FCUK I'M PREGNANT!

I was packing up the bathroom when I came across a test. I wasn't going to pack it, it was just one, so I just peed on it.

I looked at it and there wasn't a line. There wasn't actually a line, but there wasn't not a line either. It was faint, really, incredibly faint.

You've got to be kidding me.

I was pregnant. Fuck.

We'd decided to stop trying for a baby. Earlier that day I'd been made redundant. We'd been trying for a few months and laughed, thank God we weren't pregnant, when I told my husband the news.

Let me tell you the back story.

So we'd moved to Townsville because a friend promised me a job....... that job turned out not to be real.

Fuck!

We'd backed up our whole lives, mine and my new husband's, for it. And instead of us starting our new lives together, we were in Townsville, running out of money and had no jobs.

Fuckity Fuck Fuck!

So I ended up taking a job that looked amazing on the surface but was in fact a scam. It was back in the days when the government were paying for you to get free certs. Remember that scheme?

Well, this business was taking people who were unemployed and getting them to do all these free courses (which they were getting paid big money for) and promising them work at the end of the course. There was no work.

My bosses were liars. They'd lie to their clients all the time, right to their faces, and I was expected to as well. I'm not perfect, but I have a hard rule about lying at work. Nothing gets fixed if you lie.

I'd come home from work crying most days. I knew that what we were doing was terrible, and this isn't a victim impact statement. I was an adult and I knew that it was a scam, and I did what I could to survive while I was looking for another job. Which there were zero of in Townsville.

So I just started being really shit at my job. I was sick all the time, and missed all my KPIs (key performance indicators).

I'd been sick from work all week, and on the Friday I went in. I could tell they were surprised to see me, and I knew something was up. My ADHD senses were tingling.

At lunchtime they called me into the office and told me I was being made redundant.

We were financially fucked.

Fuck...... but also thank fuck. I hated that place.

Luckily I had had an interview earlier that week for a role back in Adelaide. It was in the government, and it looked to be a really cool role. Before Business Mums Hub, I was a business analyst. I can spot a shit pattern at 50 paces with my eyes closed, and they were looking for someone for a 9 month clean up contract to fix all the systems, processes and people issues in their department.

Wicked role......... or so I thought.

Instead of any of that, I'd sit at a round table with the rest of my team while our work got graded.

My boss would sit with a pen in her hair, and she'd pull it out to mark up my work, like you were in school. And not an ordinary school, but a school run by nuns who loved to nit pick. Think Roald Dahl's Matilda.

She would slash her red pen across words that you had used and she wanted you to use a different one, or move a comma. It was changes for the sake of changes.

She wasn't a bad person. She'd hired me while I was pregnant, so I felt I owed her in a way. But now I can see it for what it was. Control......

Those meetings broke my confidence. It was the only time in my life I suffered from low self-esteem. I managed to survive high school with my confidence intact, only to lose it in my 30s to a woman with a red pen in her hair.

FUCK!!!!!

Then Murphy was born, and along with her came postnatal depression. My husband wasn't working as he was in uni, so he became a stay at home dad while I went back to the lady and the pen when Murphy was 4 months old.

I use the term "went back to work" loosely, as what I really mean is I would sit at my desk crying for 8 hours. And I mean that literally. The postnatal depression was hard enough, but imagine never feeling like you ever got anything right. In the end I couldn't do the simplest things. I used to run whole departments in multiple countries, and now I couldn't photocopy documents correctly. I wish I was joking, but I really got that bad. And so I quit.

We had zero income, a 6 month old, rent, bills and food to buy. You guessed it.....

Epic Fucked........... until........... I started a business and then everything was all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. The End, full stop!

As if.

Times were still hard and I had to pull my ass out of that really dark place. With the help of my doctors, medication, and thankfully my ADHD short term memory, I was back to myself within a few months.

I built that events business up over the next few years to a business that well supported my family and allowed me to be a stay at home mum. Then when it no longer fit my lifestyle, and I had already bought Business Mums Hub (used to be SA Mums in Business) and that was thriving, I sold my events company. That money went towards the deposit for our house.

So why am I telling you my life story..... because so many times over the (almost) 10 years that I have been in business, I have considered chucking it all in and just getting a job. I understand that, and I know that being a business owner isn't for everyone.

BUT........ I make the rules. I can change direction. I never have to lie. I never have to sit there while someone grades my work ever again.

Business is hard, but working for a boss is harder.

Sandra x