I’m a Work-From-Home Mom and My Office Mate Throws Food at Me

No mom is an island, but sometimes she can still feel like one.

It’s only 10 a.m., but my office mate is already on his second snack break of the day. As he digs into a plate of cheese, crackers and grapes, I check my e-mail and sip a cup of coffee I’ve just microwaved for the third time. “Are you having a good day?” I ask. He smiles back at me. Then, without warning, he throws a grape in the direction of my head, and it whizzes past my ear.

What can I say? That’s life as a work-from-home mom.

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Five years ago, my office life looked considerably different than it does now. After a one-hour commute by train, I’d settle in at my desk and fire up my computer while sipping hot coffee and listening to music through headphones. I ate lunch with other adults. I went to the washroom alone. And I almost never had fruit thrown at my head.

After the birth of my first son, though, everything changed. As I researched daycare options and tried to wrap my head around working an hour away from my baby every day, a new plan began to form in my mind. After very careful consideration and planning, I decided not to return to my job once my maternity leave was over. Instead, I would stay home with my son and carve out a new path for myself as a freelancer. I was terrified. I’d spent years working toward the job I was about to walk away from, and I worried that it might turn out to be a huge mistake.

There are days when it seems like it all comes together and you’re totally crushing it. And then there are days when you feel totally crushed by it.

Thankfully, it wasn’t. But it hasn’t exactly been a seamless transition, either.

The thing about being a work-from-home mom is that sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where you fit in with other moms. There’s a lot of talk in parenting circles about working moms and stay-at-home moms, but when it comes to discussing the challenges of working from home while also raising kids, there seems to be a gap in the conversation. Yet I know that there are plenty of other moms in the same boat as me, trying to balance caring for small children all day while also building a business or maintaining a career. There are days when it seems like it all comes together and you’re totally crushing it. And then there are days when you feel totally crushed by it.

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For me, the biggest challenge of being a work-from-home mom is the lack of separation between work and home life — after all, I work where I live. There was a time when I could shut down my computer at 5 p.m. and leave work at the office, pushing it out of my mind until the next morning. Now, I’m stressing about impending deadlines while caring for a sick toddler, or finishing a last-minute assignment in the middle of the night while the rest of my family sleeps. And through it all, I’m exchanging texts with other work-from-home moms who are burning the candle at both ends, too. We may not share an office space, but we’ve become coworkers, in a way — offering support and advice, championing each other’s projects and businesses.

We remind each other that we are not alone, even if it might feel that way sometimes. And we tell each other we’re doing a great job, even when we’re sure that we’re failing. I’m grateful to them, and to every person who helps me make this life as a work-from-home mom possible.

The truth is, there are still some days when I miss my old desk and all the perks of office life. There are days that I wonder what might have happened if I’d gone back to that desk and that job, and chosen a different path instead. But then a grape whizzes past my ear, my son lets out a mischievous giggle and I realize that there is no office in the world better than this one.