Do What Your Heart Tells (But Be Careful)

[Valerie R Kelly]

When I was a child, I remember that mom was at home, sitting in her room, staring blankly at the wall and holding a cigarette in her hand. For a period of one or two years, she was unemployed, and I vividly recollect those times as pretty desperate and sad. She used to work as a sales representative at a telephone company, working every day, on the phone, to upsell her clients or renew their plans. She was also helping her sister who was going through a difficult divorce at the time and providing emotional support. After losing the job, she could find very little energy to take care of the household chores and spend time with me and my brother. She felt that she could no longer go back to her regular line of work and was feeling stuck in her life, as she couldn’t seem to turn the tides.

Finally, after some years of getting help from her friends and family, she mustered the courage to choose a new profession and start a new career. In her teenage years, she was always interested in going to medical school and becoming doctor. However, she changed her mind and studied economics, as the long years of education and training daunted her. She sought financial security and therefore chose to study something that would enable her to start making money right after graduating from college.

She decided to become a certified nurse and started studying for exams in order to satisfy the state requirements. At the time, internet was a sort of new thing and she had, like most people, a very big and rudimentary-looking laptop that looked more like a PC. She was mostly relying on thick medicine books as well as question-banks that she checked out from public libraries. Luckily, everything turned out good for her at the end. She passed all her tests, obtained a license, started working at a small children’s hospital. However, if she had the same online resources that are available to most people today, it would’ve been a less difficult process.

[Julie]

Thank you for the contribution.  It can be very difficult to pull yourself out of one of those sad states of mind and make positive changes, so my hat goes off to your mother for doing just that.  I hope your mother is still doing well in her nursing profession.