant. She put her job search on hold, and she and her husband, David, welcomed son Marco into the world in October 2001.
The following August, when Marco was 10 months old, Margarita became on On-Ramper for the first time.
During a visit with her new friend Danielle, who worked for the Denver Public School District, Margarita was talking about her job search, which she planned to resume now that Marco was getting older. Because of an intense focus on human resources-related issues at her former banking job, Margarita was interested in finding a position that utilized her Master’s degree in psychology.
That’s how Danielle learned for the first time that Margarita had a specialized, advanced degree. The light bulb went off – Danielle knew that the school district was in dire need of bilingual psychologists, and thought Margarita had a good chance of finding employment at last.
An interview was scheduled, and Margarita was hired on the spot.
But the job came with one condition – Margarita had to go back to school to get her EdS degree in order to be licensed. (DPS was able to grant an emergency license to practice, based on the district’s need for bilingual psychologists.)
So now Margarita’s to-do list looked like this:
1. Start a new job, and learn how to do it according to your own high standards.
2. Go back to school at night.
3. Have another baby! (They welcomed daughter Andrea in November 2003.)
4. Attempt to be the mythical Perfect Wife, with a clean house and dinner on the table every night.
5. Make peace (and help your husband make peace) with the fact that you’re not earning as much as you once did – and now you’re paying for childcare.
6. Juggle all this without the benefit of a full night’s sleep.
Luckily, she was able to take a one-year sabbatical from her new job once baby Andrea was born. And this time, the on-ramp process was much smoother – her job was waiting for her.
But that didn’t mean Margarita didn’t face challenges. Aside from the tangible “biggies” – including three years of night school with new babies, little sleep and a job – there were the intangible pressures.
Like the feeling that close family members didn’t approve of her choices. She was, after all, making decisions that would have been extremely rare a couple of generations ago. (This has to be a universal feeling among many working moms.)
But Margarita knew that for her, having a career was about more than money. “I really needed the adult interaction and intellectual stimulation,” she says. As much as she loves being a mother, she says that when she wasn’t working, “I was going crazy!”
Many women have a difficult time admitting this – the social pressure to stay home with your kids (if it’s financially feasible) can be significant. What’s inspiring to me is that Margarita knew instinctively what she needed in order to be a happy, fulfilled and effective person – whose roles include mother, wife and more.
And she stayed strong in her focus, despite a long list of pressures and challenges.
But, most admirable of all are her greatest achievements yet: son Marco, now 7, and daughter Andrea, 5, are the nicest, most well-behaved and sweetest kids you’ll ever meet.
Seems that her efforts – and focus -- have really paid off. ¡Felicidades, Margarita!
Margarita’s On-Ramper Advice:
“Yes, there were difficult times when I wanted to give up and quit. But I learned to rely on other women in my life for the special support I needed,” she says. “I would advise women to never think they are the only ones going through their challenges. There are others all around you who have been through something similar, and they are more than willing to help you. You just have to reach out.”
Interested in becoming a Get Your Genius Resident Genius?Click here to contact us and please include your bio, a link to your website and a few sentences why you feel working mothers can’t live without your expertise.