What qualifications might I add to my existing resume?

• Ability to make dinner  while breastfeeding one baby and entertaining a toddler.
• Can successfully grocery shop with 18 month old and make it to the parking lot before having a nervous breakdown.
• Can survive on less than three hours sleep for a two year period while maintaining a household.
• Ability to hold play date with 10 other moms, 18 kids, and a dog that is not child friendly complete with homemade banana muffins and juice.
• Demonstrates ability to follow others’ rules and regulations even if the other is not yet tall enough to ride the Merry Mixer.

In all seriousness, heading back to work after taking time off to raise a family full time is a frightening task.  When I decided to stay home from teaching nine years ago, I knew the day would come that I would need to return to work.  I didn’t know that I would be relocating to a new area where teaching jobs would be about as common as a spotless mini van.  Everything in my work repertoire is old; my shoes,my clothes, my resume, my knowledge, my methods, my portfolio,my recommendations and most of all me.

I am not going to lie and say the first steps were easy. When I first started back to work, I had to take a lesser position than I have ever had. I had to start somewhere!  My first steps involved cutting out construction paper shapes and laminating name tags, not exactly what I had prepared for when I got my masters degree! “Oh how the mighty have fallen!” kept running through my head as I was working for next to nothing with no real voice or control.  Thinking about who I used to be and what I used to do, compared to where I was then made it difficult.  Here is where I was wrong, even though I lacked confidence and felt irrelevant in today’s workplace, I wasn’t.  I needed to remember that my years off from work were well spent. Though I wasn’t salaried, I had spent many hours volunteering and years with some of the most difficult students I had ever taught(they live with me now).  So if you are returning to work after years at home, don’t enter the interview thinking, “If you only knew who I was.”  Go in with the attitude of you should see who I really am and of what I am capable!