values | Renée le Nobel

Does Salary Level Determine the Worthiness of a Job?

by Renee leNobel | Nov 20, 2023 | Divorce, Parenting

Does salary level determine the worthiness of a job or a person?

Most of us would say “NO WAY!” including myself, yet actions and behaviour speak louder than words.

When I was earning a decent salary (actually, some would have probably considered it indecent), for my age, people treated me differently. They seemed to respect me automatically, and I never felt I had to justify my actions. I was making a lot of money; therefore, my work was worthy, and by default, I was too.

Then I became a stay-at-home mom, and we all know how much we stay-at-home parents get paid, and that amount is zip, zero, nada.

Nobody questioned my decision when I first decided to become a stay-at-home parent. I had some savings from work and was expecting my second child. I had worked enough during the year to guarantee that I would get parental leave benefits when my second child was born.
Now that I think about it, it is fascinating how many people had opinions on my new status.

Most people told me I was making a good decision. They said, “Your children are only young once; you’re lucky to spend time with them when they are young.”

And I agree. I was fortunate to spend time with my kids when they were young.

But the other message I internalized from this comment was that I wasn’t genuinely working or working at a job that benefited anyone other than me.

As time went by and my kids got older (four years old and two years old), my justification for staying at home became more and more of a topic of conversation, and I became more internally defensive. I started keeping a mental list of how I was contributing to our overall household, which I began to obsess over almost daily.

The first question out of my spouse’s mouth, when he got home from work, was, “What did you do today?” although he may not have been looking for proof that I had worked, I had my list at the ready to prove I had not been surfing the web all day. My husband didn’t have to justify his actions because he brought home a paycheque every two weeks that confirmed he was working and contributing.

To make myself feel more justified in what I was doing, I decided I could live with less “fun” funds than my husband. I cut my leisure spending to one-third of my husband’s.

It is funny what my pay cut did to our family dynamic. I didn’t need that extra money, but in a sense, I had just taken a notional pay cut, which further minimized my mental worth. My relationship with my spouse was becoming more unbalanced – we were no longer equal in my eyes or his.
At that point, my husband and I had monetary proof that my job wasn’t as worthy as his.

This concept carried over into our divorce process. There was limited discussion about how I contributed to the household; my contribution was glossed over, and the main discussion revolved around when I would start “work.” We didn’t discuss the fact that I had effectively lost my job because being a stay-at-home parent is not recognized as a job. I had been on a lark, and now I had to get down to business and find something worthy.

What was the difference between my job and my (now) ex’s? His was paid; mine was not.

So, if you are considering becoming a stay-at-home parent, I strongly encourage you to set up your finances as follows:

Take your spouse’s salary, divide it by two, and automatically transfer half into your own bank account every pay period. Then, you and your spouse pay half of the joint family expenses, and you each pay for your personal spending from your remaining funds.

If you are about to become a stay-at-home parent, I encourage you to discuss a financial arrangement with your spouse before your baby is born. If you discover that your spouse does not support a proposal like the one I recommend above, you may have some talking to do with each other. It’s better to find this out before you give up your career to focus on a dead-end, unpaid job as a stay-at-home parent.

If your spouse supports this financial treatment, you will know that your spouse considers it a worthy endeavour – its worthiness is supported by the fact that you earn money to do the job. Despite the saying that money does not define the worthiness of jobs or people, actions and behaviour speak louder than words.

Trigger Warning

by Renee leNobel | Dec 20, 2019 | Divorce

Christmas

What?

Yes, Christmas is the word that can suddenly switch my day from ticking along smoothly to suddenly becoming one of “those days.”

Yes, “Christmas,” and yes, just the word “Christmas”.

Christmas starts to pop up in discussions (or so I have noticed) in about September and becomes a significant theme on November 1st. The other thing that pops up (for me) is the thought, “I hate Christmas,” every time I hear the word.

I have been a self-proclaimed Grinch for most of my adult life.

I have a friend, you can think of her as Cindy-Lou Who, who always looks at me incredulously whenever I say I hate Christmas:

How can you hate Christmas? It is a day when you don’t have to work, you get to spend time with friends and family, eating food, and the decorations are so wonderful at this dark time of year! There is nothing to hate!”

I usually look at her skeptically and think to myself:

“You just don’t get it.”

I then do what I do best: bury my thoughts, get on with it, and suffer through Christmas.

I also do something else; I tire myself out, and each year I compile more evidence that Christmas does indeed suck.

As I make it through another Christmas, I say to myself: “I don’t think I can do this again…”

But guess what? Christmas keeps coming back. I have not managed to convince the multitudes that perhaps we should banish Christmas once and for all.

Wait a minute; this is starting to remind me of something if I could just put my finger on it.

Christmas reminds me of my divorce.

Six years ago, I was thrust into a new reality as a part-time single parent. Being a single parent was something I had never wanted to be, and saying that I was depressed to find myself in this life situation would be an understatement. I felt like a pawn with no control over my life.

My life was happening to me against my will; it did not reflect what I truly wanted or believed.

Pain

The pain of thinking you have no control over your life and that despite having tried to follow all the rules, you are stuck being someone and doing things that go against everything you hold to be true.

I cannot describe my pain to do it justice, but I can tell you what that pain did to me.

It changed me. It changed me because I could not live with that level of pain in my life. I had to change.

I had to change.

And so, I did.

I changed both myself and the way I thought.

I began to change my life, so I was no longer a part-time single parent but a full-time co-parent.

Then I realized that I had to stop calling — and thinking — of myself as a part-time single parent: I noticed that as soon as my thoughts started to go along this path, my pain began to resurface.

As I have changed myself, some other changes have happened, including how my family and I celebrate Christmas. Christmas has changed.

About time my thoughts around Christmas change accordingly.

The BAD MOTHER

by Renee leNobel | Oct 18, 2016 | Divorce, Parenting

The following post was written when I was recently separated and had two young children. At the time of writing, I was consumed with feelings of grief and anger. I primarily directed my anger towards my ex-spouse and felt like I had no control over my life. I was also resentful that the value parents bring to the world was not recognized. It was only when I accepted my life, including my former spouse and his role as a parent, that I stopped blaming myself and became a better parent to my kids.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a bad mother? I know I have. In fact, “I’m a bad mother” is like a tagline that accompanies all my parenting mistakes. Despite knowing that parenting is challenging and I couldn’t possibly be expected to get it right the first time, I still beat myself up when parenting does not go as expected.

I can remember almost weekly instances of calling myself “A BAD MOTHER” since my oldest was born ten years ago. I took him outside without a hat. I’m a bad mother. I yelled at him when I found him irritating – bad mother again. Didn’t tell your child to look both ways when crossing the street? BAD MOTHER! My friend and I were going to get matching t-shirts that said “dumb mum.” “Oy,” as she would say.

We are wired to beat ourselves up over our decisions and actions as a species. We forgive others, but we do not forgive ourselves.

I have also realized that calling myself a bad mother serves no purpose. In fact, it does incredible damage.

I was reminded of this again this past weekend.

My children’s dad asked me to parent the kids for him this past weekend.

He asked me on Wednesday. I was flooded with work and was determined not to work on the weekend.

My answer should have been a clear no. I already had plans for the weekend; I was looking forward to having some time and space to get recharged. “No” seemed so simple to say.

Yet it wasn’t.

No was on my lips (or the tips of my fingers as I started to reply to his email request), but something stopped me.

What stopped me?

This thought: “I’m a bad mother.”

Imagine not wanting to be with my kids!

Their dad was asking for help. How could I even contemplate not supporting my co-parent?

How could I put my interests before my children’s?

Yup – it all screamed BAD MOTHER!

And so, instead of saying no, I said yes.

I cancelled my plans and told myself that the thoughts rattling around about the time I needed were selfish. I am a selfish and bad mother.

I’m wondering if you can guess what kind of weekend my children and I had.

I will say, not good.

It all started to go south when my youngest called me at 2:30 on Friday from school. He had a tummy ache.

ARGH.

I knew he did not. I knew it was an emotional tummy ache. He does not like last-minute changes, and just switching up the parenting schedule is enough to give him an emotional tummy ache. What’s the saying? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He needs time to process change, just like his mum does.

I had been planning to use all the time until I had to get them from after-school care to get my work done, and I just lost 3 hours of very efficient work hours.

I was thrown into a situation I did not have time to prepare for emotionally.

I got to school, and the first words out of my mouth to my seven-year-old were, “Do you really have a tummy ache?”

As I heard the words come out of my mouth, I heard the tagline that fast approached on their heels.

“I am a BAD MOTHER”

And then I spent the rest of my weekend with my kids, taking out my terrible mood on them.

And that is how our weekend went.

And then I beat myself when they left by calling myself a bad mother yet again. I had been bad. I had not said no to their dad even though I knew better. I knew I needed that time. I had been bad in so many ways. I thought I had shaken that people-pleasing tendency of mine, but clearly, I had not, as I had said yes when I should have said no. How could I have not learned this lesson by now? BAD, DUMB, STUPID ME. You get the picture.

I added the tagline “I am a bad mother” to every single decision I made and every action I took this past weekend.

When did the lightbulb go off?

Monday morning.

When the kids were gone, I had time and space to process my thoughts again.

I cried as I realized how I had beaten myself up all weekend.

I cried as I realized I still had work to do and didn’t want to do it as I felt sad and terrible.

Then I started to write, and I realized something.

I realized I had just gotten some life-changing proof.

I had just gotten first-hand confirmation that I had to retire my I’m a BAD MOTHER tagline forever.

As it dawned on me what I had learned this past weekend, I started to feel grateful.

What was I grateful for? My crappy weekend.

I looked back on this past weekend and said, “Thank you, incredibly crappy weekend.”

I am going to remember you always, crappy weekend.

Weekend – you were the nail in the coffin for the tagline “I am a BAD MOTHER” and all the other taglines I’ve used to beat myself up with.

Thank you crappy weekend.

Do You Understand How the Collaborative Approach to Divorce Works?

by Renee leNobel | Sep 26, 2016 | Divorce

If not, there’s a good reason.

My divorce was a Collaborative Divorce. What does that mean? On the surface, it means that you agree to keep your divorce out of the courts. That was one of the reasons why I agreed to try the process when I was getting a divorce from my husband. There had been more talk about the Collaborative Approach to Divorce at the time of our separation as the family law in British Columbia was undergoing a change and as part of that change, lawyers were required to begin informing their clients about Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR – an acronym that lawyers use a fair bit – did you know what it means?).

So we heard from many at that time that the Collaborative Approach to divorce was the new way to get a divorce. It was the better way and so those two concepts (new and better) convinced me and my husband at the time to try it to get our separation agreement so we could get a divorce.

So we tried it.

And I really did not like it.

Of course, divorce is incredibly stressful and trying to come to an agreement with someone that you are in conflict with is already a challenge so it is no wonder I didn’t like it. But I think I hated it even more than what I imagined the alternative was, which was to have a no holds barred fight.

I had been trained all my life to avoid conflict. Many of us are. I had also been trained to think I was a reasonable person that could deal with almost any situation. What this meant for me was that I tended to let things go a lot. But I didn’t really let them go. Instead, I buried them and sat on them and then tended to explode when I couldn’t do that anymore. That was where I was at when I finally separated from my spouse and had to figure out a way to now come to agreement so we could get a divorce.

The Collaborative Approach is the opposite of the all consuming war that I had been training up for and which I have to say many of us envisage when we think divorce. We think fight. We think courts and nasty revenge. We think there will be at least one loser in this war and often there are two. We have been trained by society (TV really) to have a certain picture of what divorce looks like.

The first four way meeting in our Collaborative Divorce we went to with our lawyers I almost had a coronary. I should explain what a four way meeting is. It’s a meeting with you, your spouse, your lawyer and your spouse’s lawyer present. You get to a separation agreement by way of these four way meetings. I don’t know if either of our lawyers could have talked any slower. And the stuff that was coming out of their mouths? Seriously? I felt like I was back in kindergarten where I was being told how important it was to share. At the same time I was thinking “this is costing us two hourly lawyer rates to sit here and learn about manners.”

I already knew what the answer to our problem was and so sat through this “Collaborative Approach.” for 8 months until we got there. In the end, the agreement we got was pretty close to what I had wanted. “Hey – I guess the Collaborative Approach worked for us” is what I thought at the time.

Little did I know that I never really understood “Collaborative” even after we were done.

Why is that? How could I have spent 8 months in meetings with 4 different professionals that practiced the Collaborative Approach to divorce and still not understand how it was supposed to work? They had all explained how it was supposed to work – at the beginning of the process, during all the meetings and at the end where they said – “see, we have an agreement – it all came together.” And when I think back on it now, out from the fog of emotion, I know that they did. They were explaining it clearly but something was preventing me from hearing and understanding it.

How did that happen?

Well, I think part of the reason that happened is that I had each spent 40 years learning a different way to resolve conflict. I had spent my life learning how to avoid conflict. Then I had learned that if the conflict was still there and bothering me, I had to really stand up for myself and battle through to make that conflict go away. My belief about myself was that I don’t get all bent out of shape over minor issues but watch out if someone crosses me. I switch from being an avoider to being a highly motivated person who is going to win at all costs.

So instead of seeing how we had just resolved our conflict a different way than I knew; because how can you learn a new way of doing conflict in 8 months after spending your entire life training a different way to do conflict, I slotted our divorce into my old way of seeing things. I had avoided separating from my husband and then when I realized it was unavoidable, I found a solution and hammered it through. Because deep down, I felt like I had been the one driving our agreement process. I had made sure the meetings happened, I made sure my ex did the “homework” and I made sure our agreement got signed.

And….

How can you learn a new way of doing conflict when you are at your most emotional point in life? I was not calm or rational. I was alternating between being sad and angry on a minute by minute basis. The only thing I was focused on was revenge. I could not hear a thing those professionals were telling me. I was living in an extremely stressful situation where I was sharing a house with a person I did not want to have anything to do with anymore and I had two small children that I was extremely worried about. I was not at my best for learning new concepts.

So, while we used the Collaborative Approach to divorce, it was only on the surface. We stayed out of court. Oh wait – no we didn’t. We ended up in court after we were separated and divorced.

Our agreement allowed us to get a divorce but we were still in conflict and were still not able to resolve it. We reverted to our old patterns and styles of managing conflict as soon as we were released from our professional team.

I think this is what it is like for many people. Everyone has learned a certain style of conflict. Some people may have learned a more collaborative approach to resolving conflict and when they enter the Collaborative Approach to divorce, they get it and things progress and it works.

So what about the rest of us? Those of us who have been trained throughout life not to do things collaboratively?

We need more help. We have to be told again and again what it means and how it works because it is a difficult concept to grasp when you are in the midst of emotional upheaval and have years of resolving conflict in a different way.

I myself only started to understand what it meant about a year after my divorce was finalized and after I had started to train to become a Collaborative professional myself. Here is part 1 and part 2 of posts I wrote when I finally did start to understand what Collaborative means.

Now I find myself helping people with their own Collaborative Divorces. I have heard them say exactly what I said during my divorce: the meetings with the Collaborative professionals are slow, it doesn’t seem like actual issues are being addressed and the divorce is not progressing.

These words have become signals for me to sit up and pay attention. I have to remind myself how much time it took me to understand how Collaborative works. I realize that the best way I can help people is to help them gain that understanding too. I have to fight my natural inclination to go back to my life training to be a problem solver and solve these people’s problems and remember instead I am helping to facilitate a Collaborative process so they can figure out the best way to move forward with hope.

The Importance and Contradiction of Alone Time

by Renee leNobel | Sep 18, 2016 | Divorce

I was trained to believe that being busy means you are important. This wasn’t overt training. It was training I chose to believe from observing the world around me. OK, there was a bit of overt training in school. I see it now when I see what I’m doing to my children at the start of the school year. The school year has started and the pressure to sign my children up for all sorts of extra-curricular activities has begun. And I have bought in. My older child is resisting hard and I think I’d better let him win this one (after I sign him up for a few things – swimming, choir, cross country – hey it’s only a month and I’m only doing it so he gets the bus ride home to the park near where we live). I am in such a quandary over signing him up for dance though.

I put him in dance a couple of years ago because he does not appear to like the team sport thing. Plus, whenever we were at the beach – a place he claims to hate with a passion – he would break out in dance. I decided that dance was the happy place he needed to go to so I figured he would love it as an extra-curricular activity. So I put him in dance and he did well and frankly I loved the year end concerts and hearing that he was a natural from his teacher. But he doesn’t want to do dance. He tells me that it is boring – they repeat the same moves over and over again and it has become a chore for him. Just one more thing to do to please people, including me, the woman who runs the dance studio and the world. Despite knowing this, I still want to sign him up because if I don’t, how is he ever going to figure out what he loves in life if he doesn’t try it and keep practicing it? He is going to get left behind by his peers. He is going to lose the thing he loves!

Yes, this is the argument that is going on in my head that is leading to me badgering my child to sign up for dance again. Sometimes I really hate self-awareness.

Yet self-awareness is hitting me over the head with a hammer this weekend.

Why?

I am alone.

Why am I alone?

Well, I was supposed to go on a big hiking trip with some friends but then it turned into a torrential rain weekend (of course it did – it was the start of soccer season) and we decided it is not much fun camping and hiking in a torrential downpour.

So I have no kids – they are with their dad this weekend – and I have no plans.

This is a place I found myself in A LOT when I was freshly separated. It was a place I really could not mentally handle at the time. When I was freshly separated and alone I spent a lot of time crying. A lot. I equated being alone and not busy with being useless and a failure. I had no career to bury myself in, I had no kids to take care of (they were with their dad) and all my friends were extremely busy with their families.

It sucked big time and drove me to depression.

Then my coach helped me understand the importance of alone time (especially for introverts like me and my son). She told me it was OK to sit on the couch and cry. She told me eventually I would get tired of it and move on to something else. She also told me to start figuring out what it was I enjoyed doing and to just start doing it when I had that alone time. She told me to recognize the guilt that would crop up when I was doing something that I enjoyed that I didn’t think was a “valuable use of my time” according to the old rules I had taught myself. She told me to push through that guilt and not let it stop me from doing what I enjoyed.

The great thing about this for me was that she prescribed alone time and fun time for me. I am a rule follower, a lot of us are as we are trained to be in life. So I did what I was told and sat very uncomfortably in my alone time because she told me to. I also started to go out and do things that I had enjoyed in the past. Because at that point in my life I didn’t enjoy anything. I was depressed. I repeated this prescription for a couple of years and in fact sometimes I have to go and get a new prescription for it.

This weekend I got a new prescription for it.

It is amazing because even knowing that being alone is OK now I still can’t quite handle it. I still equate being alone with many bad things and it takes me a lot of (wait for it…ALONE) time to realize how important being alone is.

So on Saturday I woke up and stared alone in the face again and started to get antsy.

I texted my friend that I was supposed to go hiking with to see if she was up for a hike even though it was pouring. Nope. So I sat on the couch and started to see the weekend stretch out before me. I RAN to my closet and put on my exercise gear, hopped in my car and drove myself to the Grouse Grind. I did that, drove home and started to work. I did that for a while until I started to beat myself up again for having no life outside of work and exercise and then I started to text all my friends. My dear friend recognized I was sliding a bit and offered me the opportunity to come over and help her prepare some healthy food.

Um. I hate cooking. I can do it and I can do it well and it has taken me many years to admit that I hate cooking. My family are all fabulous cooks and foodies. My sister reads cookbooks for fun. I should like cooking. Shopping for healthy food at the local markets, cooking and healthy eating are all the rage. OK – this is turning into another post but when my friend asked me if I wanted to come over and help her cook I realized I would rather be alone. Heh. She heard me recognize that and told me to just go make lists of everything I have to do (because I do have work I could be doing) and she knew that would give me something to do so I would’t be obsess about being alone AND I would get something done which I still haven’t let go of as being important.

This is turning into a very long blog post. Is anyone still with me? I work out the analytics of things as I write.

So I started to list all the stuff I have to do and then I realized I was losing my alone time. It was vanishing before my eyes. OMG – I have a lot to do and not much time to do it in. I need more alone time!

I decided I had to go to yoga – it is like alone time. It has meditation built in. I went to yoga.

I came out of yoga and my dear friend had asked me over for pizza (that is how first met in life – she randomly asks strangers if they want pizza as they walk by her house).

Of course I wanted pizza (it had bacon and potato on it!) and of course I wanted to hang out with my friend.

Then I came home and it was still Saturday night and I was alone.

It was then that I finally FINALLY recognized how well and truly I have been trained to think that there is something wrong with being alone with nothing to do because I realized I still subconsciously believe this fallacy.

Then I recognized what my alone time that day had brought me.

I had re-learned what is important to me and I got re-charged doing the things I enjoy. I actually got very excited about life again and I was grateful that I had gotten alone time to get reminded of these things. It really was the best day ever. I felt happy when I woke up this morning. Happy.

To bring this post full circle I now recognize what I am doing to my children when I fill up their schedules with extra-curricular activities. I am teaching them that being alone and being bored is bad. I am also not giving my introvert son enough time to figure out what it is he enjoys. He is being told what to do and he does it because he is a rule follower just like me. I am setting him up for a future mid-life crisis. Someday, he will have to learn that being alone is not bad. He will also have to learn what it is that he loves because he will never have had a chance to figure it out for himself.

I subconsciously knew that I was not letting my son be OK with himself and what he wants. I was trying to convince him he is wrong about stopping his dance class. This is the other awareness I had this weekend in my alone time. I realized that though all I’ve ever wanted for my kids is for them to be happy, I’m still following a set of parenting rules that does the opposite. I am still following the rules that I thought I had unlearned.

So, to be clear and because it seems it takes a lot to unlearn 40 years of training, I am reminding myself that alone time is good – not only is it good, it is awesome.

So this is my reminder and I hope it helps you too.

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