What I’m doing doesn’t look like adulting.
What I’m doing looks like, “Okay, Caroline’s really lost it now!” But this is the most grownup I’ve ever been, doing something that is perceived as the least adult thing I’ve ever done.
At 20, I was the chief of staff for a Maryland state senator. At 35, I’m a single mom of two kids. I make my living as a doula and a yoga teacher.
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need for change.
I was born in Germany. My family moved back there twice in between short-lived relocations to to North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland and England. I don’t like being in one place for long. I get bored and restless. I don’t connect with people. I assume they’re not going to be around for long.
My erratic, nomadic lifestyle followed me into college – or what my dad called “$25,000 bartending school.” I was not ready for that level of freedom. I didn’t know how to take care of myself. I had never done a load a laundry, never cooked for myself, never cleaned. My mom was a homemaker, and she took that job very seriously. Her identity was tied up in taking care of her kids. We weren’t really allowed to take care of ourselves because, then, what would she do?
Failing at adulting, I dropped out of school partway through my freshman year and moved home. My dad said I had to go to school or get a job. That was fine. I wanted to work, but there was just one problem. I didn’t have any work experience. I'm nothing if not resourceful so I fabricated a resume with my aunt as my boss and got a job as an HR Assistant for a two-way pager company.
To teenage me, they paid me buckets of money. The only bad thing was that I had to pay my parents rent. It dawned on me that college would be so much easier, so I went back to school.
That stuck until I got an internship at a state senator’s office in Maryland. While the other interns were answering constituent phone calls, I was working on bill tracking and reading legislation. I felt important and thought, oh, this is what I want to do.
When my direct supervisor left to go to law school, I applied for his job even though I didn’t have any degree. I was going to community college. But I got the job and quit school for the second time.
I hired a staff of 10 interns, all more qualified to do my job than I was. Everyone was asking, “Oh, Caroline, where’d you get your degree?” “Oh, Caroline, where’d you go to school?” “Oh, Caroline, are you going to law school?”
I artfully dodged all those questions by telling them to get back to work.
We put on all kinds of community events from parades and tailgates to handing out pine tree saplings in schools for Arbor Day. During the legislative session, though, I’d work 20 hours a day. We had 90 days to shape policy in Maryland, and it took every hour to do it.
I had all the time and energy in the world and an expensive wardrobe to back me up.
Maybe I would have stayed longer if the senator, a Democrat, hadn’t voted against an assault weapons ban. After that, the phones wouldn’t stop ringing. The voicemail filled up in seconds with angry constituents.
That’s when I was like, no, I do not want to do this work.
I quit. I moved back home and went back to school for the third time – and believe it or not, I did this four or five more times. This time around, though, I dropped out and landed in a dream job as a legislative aide at the largest and oldest veterans service organization in Washington D.C., where I helped craft the Post 9/11 GI Bill and write congressional testimony.
But now I had a daughter, and I was a single mom. I dropped her off at daycare at 7 in the morning and didn’t get back to her until 6 at night, when I still had hours of work left to do.
At the end of the day, I was going to leave some part of my personal or professional life undone.
I saw the chance to do things differently with this guy in Iowa. I met him at a friend’s wedding. He was doing the “responsible” adult thing and getting his master’s degree to become a financial planner. I thought he could provide the same kind of life for me as my parents.
I wanted to stay home with my kids like my mom – and only do work that was satisfying to me. I wouldn’t work because I needed to. I thought he was going to take care of me, and I was going to take care of him and the house.
That was six years ago, and he has yet to get a job in his field. I went to work as a waitress. It wasn’t fulfilling, but I knew of something that was.
Over the past decade, I’ve always been a doula, which is Greek for a woman who serves. I’ve been supporting women and families through pregnancy and birth all along. Everyone told me that was a hobby. It wasn’t a “real job.”
But what if it is a real job? What would that look like?
Now, how I approach the very real work of being a doula is that I help women acknowledge the strength and power in the pregnancy experience, as opposed to feeling disabled for nine months, which is how a lot of women are treated.
Around here, a big part of my job is telling women, “You’re not crazy, and here’s how to advocate for yourself.”
Because I had to advocate for myself when I was pregnant with my second child. I wanted to do a vaginal delivery. I was told I couldn’t because I had a C-section with my daughter. There’s a slight risk of uterine rupture. So the doctor told me no.
The closer I got to having my son, the more I was scared of having a forced C-section. I was calling the hospital, saying, “Well, what happens if I show up and my baby’s head is out?”
They’re like, “Well, I mean, then we’ll catch him.”
But then, I’m thinking to myself, “Why do I have to create this emergent situation where I’m delivering on my way in the door to have the birth I want?”
I decided, no, I’m not going to be talked into a major surgery. I won’t do that. I called my dad. He picked me up when I was 30 weeks pregnant and took me back to New Jersey, where it was the assumption that I would want a VBAC.
I had my baby. I came back here, and nine months later, I was pregnant again. I thought, “Super! You know what, my last birth was a vaginal delivery so I’m going to go to my doctor’s office and tell them, ‘I’ll have another one of those!’”
I went, and I was told no, again. Instead of making another 1,300-mile road trip out to New Jersey with my angry father, I found a homebirth midwife and a doula. They ended up serving me in an unexpected way when my son, Elliott, was stillborn.
Through loss and grief, I discovered the birth community of Sioux City and the support it has to offer. I discovered meaning.
Now, I’m doing something that’s making a difference. I feel rooted for the first time in my life. My professional and my personal lives seamlessly flow around each other because of the flexibility I have with these two jobs. I don’t ever feel like either of them is suffering because of the other.
Every once in awhile, the fact that I can’t get a bagel breakfast sandwich at 2 o’clock in the morning still annoys me, but that’s so much less important than everything else I get from being here. I really do love Sioux City, against all odds. This is the place where I gained the ability to connect.
This is working for me. I’m providing for myself, teaching yoga and helping families grow. I feel so grateful to be able to do something that I love – and to feel truly satisfied by what my version of adulting looks like.
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Caroline Rivera is the owner of Mamaste Birth Services and a yoga teacher at Evolve Yoga and Wellness Center.
Ode is a storytelling series where community members tell true stories on stage to promote positive impact through empathy. It is produced by Siouxland Public Media.
The next event is 7 p.m. Friday, June 2 at ISU Design West in downtown Sioux City. The theme is “Stigmas: An ode to the power of opening up.” Tickets are available at kwit.org. For more information, visit facebook.com/odestorytelling.
