About one week after I started freelance writing, my husband was laid off.  The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, and he took over the role I have held all these years – the keeper of the house.  He takes care of the kids, watching them while I work in my office, and does all the cooking and most of the cleaning.  I couldn’t do what I do without him, but the transfer of power has been a hard internal struggle for me.

When you run the house by yourself, you do things certain ways and have a system that keeps everything going.  It has been so hard for me to step back and allow him to develop his own ways of doing things while I work in a nearby room.

I am trying so hard not to undermine his authority with the kids or criticize when he cleans the house differently than I do, but it sure is hard to sit here and not think of how I would be doing things.

Even though I know there is no way I could handle all of the responsibilities of running the house, caring for the kids and writing full time, I still find myself trying to figure out a way to do it.  It isn’t that my husband does a bad job – he’s working hard all day long – but I find it hard to relinquish my position in the home.

We are slowly developing a routine that works, but it is taking a lot of time and compromise to get to where we both feel happy with the distribution of responsibilities.  I know that someday soon we will find a happy medium, but for now, I am still working hard to give up my job and let him do his.