Severance and Sliding Doors

You know the film Sliding Doors? I’m not a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow but I always really liked her haircut in that film - I had that same hairstyle around the same time, the film came out in 1998 when I was at uni. But aside from hairstyles, essentially it’s about the different paths life can take - what would happen if you made one decision instead of another?

I had a reminder on my phone that it has been 6 years since I left my last (proper) job. In that Facebook post I said it was strange to think that I started that job as a fresh-faced twentysomething and left as a 40 year old mum of two. Anyone who is a parent (in any form that takes) and looks back at themselves when they were in their 20s will know that they’re not the same person they were then! The huge metamorphosis that happens when you become a parent is just bonkers, and yet you are the same person, you’ve just added more strings to your bow, so to speak. When I started my last job, my partner and I had just bought and moved into our first home together - I remember taking the phone call to accept the job on the back doorstep, getting to grips with my new garden while I was on leave after moving house. And a few months later we got our dog Alfie, our first foray into parenthood (one that at times was harder than the human babies!).

One of my first jobs was a teeny studio deep in the countryside. Idyllic in some respects but frankly absurd in others, I have many stories to dine out on from those days; getting to travel; running training for brand ambassadors from countries all over Europe and beyond; developing my design, illustration and website management skills for an international brand; and once - in Madrid, I think it was, being too shy to speak to Howard from Take That on the phone (!), all while such bizarre rules were imposed like what I could and couldn’t wear, including shoes… (see? absurd). But when I needed to move on I was desperate for the most urban, mainstream, NORMAL job I could find. Eventually I found my next role (no mean feat, as LinkedIn didn’t yet exist, recruitment people didn’t really use email then, no mobile signal at work, rigid hours and a big commute with no opportunity outside of work to get hold of people!).

This was the role which brought people (a team!), the ‘fun’ of piling more onto an already slightly ridiculous job spec (we bought yet another company! you manage this website as well now!), more micro managing, and the biggest contrast - industrial estate life (sandwich lunch in your car in a service station car park? Nice!) My time there included a lot of giggles (the people) but a lot of stress too (the managers). It also taught me that I hate industrial estates. I can’t do ugly, soulless workplaces. That might sound pathetic, but you have to spend a huge chunk of your life in your workplace - it should be a nice one! (Of course, nice workplaces exist on industrial estates, it was more the whole combination that was the problem) What I also didn’t realise at the time was that anxiety was beginning to hit me hard - with the micro managing and lack of flexibility, I didn’t realise it was starting to have a physical impact (fun fact - you didn’t get paid for your first day of any sick leave. One year I got a reward for not taking a single day off sick for a year! Woohoo! Not a great company policy for staff mental and physical health, guys).

My next move was fairly strategic - I knew I wanted to get out there into a workplace that was doing good things for people and the world, instead of just selling stuff and not treating people very well. But I also wanted life to be less stressful, less micro managed, less ridiculous pressure about ludicrous things. And I got it - university life was a blessed relief. A beautiful and varied environment. An employer that did something important and made a difference to the world. I was in a role which was new and a bit of an experiment, and was able to carve out a niche, break some new ground and make connections across the institution that weren’t necessarily there before. Not on my own, I had wonderful colleagues around me. However, for a good few months, it was lonely. Having one foot in one team and one in a different team, and actually a third foot that you had to rustle up to work for another team on another day of the week, often made for a disjointed and unsettled experience. It was still before flexible working and working from home became commonplace. By then anxiety was causing havoc for me physically, something had to give and in the end one of my wonderful managers (who later became a mentor) was able to push others to allow me to work from home for some of the week, giving me back some autonomy, control and most importantly, trust.

During the 12.5 years I was there, we built the team from less than a handful to a small army - a proper webforce. Having lived, breathed and shaped that role from its conception, I knew the relationships and connections that it pulled together across a complex institution, up and down the hierarchies of staff levels and departments. Working really closely with colleagues who’d subsequently joined in the same role, I knew the common issues we faced and difficulties we often had, and where the positives were too. I knew that the stability of the ‘home’ team was the critical factor that made the role really work - and that collaboration - literally diving in together to tackle the big chunks of work together, not just sympathising when workload was heavy - was the key to maximising the impact we could have while supporting the individual.

When I had our son back in 2010, it was of course a huge life change, and a fabulous one (albeit exhausting!). I appreciated the incredible value of a good maternity leave provision but was still genuinely looking forward to getting back to work when it was time (having friends at work really is a lifesaver). It was the beginning of split priorities. Of course it’s a juggle. And you can have it all - but not necessarily at the same time, parts of that ‘all’ happens in different life phases, I think.

I thought I was winning at that juggle when I got promoted to a team lead while working part-time and a mum - look at me smashing those glass ceilings and bossing it! Hell yes! And in lots of ways yes I was - I appreciated being able to work part-time, I appreciated time with my boy, I appreciated that my parents were thankfully here, local and able to look after him too (alongside my other half and I). I was even able to work from home! Spinning plates every day - putting a load of washing on before starting work? Check! Doing the nursery pick up? Check!

I increased my hours to work full-time when our son was 2ish when my partner’s job changes meant we needed that. In fact it worked really well - not least because I had experienced something interesting once I was working part-time - the ‘part-time invisibility factor’. It’s not unique to me, it was common to all my colleagues who worked part-time (I mean - we worked full time, frankly, as working parents, but I mean the time you were considered ‘visible’ at your employed work). However, I know I worked to minimise that where I could - even just small things like structuring meetings only on colleagues’ working days so they weren’t out of the loop or missing the start of a project (a pet hate for me!).

My second maternity leave saw a shift. While being a real killer, as my daughter woke me up So.Many.Times in the night for YEARS, the whole thing was more enjoyable, somewhat easier, less of a shock than the first time round (I think many people will attest to that!). I also felt really on top of things and again, felt positive about returning to work. Ahead of my mat leave, we had recruited two of my team to cover my role, which had been my suggestion. I knew that doing this would be a great way to cover it, I knew that we had brilliant people to take it on, and I knew that it created opportunity to give people development, challenge and variety. It was indeed a success; they were ace, as I knew they would be.

Something that many women will be familiar with, unfortunately, is that the return to work is not always smooth. And it’s a strange thing - I do appreciate that it’s not easy to fully ‘get’ what we’re on about if you haven’t been in that position. I mean, we all agree that maternity leave is an amazing thing (albeit pretty essential). And the improving provision for paternity leave and shared parental leave is also a Very Good Thing. I think unless you’re a total ass you know that maternity leave is not a long holiday. And I do appreciate that it is not easy for businesses to cover someone being off for months and all the financial ramifications of that. However. You are literally displaced. The small things become big things. It could be something like ‘oh we haven’t got you a proper desk yet, can you sit here’. Or not being included on projects. Or as I found, the start of a slow process (deliberate or not) of being usurped (that’s a great word isn’t it).

You return, the same person - but better. Better time management skills. Less patience with faffery - you get shit done. More focused - not less. You now know all about life balance and priorities - you want to do work well, you want to do parenting well. You enjoy work for the good things it brings (adult company! hot drinks!). I found increased confidence too.

And then there was ‘we think we’ll keep this part of your role (ie my favourite bit, that I’d really made my own) with x, so we can give you bigger, better projects’… okaaay. What are these better projects of which you speak? Spoiler alert: I still haven’t found that out.

Those micro changes developed into bigger changes. The work/life seesaw regularly swung the wrong way; I recall a phone call where I agreed to take on an ill-fated project while trying to keep an eye on my toddler daughter in a playground on one of my ‘non-work’ days (I shouldn’t have taken the call, or said yes). Restructures that dragged on interminably. And then conversations, where signals start to become clearer and it dawns on you, hiding in plain sight amongst all the restructure-speak, ‘oh you want to make my role at risk’ (despite equivalents remaining unaffected). A lot of that sort of thing, until the grand finale is eventually, painfully reached and it’s a sparkly game of Promotion or Bust.

And another spoiler alert - following more conversational gems such as ‘you do realise this role is full time?’, the outcome of the game was: Bust.

I had been aware of the physical manifestations of anxiety (Anxiety the condition, with a capital A) for some years by then, but hadn’t quite realised the physical manifestations of prolonged stress until that point. The unstoppable tears, the absolute exhaustion but more importantly, the aching all over for days on end as if I had flu. My body said ‘stop’ and made me listen.

Somehow, the worst thing following all this, was that this limped on for a couple more years, but with less and less work coming my way. But - I was treated to a women’s personal development course! What makes me chuckle is that workplaces don’t appreciate that development courses are the beginning - the course itself is not the development. Give a man a fish, etc. This development course did change everything for me, although change wasn’t realised for some time.

A mentor (the aforementioned manager) gave me back the connection and acknowledgement of my experience that I needed. Fellow women on the development course, older peer mentors, gave me incredible validation - I’ll never forget one woman who totally hit the nail on the head when she said ‘it’s a form of grief’. And it is - I don’t use that term flippantly. It’s grief for one path; the one you’d built and worked towards, that has gone.

This is the Sliding Doors thing - how would your life be different if it had gone one way instead of the other? If you’d made a different decision?

I think it was coincidence that I had just turned 40 when I decided to take the so-called ‘voluntary severance’ from work, but I did think ‘if not now, then when?’. I found the whole thing quite comical, like a ‘voluntary guillotine’ programme with ‘Pleeeease release meeee, let me go’ soundtrack; sort of widely promoted to the point where you felt like there was a neon flashing arrow above your head ‘it’s yoooouuu’ where they were all trying to tell you to take it, but also secret squirrel and hush-hush and nobody talking openly about who was going. There was a point in time when direct management wouldn’t say aloud that I was going - but I didn’t actually know whether they knew or not because no one had let me know if they knew… Farcical. There isn’t much that makes you feel more valued than ‘we’ll pay some of you to leave’ * insert crying laughing emoji here *

So the Sliding Doors were put into motion and the Severance red button was pressed. It felt good. I had felt stuck for a long time, stuck in an office with no footfall, dwindling collaboration with anyone outside the office door, workload decreasing to ludicrous levels, no matter how often I communicated that. I had made the decision to go self-employed and in the first instance post-release, work alongside my partner. We have always been connected in a work sense since we met, with complementary skillsets and interests. I needed his support more than ever now. ‘Work’ being based in a funky co-work office in a beautiful riverside location was so freeing. It was like bunking off school - so this is what happens in the outside world during the day!

There have been many seismic changes since then, not least the Covid pandemic changing the whole work landscape. We worked together successfully (although like many, the lockdown days I do not wish to see again!) and both of us gained genuinely valuable experiences - it was great. My partner is now fully employed which, like so many people, was a decision that had to be made post-Covid to pay the bills (but it also took his experience in a good direction) - both being self-employed is tricky. I’m building my business, but I would not be able to support us with it, so I’m grateful for this balance and support.

I am loving the independence and challenges of working as an illustrator - it’s what I have always wanted. I was craving variety and I have certainly got that! I was desperate for recognition, and I get that now. Being able to put my name on a piece of work and say ‘I made this’ is something I will never take for granted.

#worklifebalance #selfemployment #womeninbusiness #supportsmallbusiness #freelanceillustration

Image credit from https://www.workdesign.com/2025/02/severance-future-work-part-1/