I Thought I Needed to Quit My Career. Instead, I Got Help Managing My Home.

How embracing household help helped me find my way in motherhood.

They say motherhood changes you. I don’t think it changes everyone, but it changed me. I was on the backside of two miscarriages, beginning fertility treatment and facing the possibility that our son, Atlas, might be our only child. I had built a career that far surpassed what my childlike self assumed was possible for my life. My national role leading a corporate foundation had me travelling regularly, doing work I loved and having incredible experiences. It was glamorous on the outside, but inside, I was exhausted and questioning who I was after motherhood.

I’d hear older women peer at my toddler in his stroller and say, “Enjoy it, dear. It goes so fast.” Some find those comments redundant in a world where raising children can feel like it happens in the margins of work emails and laundry baskets. But I wanted to enjoy it. I just felt pulled in a hundred different directions.

One day, I told a friend I thought I needed to quit. She’d watched me work tirelessly at my career since our university days, so instead she asked, “What is stressing you out the most?”

Meals. Laundry. Keeping our home tidy. I had limited time with my son when I got home, and I wanted to be present for it.

“Then hire help with that,” she said, as if it were obvious. Can you imagine?

I told her we didn’t need a nanny; Atlas was in daycare. “Then don’t hire a nanny. Hire what you need.”

And eventually, we did.

I still remember coming home after her first day with us. Atlas ran outside to find my husband, and I headed toward the laundry room, but the laundry was already done. No heaping baskets. Out of habit, I walked into the kitchen to start dinner, only to realize dinner was done too.

I remember standing there for a moment, almost confused, before thinking, I guess the only thing left to do is go play with my son.

Not long after, just as we were preparing to start IVF, I found out I was pregnant spontaneously. I fell to the floor when I saw the positive test. Then came the shock of finding out it was identical twins.

Suddenly, I was navigating a high-risk pregnancy, weekly appointments and the reality that we were about to go from one child to three. I worried about how I was possibly going to handle it, but I had something going into twin motherhood that I hadn’t had before: I already knew how to accept help.

When the twins arrived, that support gave me capacity for the parts of motherhood that needed me. It also made me look differently at the mothers around me working moms and stay-at-home moms alike, trying to be regulated and present while exhausted and carrying an impossible number of things.

At four months postpartum, I was laid off. Reading my severance package at two in the morning with tired eyes while nursing my twins wasn’t how I imagined my job ending, but ultimately it gave me the opportunity to pursue social impact differently.

I knew how life-changing support with the mental load and household labour had been for me, and I wanted to bring that kind of support to other families. I had a village, and I wanted to give it to others.

And so began Your Village Co., a household support service that takes ownership of the laundry, food prep, tidying, organizing and everyday work of running a home. We aren’t a nanny or a cleaner; we exist somewhere in between, giving families more capacity for the things that matter to them.

Learning to accept help changed my experience of motherhood. Eventually, it gave me the drive to offer that same support to other families.

-       Rebecca Smillie Nedelec, Wife, Mom of three, Former corporate girlie & Founder of Your Village Co.