Sometimes the Salary Just Isn't Enough

May 29, 2026|Gill Townsend

I've been thinking about what happens when you go back.

Not to a relationship, not to a place — though both have their own version of this. I mean going back to a way of working. A structure. A version of your professional life that was familiar and, on paper, made complete sense.

We talk a lot about the difficulty of returning after a break — maternity leave, a career pause, redundancy, illness, the pandemic. The CV gap, the re-entry challenge, the seniority you need to rebuild. What gets discussed less is the specific thing that can happen when you do return successfully: you discover the break changed you more than you realised while you were in it.

The thing you went back to fits differently now. Not because it changed. Because you did.

In the year to February 2025, over 534,000 Australians left jobs simply because they wanted a change or something better. Hundreds of thousands more took breaks they didn't choose. Most of the research on career breaks focuses on the challenge of re-entry — the pay penalties, the loss of momentum, the gap on the CV. What doesn't get studied much is what happens when the re-entry goes fine, and you're back, and functioning well, and something still isn't quite right.

Here's what the data doesn't say.

Mine started with a retrenchment. Months off — not entirely by choice at first, and then, quietly, very much by choice. And a feeling I didn't expect: lighter. Genuinely lighter. Like something I'd been carrying for years without noticing had been set down.

For the record: lighter looked a lot like sleeping past 6am and not immediately checking my phone. Revolutionary stuff.

I told myself it was temporary. A rest response. Something that would normalise when I went back.

It didn't normalise.

Going back felt right at first. The right role, genuinely — great company, exceptional team, a product worth believing in. Everything that should have added up to fine.

For a while, it did.

Then somewhere in the middle of what should have been a good year, I noticed I was performing fine without actually being fine. Oscars-level fine. Showing up, contributing, caring about the work — and underneath all of it, a quiet and persistent feeling I kept trying to override. Tired in a way that sleep didn't fix. A feeling I can only describe now as betrayal. Not of the company. Of myself.

The honest version: I'd had a taste of something different. Months of a different pace, a different relationship with my own time and thinking. And going back to the familiar structure — even a good version of it — felt like trying to wear a coat that used to fit. The coat wasn't broken. It just wasn't mine to wear anymore.

I didn't realise that at the time. I thought I just needed to push through. Adapt. Get back up to speed. All the things you tell yourself when you're not quite ready to name what you already know.

What I know now is that the break changed me more than I understood while I was in it. Not dramatically. Not in a way I could have explained to anyone at the time. In the quiet way that happens when you finally get to hear yourself think for a few months after years of not quite managing it.

Women have been making this particular trade-off for generations. Career for family. Ambition for stability. The version of yourself that wants things for the version of yourself that holds things together. We're supposed to perform the sacrifice — the reluctance, the difficulty, the brave face that says this is hard but family comes first and I'm absolutely fine with that, really.

What we're not supposed to say is what I'm about to say.

When the reason came to leave — family, health, all of it true, all of it real — I could have pushed back.

I secretly welcomed it.

I'm aware that's not what you're supposed to admit. It doesn't fit the narrative of the capable woman who reluctantly, nobly, sets down her career for the people she loves. That's a better story. This is the honest one.

The salary was good. The salary was fair. The salary was also not, as it turned out, the point.

I felt the weight of it when I resigned. That specific heaviness of letting people down who didn't deserve to be let down. A company that had done nothing wrong. A team I genuinely cared about. That part wasn't easy, and I want to say that plainly — because most stories about leaving corporate quietly skip it.

But family comes first. And sometimes the right thing and the easy thing are not the same thing.

Here's where I am now.

My creativity is flooding back. Ideas that went quiet for a long time are loud again. I'm tinkering, building, making a mess and cleaning it up and making a different mess. Not entirely sure what shape the next thing takes — and surprisingly fine with that. Better than fine.

My mum has always said the same thing when the ground shifts under me. Not as reassurance exactly. More as observed fact, delivered with complete calm: