'The Comeback' can help moms blaze new career paths

— -- A little well-placed denial helped Emma Gilbey Keller rediscover her passion for work, and led to her second book: The Comeback: Seven Stories of Women Who Went from Career to Family and Back Again.

The former freelance journalist and author of The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela put aside a thriving career to become a mother in the mid-1990s, when she was in her mid-30s. (She is now 47.)

As her husband, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, took exciting steps at the newspaper, and the couple welcomed their second daughter in 2001, Keller felt her self-confidence slowly draining and "the ennui of dealing solely with small children."

In search of inspiration, she looked for information about women who returned to the workplace after staying home with children. Instead of the positive anecdotes and promising statistics she'd hoped for, "I learned that I could never make the same money as I had before, that I would have to take a demotion."

Keller focused on the women who had achieved success — only a third of the women she read about. She became determined to find and talk to women like them, learn from their experiences, and share their stories.

The seven women profiled in The Comeback shore up Keller's theory that creativity, determination and flexibility can result in career and family satisfaction.

Women would do well to view a career as an evolution rather than a series of steps that must be followed in a particular order. Similarly, considering only a return to the exact job you left is limiting. It's better to be open to career paths that use a variety of skills. In this way, there's more potential for success.

Keller learned valuable lessons from the women featured:

•A hobby can become a multistage career. Over the course of 35 years, Ellen Warner was a photojournalist, portraitist, stay-at-home mother, dedicated volunteer, specialist in author photos, photojournalist again and an artist with showings in Manhattan galleries.