Mom Takes Mid-Life “Gap Year” To Pursue Passions

Tired of feeling overworked and burned out, one mom found a fix in something that’s usually only for younger adults: a gap year. At the age of 42, Kym Wootton, was frustrated with juggling work and home responsibilities, so she felt the time was right to step away from her successful career and “reimagine” what she wanted to do.

“Today is the first day of my mid-life gap year,” the Colorado mom of two says in a TikTok video from January 26th. “I'm going to use this year to, first, slow down. Take some of the rush out of my life.” Wootton explains that both she and her husband have worked since her kids were young and after finding herself in a job that wasn’t a good fit, she decided to quit and not search for another job.

But she didn’t do it on a whim, she planned it all out ahead of time to make sure her family could live on her husband’s income alone. Wootton says she knows how lucky she is to be able to take this time and she’s using it to focus on family and following her passions, like writing, and she hopes the experience teaches her kids an important lesson.

  • “I want my kids to find out what they love and what lights them up and what makes them feel good and what makes them feel like they’re contributing in a way that’s meaningful to them,” she explains. “And if that means that they have to leave a successful job at some point and start over and do something else, I hope that they will look back on the time that their mom did that and feel the confidence that they can do it for themselves.”

Source: Good Morning America

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