I Never Wanted to Be a Stay-at-Home Mom.

Heather Flores
Nov 1 · 9 min read

For most people, when that first alarm goes off in the morning, it is followed by a groan and an automatic pressing of the snooze button. For me, that alarm meant I got to get up and head out the door to the greatest job in the world.

I would quickly shower, pack my lunch, give my daughter a kiss, and hop in the car to head to the place that truly felt like home. I was a Perinatal Sonographer at a Maternal-Fetal Medicine practice (fancy terminology for ‘I got to take pictures of precious unborn babies all day!).

Full disclosure: sometimes it felt like I had the worst job in the world — every now and again I would find something unimaginable (i.e. miscarriage, a fetal condition not compatible with life, a baby missing an arm or a leg, a baby with a heart defect, etc.) In these instances, my job was HARD. I would have to complete the scan knowing full well that the woman on the table was about to get the news that was going to break her heart and shatter her world.

Despite the horror and heartbreak of those cases, I still loved my job with every fiber of my being. There was nothing more magical than watching as a newly expecting couple saw their baby’s heartbeat for the very first time, or learned the gender of the baby they would get to hold in their arms in just a few short months. I would work long, hard hours, day in and day out. Some days were filled with more bad than good, but over the years I had learned how to focus on the beautiful moments and bless and release the heartbreaking finds of each day. Being part of such beautiful, unforgettable moments in someone else’s life felt like the greatest blessing in the world.

By the time I would get home at night I was physically and emotionally exhausted and would have little left of myself to give to my extremely energetic young daughter. I would come home and want to relax and decompress; she would jump all over me and run and squeal and beg me to play with her. In these moments I would say to myself, “UGH! I could never be a stay at home mom. I would LOSE MY MIND!” I would rush through bedtime routine so that I could have some peace and quiet and alone time with my husband.

I would wake the next morning recharged and ready to rush out the door again. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life’. Let me tell you, that saying is spot on. I loved my job so much that I would have done it for free (if we didn’t need the money of, of course).

When I found out that I was pregnant with my son I was over the moon. My husband and I had been trying to conceive for years and I couldn’t wait to be able to peek at my baby at work every chance I could. I never imagined how complicated and dangerous my pregnancy would become. It was recommended to me several times that I terminate the pregnancy to save my health, but I refused each time. I had been praying for this baby for years, and now that I was finally pregnant, I would do anything to make sure that my son was born, regardless of the impact it had on my health, just so long as he was okay. This decision nearly cost me and my unborn son our lives, and he was born prematurely via emergency c-section.

In the months that followed, my son required several surgeries and was being followed by just about every kind of specialist you could imagine. I was unable to return to work because of my own health struggles, but even if I could, my children needed me at home, and so began my new life as a stay at home mom.

It didn’t take long for me to miss my job, to have a reason to leave the house other than our never ending schedule of doctors’ appointments. To make up for the loss of my salary, and half of our family's income, my husband started working longer and longer hours. He would leave the house before anyone was awake and come home after the kids were in bed. We barely spent any time together as I was exhausted at the end of the day. He was feeling the pressure of trying to provide financially and I was feeling the pressure of having to take care of everything else by myself. I was also overwhelmed with guilt, watching my husband run himself to the ground and me not being able to contribute to our family financially. The medical bills alone had us drowning in debt, plus everything that we had to put on credit cards to cover necessities.

I would cry every day, feeling stuck and helpless, wishing that I could find a way to take some of the burden off of my husband and still be able to care for my children and our home. I felt like all of our problems were my fault, that if I hadn’t gotten sick none of this would be happening. We wouldn’t be drowning in debt, my son wouldn’t be so medically fragile, my daughter wouldn’t be suffering from PTSD. I started spiraling into a deep, self-loathing depression. I began picking fights with my husband at every chance I got and yelling at my daughter for doing normal kid stuff. I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t keep my emotions in check.

I believed that I had reached the point of no return. I sat down with my husband and suggested that we declare bankruptcy. I didn’t see any way that we would ever be able to get out of the hole that we were in, the whole that got deeper and deeper with each passing day. My husband was dead set against it and said he would get another job, work nights and weekends, and I just cried. Him taking another job would mean he would be around even less than he already was, and I didn’t think that I could manage taking care of the kids all by myself every single day and night.

That night I resolved to find a way for me to make money, a way that wouldn’t interfere with doctor appointments and therapies. As you could imagine, I couldn’t find a single job that could provide the flexibility that I needed, but I wasn’t going to give up. A short time later I was introduced to network marketing.

It seemed to be the answer to my prayers — I could make real money working from home (or from my phone in waiting rooms before appointments), I wouldn’t have a boss hovering over me demanding that I work a certain number of hours on certain days, plus I would have a new group of friends to support me and help me along the path to success. I had never been in an MLM before and had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I saw all of these women making a ton of money and knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

I had come to learn that the MLM industry as a whole has a pretty bad reputation, but that didn’t deter me. I was determined to make it work. I HAD to make it work. I did exactly as my upline told me and was super successful almost immediately. Before my second month was over I had achieved four bonuses and earned a brand new car! I couldn’t believe it. I was doing it, I was going to save our family!

My spurt of success was short-lived, and after going through my entire warm market, my business hit a wall. I started panicking. My leadership was telling me to practice attraction marketing on social media, start reaching out to people on my friends list, start joining groups and making new connections, etc., and so I did.

These methods were working for them, so surely they would work for me too. I worked my fingers to the bones but wasn’t having much success. From the moment I woke up to the moment I passed out, phone in hand, I was pushing. Months went by and I realized that while these things were working well for others on my team, they were not working for me.

I was encouraged to reach out to even more people, reassured that network marketing was a numbers game and that I would get more nos than yeses, but that if I kept at it, eventually success would follow. I keep doing what I was taught, but it didn’t feel right in my heart. I knew that the way my team was building their businesses was way better than those ‘other network marketers’ who just copy/paste spam messages to their entire friends lists, but it still wasn’t authentic to who I am. I didn’t want to do it anymore, but I refused to quit. I knew there had to be another way, and come hell or high water, I was going to find it.

Despite my original feelings about being a stay-at-home mom, I love spending my days with my kids! I couldn’t imagine ever having to leave them to go to work now. So I bought every book, signed up for every training, attended every seminar I could find, searching for someone who could teach me something different. My upline lovingly told me that I should stop taking so many trainings, that I was confusing myself, that what she had taught me works and that I should try harder, that I should ‘stop trying to reinvent the wheel’. It was then that I realized I would never be on the same page as my team leaders.

It has been nine months since I joined my company, and in that time I have spent a sickening $50K (that we didn’t have) trying to find the secret key that would finally lead me to success. A week ago I returned home from yet another business workshop (another $8K) and was ready to throw in the towel. I didn’t want to let my daughter down — she is SO supportive and proud of me. She keeps a stack of my business cards in her bag. She tells everyone she meets about my products and then hands them a card and tells them to call me. She truly is my biggest fan, and I never wanted to let her down. I wanted to show her that even when things are hard, you push through, you never quit.

I cried for days trying to figure out a way to tell her and my husband that I was done and came up with nothing, but decided I couldn’t wait any longer. That night, after my husband picked my daughter up from gymnastics, I was going to tell them. While I was waiting for them, I saw an ad on Facebook for yet another training, a 30-day challenge, and something inside me was screaming at me to hold off on that conversation. Before I knew it, my credit card was in my hand, and I was signing up. ‘This is the last one.’ I told myself. ‘If this doesn’t work then I’m really done.”

On Day One of the challenge, I sprang out of bed earlier than usual and rushed to my laptop to get started. I went through the videos and couldn’t pick my jaw up off the floor. This first day taught me more than all of the other trainings I had taken combined. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I began to cry (again!).

This is everything I’ve been searching for. I have finally found someone who has the same vision as me, who is doing things in a way that is completely aligned with the way I want to run my business. I started searching for everything I could get my hands on that he has every published.

What I have learned so far is going to change everything for me and my family.

I cannot wait to help others create freedom for themselves in the way that I am creating freedom for my family.

I cannot wait to be the person that my daughter already sees when she looks at me.

Join me every day as I document my journey to bring MLM away from spammy, antiquated tactics by learning and using real marketing strategies to revolutionize this industry as we all know it.

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