23 : You Don't Have to Explain Yourself to Anyone

For all intensive purposes, I was relieved at the chance to take a LOA (see post #6). However, I knew my absence from work would cause some speculation as to where I was. I was sad. I was angry. I was confused. I was hurting. On top of that, I was humiliated as to what had happened. My husband left me. Everyone at work had just watched me go through a pregnancy and return to work from maternity leave gushing about my new baby. And now only a matter of months later, my husband left me. How could I explain that? I couldn’t, because I still didn’t even understand it myself. I had a long conversation with my boss prior to my official LOA and she was amazing. We had worked together for over 6 years so she was my friend in addition to being my boss. I called her to explain that I needed some time off and but started to break down before I could get the words out. Without hesitation, she said she was coming over to have this conversation in person. Within 15 minutes, she was at my apartment with a bottle of wine. She sat with me, listened, cried with me, listened and cried some more. I told her my feeling of humiliation and the stress as it related to our work environment. And it was then that she said:

You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone.

I was the victim here. I didn’t owe anything to anyone. She went on to say though, how much I was loved at work. And if I chose to let people know what was going on with me (stressing that it was my choice) I would be surprised at how people would rally around me. People would have my back. People would want to protect me. But I didn’t owe them that explanation. I didn’t need to decide now. When the time was right, I would know what to do.