fate accompli

Its easy filling out forms. Barely glancing at the bits to sign, just put the date there, yes and fill that bit out there. Sign on the line at the end, OK. Done. OHMYGOD what have I done?

Ive just resigned from a tenured position, half time. A wonderful job, by all accounts, and compatible with life as a mum and architect. A great opportunity to share my knowledge, read and research, work from home if I want to, re-write course material if it interests me. Don't get me started on the fantastic leave entitlements, I'm about to toss away into the wind.
On the surface of it, the decision is a fate accompli. Husband has moved the family to Tasmania, so wife and kids uproot and go. I cant possibly maintain an academic position travelling interstate on a weekly basis: I'm not so enamoured with the job that I am prepared to wear myself out with late night flights just to do this. Trouble is that I have no position here. Just a bit of part time work. I feel just a trifle diminished.

And yet, there is the possibility of new things opening up. Other horizons. There might well be some other field of work that suits me better, and interests me more. I'm thinking about studying again. Maybe a PhD? Thanks to 'Bluemilk' for the reminder of the ways in which mothering causes us to sacrifice our feminist principles at times. I'm not sure I feel any better, seeing this issue from a feminist perspective, its kind of tragic that its often the woman that makes the "sacrifice".

Such a shocking word as it implies the death of something, and yet it also means 'a surrender of something of value as a means of gaining something more desirable'.