How I Relaunched My Career After Spending 11 Years at Home
By Zibby Owens
11 years. That’s how long I “stayed home” with my kids.
For anyone else who, like me, thought they’d completely missed the boat on a career after years and years out of the workplace, I’m living proof that all the pent-up intellectual energy can be saved and used later if need be! It’s not too late. EVER!!!!
I only started regularly writing again in 2017 after my divorce. I only started my podcast in 2018. (Now, four years later, I’ve released over 1,000 episodes, have had millions of downloads and it has won the most prestigious industry award plus dozens of others — and is earning money!!)
It has taken me almost 20 years to sell my memoir, but now it’s finally coming out in July — after I’d cried over so many rejections that I thought it just wasn’t going to happen for me. I had this almost inexplicable compulsion to get my story on the shelves.
So yes. It can happen to you. I did it one podcast at a time. Letting things unfold “organically” as my husband taught me.
So when I spin around in excitement about going to a book signing for my children’s book, Princess Charming, that is why.
Because I’ve been through SO MUCH. (Which you can read about in Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature.)
Because even though I’ve believed myself to be a writer since age eight, the universe didn’t acknowledge it until now.
Because I thought my life was going one way fast and it wasn’t. Whiplash.
Like Princess Charming, I never gave up. Perhaps when I probably should have. (😂)
My constant posting on Instagram and Facebook about all of it isn’t to brag. It’s to say: holy c — p, can you believe it??!? I was just at Little Maestros rattling a tambourine and look!!!
So if you follow me, know this. I exalt every day I get to spend on earth — with my four (also unlikely) kids, with my new career in books (author! podcaster! co-founder of publishing company Zibby Books!) which feels like play everyday, and just to live and breathe in a world in which another day is not a foregone conclusion.
I AM SO GRATEFUL. And so I shout it from the social rooftops.
I am not bragging. I am marveling.
It wasn’t over. It was just beginning.
(If you know someone who may need to hear this, please forward it! They can sign up for my newsletter here and follow me on Instagram! My website is www.zibbyowens.com.)