Work will set you free

Split in two, but still whole

The phrase “work will set you free” clinks in my brain like a bell rung in a long-abandoned hall. It is hollow, historic, and still somehow resonant. Its origins are heavy — seared into history by iron gates and unimaginable pain. Elie Wiesel wrote about that darkness, that bitter irony. I don’t borrow the phrase lightly. But sometimes, phrases take on new meaning when held up to a different kind of light — softer, maybe, but still real.

Last week, I sat at my desk for the first time since having my second child. Not at the dining table, not on the floor with my laptop balanced on one knee while a tiny foot kicks my side, but a desk, in an office. With a window. With a mug of tea that was still warm.

Photo by Jonathan Castañeda on Unsplash

It felt strangely monumental. Like cracking open a window that had been stuck shut. The air that came in wasn’t necessarily sweet or even fresh, but it was air — different from what I’d been breathing in the closed loop of this second matrescence.

There was quiet. I could hear myself think. And then, I could hear what I was thinking about.

Nap timings.
Did he go down okay?
Is it the long nap or the short one?

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

It’s wild how much noise silence can hold. The click of the keyboard, the soft hum of the dehumidifier, the shifting shadows of late morning sun. Under all of this, my mind is doing a kind of mental inventory that has nothing to do with the spreadsheet open in front of me.

I caught myself watching the clock. Not for a meeting. For his next feed. For the nap wake window. For the imaginary sound of a baby laugh that I know all too well.

I trust his caregiver completely — truly, I do. She knows the rhythm of his days, the arc of his moods. And still, my heart sends out little sonar pulses every hour, echoing across the distance between us.

There’s a part of me that wants to apologize for this split attention. To my employer, to my colleagues, to the version of myself that used to be more linear, more focused. But I’m learning it’s okay.

It’s okay to sit in this strange in-between.
It’s okay to long for both the sound of your baby’s breath and the satisfaction of an well drafted email.
It’s okay to want to be in two places at once, even if only one has your physical body in it.

Work, for now, feels like a rediscovery of something I forgot. Not because it defines me, but because it reminds me that I’m still here. Not just mom, not just provider, not just milk and barf and vibes. A full person. Cracked open again.

So yes. Work will set you free. Not in the way it was once cruelly promised. But in a way that feels tender, personal, and small.

Free to think about other things.
Free to miss him.
Free to be whole in all the messy, fragmented ways that come with loving deeply and living fully.

And for now, that is enough.