A past guest recounts how she burned out, quit her job, intended to get a new job after taking a breather, and then didn’t for over a year. That’s because someone in her family kept getting sick or hurt, she had to move twice, and all of the logistical and emotional responsibilities fell to her (because who else was going to take them on?!) Sociologist Jessica Calarco helps her make sense of that exhausting year of unpaid work and the forces that put her and other women in this sort of position.
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You'Re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
Amy I'm Amy Gallo.
And I'm Amy Bernstein.
Toward the end of 2023, our producer Amanda saw a LinkedIn post from one of our former guests, Marty Bledsoe, that made her eyes go wide.
Marty had titled the post A Pretty Big Year in all caps and justifiably so.
In January, the older of her two children, a freshman in high school, was still coming through a major depressive episode.
At the time, Marty was the executive director of the Kids Mental Health foundation, so she knew enough about the disorder to quickly coordinate professional support.
By March, happily, her teenager was in a better place mentally and emotionally.
But Marty wasn't.
She had resigned from her job because she was burnt out, just like so many parents straining to manage their kids anxiety or depression or anger while also keeping up at work.
As exhausted as she was, she immediately started applying to leadership roles elsewhere, hoping that changing workplaces would re energize her.
Between zoom calls with people in her network, she cried and napped.
A month into that routine, the landlord of the house she'd been renting decided he was going to move in, which meant that Marty and her kids had 60 days to pack up and leave.
That's when her plans to bounce right back into the workforce really started to fall apart.
Yeah, I remember it as very chaotic and out of my control.
They spent 12 weeks at her mom's house before she found a new house within the same school district that would fit them and her fiance and his daughter.
The last day of the move, her fiance slipped and tore his patellar tendon.
An injury that requires surgery and a 16 week plus recovery.