She had everything -- but a life

Alex e-mailed to me the remarkable story of Gaby Hinsliff, the political editor of The Observer newspaper in England -- or rather, the former political editor, inasmuch as she resigned because she concluded she couldn't have both a high-powered career and a satisfying family life. Excerpt:

Tucked away down a winding track on a remote Welsh peninsula, the farmhouse we rented for a family holiday last June was a much-needed haven from real life. My two-year-old son and his cousins ran wild on the empty beaches all day, chasing crabs through rock pools. When they all finally fell asleep in a sandy tangle of sheets, the adults cracked open another bottle and watched the sun sink slowly into the water. Months of tension melted away... until the night someone flicked on the television for the weather forecast, just in time to see James Purnell resign from the cabinet.

"That's the end, then," I said.

Of Gordon Brown, someone wondered? But I meant, of the holiday. The point of journalism is being there when things happen: the blessing, and the curse, of political journalism is that things happen so often. I rang the office, and started packing.

All the way back down the motorway, the car seethed with resentment. "Freddie NOT go home," said my son mutinously, kicking the back of the seat. "Yes, well, Daddy doesn't want to either," my husband muttered. Even the dog glowered.

And was that the tipping point? The moment I realised I couldn't do this any more, couldn't do it to my family any more, and would therefore have to resign from the job I loved? It would make for a convenient story if it was. But in all honesty, it was a slower, subtler thing than that.

Surrender steals up on the working mother like hypothermia takes a stranded climber: the chill deepens day by day, disorientation sets in, and before you know it you are gone. In the sleepless blur of the last three years, I can barely even remember now how it started.

More:

Every day became a battle against the clock. I never listened properly to phone conversations with friends, because I was always simultaneously doing something else. I was so on edge I raged at the tiniest delay - tourists blocking tube escalators, a computer slow to spark up in the morning. Running for the train in high heels, I sprained my ankle: the doctor prescribed some exercises, but who had time for that? I wore flat shoes, took painkillers.

My reward was that for two crazed but fantastic years, I did - in that loaded cliche - have it all: terrific job, plus small child. Thanks largely to a brilliant nanny and a hands-on partner, I don't honestly believe either suffered from the other.

But what got lost in the rush was a life, if a life means having time for the people you love, engaging with the world around you, making a home rather than just running a household.

So when my long-suffering husband was offered a new job in Oxford, involving the move to the countryside he has always wanted, there was strangely little to discuss. For years he had organised his own career to let me do what I loved, and now it felt like his turn. I closed my eyes and jumped.

But I never expected the emotional outpouring that followed. "Wish I had the guts to do the same," texted a junior minister, when I announced my resignation.

A seemingly unflappable PR confessed secretly agonising over "not being the kind of mother my son deserves": a colleague whose slick work-life balance I had always envied admitted she was "at the end of my tether", dying to quit.

Confessions tumbled compulsively from people I barely knew: tales of stricken marriages, miscarriages, only children who were meant to have siblings but then a career got in the way. "Too many of us once had relationships that we haven't got now because of this job," said a veteran male reporter, now divorced.

"I can't afford regrets," mused a cabinet minister, "because I've had this fantastic career, but..." Politics had, he said, dominated his children's lives.

I hope you'll read Hinsliff's whole essay.

Hinsliff is now writing a blog about her life as she tries to downshift from high-powered career woman to stay-at-home mom. Here's an excerpt of a recent entry:

I come from a family where good food and the rituals associated with eating together -- talking, arguing, laughing, getting drunk -- mattered.

When I worked fulltime, cooking supper marked the transition from office to home: here is something terribly soothing about chopping, stirring, spooning. But it was also one more thing to fit in, and sometimes by the time it was finished I was too tired to eat it.
So Henry has reminded me that now I have more time I want to spend more of it on food: cooking for friends, cooking with my son, maybe growing a bit more of our own stuff, and working out how to use cheaper cuts and leftovers.

After all, without a fulltime salary, there can't be expensive takeaways and convenience foods and nice stuff from the deli. But there might actually be time to eat without getting indigestion.

I don't mean to give the impression that Hinsliff believes she's stepped out of a stressful life into a garden of domestic bliss. She's struggling with a lot of anxiety over whether or not she's done the right thing, and getting used to life at home all day instead of being at the office. What Gaby Hinsliff did takes courage, and I bet she'll embolden many more couples to try it. Her blog is one to watch.