How I Used My Decade of Maternity Leave to Become a Published Author

Let's talk about the gap in my resume.

Next month marks a big anniversary for me: June 2025 is the ten year anniversary of my last day of work. I was pregnant and working as a high school English teacher in 2015, and the last day of school would begin what I expected to be a short maternity leave. But when faced with the actual reality of having a baby, my husband and I realized that the only way for us to function would be for me to quit my job and stay home with the kids—we wanted three— for the long haul.

Cut to today: at the end of my long stretch of unemployment, I can go to Barnes and Noble and find four books with my name on the cover. I've been an editor of The Belladonna for several years. My work has been published in The New Yorker and I write a column for McSweeney's. During my ten years of "not working," I built the career I always wanted. Here's a timeline of how I did it.