AI, Postpartum, and Other Messy Affairs

The long goodbye to who I thought I was

A few months ago, I was speaking to one of my MBA clients (now a friend) about publishing my farewell to relationship coaching. Her response surprised me.

She said, "No, don't do that. It's okay even if you don't want to coach anymore, but you don’t have to say it. We like to hope that you are there for us, somehow."

As flattering as it was, I felt a greater sense of urgency to publish it. To finally break free. So, I hit publish.

I've been staring at this blank page for weeks now, trying to find the perfect words to explain why I'm suddenly talking about AI instead of relationships. But there's no elegant way to say this, so here's the unvarnished truth…

I'm terrified.

When I shut down Marriage Broker Auntie, I had no idea who I was anymore. My entire identity had become "that relationship person." Then I took a corporate job that crashed and burnt spectacularly. This was supposed to be my re-entry into full-time employment, but it had ended in a year.

Should I go back to being an entrepreneur? I didn’t have any new ideas worth pursuing. Also, I’m not one of those people who became an entrepreneur because I wanted to. It just happened. Organically. Accidentally. So no, I wasn’t going to force open that door. Not yet.

Should I apply for another job? My last job had ended so badly that I became paranoid my next employer would call them for references. So, I didn't apply. My brain still avoids thinking about whether it was someone’s incompetence, a culture conflict or just a personal fallout. It wasn't pretty.

I told myself I needed a break to "heal."

What a joke.

I'm not wired to take breaks. My whole damn self-worth is built on the idea of effort and achievement. Sitting with nothingness felt like drowning.

Every social interaction became torture.

"So, what do you do?"

“Where do you work?”

“What’s next?”

These questions would hit, and I'd scramble for answers that didn't make me feel like a failure. I gave different answers to different people. I didn’t know who I was or where I was headed. It was a deeply uncomfortable place to be in. At 35, I still felt the disappointment of my parents, and my young daughter’s discomfort with a “housewife” mum.

For a while, I tried to fight. My family. My conditioning, My own expectations. I wanted to sit with the discomfort, but I just couldn’t.

I ran.

I found a project through a friend, probably the only person in my professional life who I felt actually trusted me.

Honesty, trust, transparency, integrity, these are all things I value deeply, and sometimes, these values are at odds with the corporate world, or people who thrive in it. So you see, I've never been good with bosses or building those networks everyone says you need.

I have a few deep friendships (even from work), but otherwise? I'm that person who doesn't "play well with others" on the report card.

Just as I started that project, after years of trying and failing to get pregnant, it happened. Unplanned in timing, but very much longed for. I was physically and mentally exhausted most days, so job hunting went out the window. I focussed on the projects at hand and lived in the present.

Then my child arrived, and holy shit.

The sleepless nights, the isolation. People STILL asking what I did for work when my son was literally days old. But this time, I couldn't fight it. I couldn’t run. I had nowhere to go. So, I had to be with my baby.

My husband had quit his job to start a new venture. So, I found small projects to work on from home. I jumped them, never feeling like anything was enough. Nothing reflected who I was, or who I thought I should be.

Finally, I broke.

Just completely broke.

I can’t remember what triggered it, but I finally came face to face with the fact that I had unresolved postpartum depression and anxiety from my first child that I'd never properly dealt with. Yes, I was in therapy for several years, but apparently it was never enough, because now, the second birth had only exasperated it further.

So, I got on antidepressants, even though I was breastfeeding because I was losing myself completely. I started eating better. I started sleeping through the night while my husband took over baby duty. I started lifting weights (guilty!). I couldn’t tell if I was getting any happier, but I kept at it.

I started teaching a course on happiness. What an irony, huh? The person who could barely get out of bed some days was teaching others how to be happy.

This was yet another of those things I’d always wanted to do - teach high school and college kids life skills so they could make better decisions as adults. Was it poor timing to facilitate this? Maybe. or maybe not. But teaching the course forced me to learn how to be happy.

And what better way to learn than by lived experience, right?

Postpartum can be very isolating. Children are no longer raised by villages. We don’t live in communities. We live highly individualistic lives, and raising children has never been harder. I was deeply lonely. My community wasn't physical friends or family. It was strangers on an app called Airchat. And it was there that someone introduced me to LLMs.

I can't explain why, but something cracked open in me. Every word I read was new. I had a reason to wake up. To learn. I became obsessed because these systems reminded me of who I used to be. Curious. Alive. Someone who connected dots between seemingly unrelated ideas and got excited.

I was suddenly reading about and listening to people I’d never heard of - Andrew Karpathy, Dario Amodei, Yann Le Cunn, Yoshua Bengio, Paul Christiano, Jan Leike. People who’ve been working in AI for years, even decades. Breakthroughs and debates that unfolded while I was studying engineering or building other things, and I found myself wondering, what if I’d been in this space all along? But also feeling grateful to have arrived now, with a completely different perspective.

You know what the strangest part in all of this chaos was? Learning about AI brought me joy. Real, genuine joy.

That, along with teaching my students at IIT Madras, and working on my book (whose pitch was chosen for finals at the Bangalore Literature Festival 2024, by the way) were the only things that felt right when everything else felt wrong. The only moments I wasn't questioning myself or feeling like an imposter.

I started writing again because that's how I make sense of things when they're chaotic in my head.

At 37, I'm here, trying to pivot from being an executor to a thinker in a domain I've never formally worked in. It sounds ridiculous even typing it out. Who does that? Who throws away years of experience to start over?

Me, apparently.

I need to admit something I've barely acknowledged to myself. When I write about AI, sometimes sounding like I know what I'm talking about, I feel like a complete fraud. Like I'm cheating people by not being honest about who I really am or what's really behind this perspective.

The truth is, I hung onto my old matchmaking identity long after I'd outgrown it. I wore that mask because it was familiar, because people recognised me for it, because it gave me some sense of worth when everything else felt uncertain. I craved acceptance. Community. Anything to feel less alone in the flux of my professional journey.

This pivot isn't just about finding new work, it's about finally having the courage to let go of who I was supposed to be and to just be who I am.

I don’t know if anyone will hire me in AI. I don't know if anyone will take me seriously. But for the first time in years, I'm not paralyzed by the fear of looking incompetent or foolish.

We're at this weird inflection point with AI. It's not just about building smart systems. It's about designing how humans and AI will coexist.

It’s about our relationships (Oops, there I go again).

Maybe I am that relationship person after all, except, I’ve outgrown humans ;)

All those years I spent untangling human relationships, behaviours, values, and decisions might actually be useful here.

So that's it. That's the messy, non-linear, embarrassingly vulnerable truth. No clever plot. No connecting dots. No inspirational story of triumph. Just a person trying to accept herself, finding her way back into a professional career and navigating a puddle of possibilities.

If you're here for relationship advice, I get why this is a disappointment.

But if you're interested in this weird, messy journey of figuring out how humans and AI can have a relationship that doesn't suck?

I'd love for you to stay.

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P.S. If this resonated, I’d be grateful if you shared it. It’s one small way to help my voice reach corners of the AI world that might never otherwise hear from someone like me. That’s the only algorithm I have right now. ;)