Person of the Week: Sharon Truelove

 

Being a stay-at-home mother while working for an aid group may be tough, but Sharon Truelove proves it’s possible.

 

For half of the year, Truelove works in “desperate situations” from across the globe as a British Red Cross aid worker.

 

“Leaving gets a little easier each time I go, as we (Truelove and her family) all grow in confidence that we will survive it, and we will be together, under one roof again before too long,” Truelove writes in The Independent. “But I don’t pretend that it’s easy for any of them – perhaps least of all for a little girl of six – to see their mum disappear to somewhere they’ve only ever seen on the news. Somewhere dangerous, where people are dying.”

 

It’s “very hard” for a woman with children to find aid agencies “willing to take you on,” Truelove shares.

 

“The job requires the kind of flexibility and commitment a lot of men and women with families would struggle to meet … I was qualified to do it and, until I became a mother I had relished the challenges that every assignment threw at me,” she says.

 

Truelove concludes: “The bottom line is, my family’s needs really do come first. But with their support, I have the best of both worlds and I hope that when I open the front door they feel that they do too.”