When you work as a homemaker, you have no salary, no lunch breaks and no one ever offers you a cup of tea. As a busy mom your work is de facto invisible and unrecognized.

The time you put into your work at home, the research on extra curricular programs and medical appointments, the administration of the household, the physical labour of cleaning and sorting, the volunteer work in the community, the endless emotional labour, all of it is unpaid and unrecognized.

If you leave home for work, for even the most basic job, there is a pay check and the chance of bonuses. And there is the comradery, the tea break and the satisfying conversation with your colleague in which you complain about your work.

Depending on your employment, you might get a free lunch or a business trip. And it is perfectly valid to buy good clothes and take time to look after yourself when you are making an income. You belong, you have a community and you are a cog in the machinery.

But when you are a homemaker, no one takes you anywhere. For years I was over joyed if some one offered me a tea or coffee. I felt so fancy, like a real person! My favorite librarian in my local town sometimes offered me a tea and you don’t know how that lifted my heart.

As a homemaker you organize everything in the home. You make sure everyone else is content and well looked after. And, because you are not making any money and your role exists without recognition, you don’t feel right about spending money on yourself.

Why do you need new clothes or a nice hairdo? You don’t have the time for that foolishness, anyway.

When I see photos or videos of me at the time I am a little embarrassed by my odd outfits, hair pulled back, shy and awkward in front of the camera. Too accustomed to being off scene, in the back ground.

In a job with a pay check you sometimes find a good manager that offers bonuses or freebies to the workers to keep their spirits up. And let’s admit it, it feels good to bring home a little present or award, to get a bonus or even just verbal approval. We love it.

But instead of gifts or pay checks, I was offered the opposite. Sadly, it was mostly women who policed my life and questioned my occupation. What is your job, I would hear, or, why aren’t you working? A comment that destroyed a perfectly happy day, and a possible friendship was, ‘what does your husband think of you not working?’

I was always on the back foot, defending my choice to care for the children. The assumptions and judgement were outrageous and I was sad, as a lifelong feminist, that women could be so attacking instead of supporting a sister.

Never mind that no one knew that I was usually either looking for work or actually working. Sometimes I worked part time in a restaurant or for an arts organization, and I was always writing freelance articles. Sometimes I was studying long distance classes in library studies with the future aim of running the small local library when the kids were grown.

But because I didn’t leave the kids for eight hours a day, and I didn’t use daycare, I was put on the spot. And it began to make me self conscious. I remember someone asking me ‘when I was due’ when I was pregnant with one of my children and I immediately heard it as ‘ what do you do?’ and started into my defence of my life choices!

And what did my husband think? We shared our parenting style and he was my partner and my support. Looking back we both agree that we wouldn’t have had the same home if both us had been out all day at work.

What I speak of here – the unappreciated housewife -is an old complaint, a cliché. And it could be also be seen as a retro complaint in today’s economy, as very few couples can afford to have one parent dedicated to the ‘home care’.

But I lived the truth of the being the all-giving, always-present ‘home wife’, as one of my children appropriately called it. I lived it thoroughly; I never asked for time to write or pursue my work, I just got it done. I was emotionally invested, content and proud of my role and my family.

When I contrast my home making mindset with my mindset now as I pursue my MFA in my older years and in my empty nest, I can see the difference. My goals now seem frivolous in the extreme, while looking after the children never felt anything other than the essential occupation of my heart, body and soul.

I was so shocked by the first outlay of money that I felt sick and wrote in to the program to say that I was dropping out, which I later took back when I recognized how much I had been revived by the challenge and the potential rewards.

I recently made time to go to Montreal to visit McGill for some research, and I said to my friend and host Susan, who put me up in her fabulous apartment richly decorated in dark colours, swooping drapes and antique lamps, “What I am doing doesn’t really matter. There are no stakes. I just made up this whole project’.

And then I caught myself and laughed. I don’t have to make excuses for dreams or projects. No one else does that.

I wanted to pursue the MFA for a few reasons; one of them was to improve my options for employment and another was to finish something I started long ago.

But I see now that the process is rejuvenating my spirit. With every conversation, class or trip to the library I am reconnecting with the outside world.

I am writing myself into a new life, and out of my old life.