Arlene Maharaj: Stepping out with courage

“I’m really here to encourage you to be bold, to speak your truth in your own way, and to live your life on your own terms,” said Arlene Maharaj.

She is now an Operations Evaluations Specialist at the DBSA, but Maharaj’s journey there was certainly not an easy one.

“I knew very early on in my marriage, I’m not going to be happy here, but I can’t afford to be a single mother unless I improve my education, and I make some changes, and so when the time was right, that’s what I did.“

She studied IT and started her career during the “dawn of the internet”, and stayed in the maledominated industry for several years. “For a very long time, I was the only female in the team. But I

received the same treatment, which was fair and what I wanted.”

After the birth of her second child, she felt a lot of pressure from all sides, and decided to make a change by going into the educational sector professionally. She also studied educational and industrial psychology, in part to connect with her children better and be the best mother she can be. Despite some of the steps on her journey entailing a strong pay cut, she forged ahead.

Shortly before a milestone birthday, she told herself she needed to find a better job, lose weight, and leave her 20-year marriage. “And I got this wonderful job at the DBSA five months before I turned 40,” she says. “Taking action is just the tip of the iceberg; before that, it took a lot of mental and emotional work for me to get to that point.“

This difficult process brought her to a much happier and healthier place overall, and she is now able to do a job where she feels she makes a difference. “I keep thinking that the only reason those changes were possible was because of the quiet quivering voice in the back of my head, that said ‘you deserve them, you are worthy’.”

“Part of my learning is I realise that I don’t want a frantic career,” said Maharaj. “I want just enough money, time, good relationships and good health. You know, sometimes you get swept up in the title of achievements when you’re young and ambitious.”

Balance has been a wonderful achievement for this successful woman. ”I want to encourage you to make sure that you are spending your only nonrenewable resource, which is time, on something that you will want and what you really want.”