Bonus Blog Post by Stephanie Katele
Dear Reader,
After posting Three Things I Learned While Starting Over in a New Career With Kids, my first Chicago babysitter, Stephanie Katele, read it and wrote the most incredible Facebook post. It is so powerful that I want to share it with you. It goes to show you that it pays to live an authentic life because you never know how your actions will impact the lives of others. Enjoy Stephanie’s post below.
Warm Regards,
Rhonda Coleman Wandel
Facebook Post February 24, 2021 by Stephanie Katele
Covid sucks so here is a feel-good story to take the edge off.
10 years ago I was working at a CPS school and talking to a parent. I had just been cut to part time in the post-2008 budget cuts and was struggling. The parent mentioned she needed a babysitter, and I mentioned I needed supplemental income. So we worked it out and I began watching her daughters, Kimani and Miniya.
She had just moved to Chicago after leaving the teaching profession and was in law school. I helped the girls with their homework, put them to bed at night, cooked whatever they would eat, kept the girls engaged mentally on weeknights, did all her laundry, and sometimes just came in on a Saturday so she could sleep. I needed the hours and she needed the help.
I learned so much from that experience, on how to make it on your own with a kid, on how to manage yourself and your responsibilities and set your children up for success. She also was so kind as she taught me how to manage her girls' hair and let me grade papers while the girls did their homework.
I saw her grow and build something for herself and her girls. I've seen them grow online since then and they are clearly powerful young women and well educated and well rounded.
The times I fell asleep on the couch and my kid would wake me up, mad at me that I was sleeping, the times I could barely manage to find time to get an oil change, let alone work like this and raise this girl on my own, I always thought of the women who have been paving the way before me and the women who have been holding me up through this.
There is an unsaid bond amongst us single moms. The moms who have no one to pick up their sick kid from school, the moms who fall asleep from exhaustion at inopportune times, the moms who don't even get a chance to eat while being tied up at work, texting parents/clients as your kid pulls your hair, who do their planks as they read their bedtime stories because that's the only time they can fit it in; no one else knows what those women do except for the ones who see them in their homes. And Rhonda is 100% right, a happy, balanced parent leads to a happy, balanced child. Someone pulled me aside 2 years ago and gave me the same advice, to put the oxygen mask on myself first so I could be there for my kid and I never forgot it.
Thank you Rhonda Coleman. You were and are such an inspiration. Thank you for your patience with me and giving me the room to grow. I had no idea I'd have a kid on my own too when she hired me, but I never forgot how impactful her family was to me.
Read her story if you need a pick-me-up.