MYNIPPON

Summary:  It might seem that sabbaticals are possible only for men or for people in their middle age with grownup kids.  Read below how a married professional woman with a demanding job, husband, and young kids still manages to find time for an extended vacation to recharge herself.

She tells me, “What will happen is that I will finish the current job that is killing me. Then take a three month break before my new job begins. I would like to go somewhere no one knows me and just maybe serve coffee for a while; that way I am still talking to new people but in a very stress-free environment. Just have a small rented room, and warm weather. My husband will probably agree to it, as he can see me withering away. I have left before, usually for three month as I did to British Virgin Islands and again 6 years ago to China, once in Paris, and usually in Thailand. I will never leave him permanently. In some strange way, he loves me for everything I am. He takes the eccentricity with the flamboyance. I was meant to be a free spirit. When we got married, my mother took him aside and said, “You know that my daughter would never have children, and she must never be caged.”  And I think to some extent I compromised and had kids for him. And though I do not regret my kids, I am not natural being a mom. I would like to think I make a different kind of mom. It makes me cry to think life is about sacrifice! But why my life is the way it is may well be that the genetic pull between two people is greater than any sense in the world. Maybe the need for civilized procreation (natural selection) is beyond the importance of our own happiness.”