Carving Out Some "Me" Time

I've been in a state of a stay-at-home Momhood for almost 8 years now - 2 more than I expected to be working only at home. I say working because make no mistake, I am working, there's just no paycheck involved. I'm not suggesting that it's particularly hard work or that I don't benefit from this arrangement. My basic needs, and even some wants, are more than adequately met in return for my contribution. And I like to think that my staying atop the persistent pile of mundane tasks related to keeping children healthy and ensuring the house doesn't end up as a candidate for "Hoarders" makes it easier for my hubby to go to work and continue to pay for all of this. For the record, I'm married to one of the best guys around. He gets how taxing dealing with children full time can be, and he certainly gets that taking breaks are necessary for good parenting to continue to be possible.

There are circumstances in life though when, if you aren't careful, what was your assuredly solid sense of self can slip unnoticed through your fingers until you hardly recognize what remains in your grasp. Unguarded parenthood - constantly attending to everyone else's needs before your own - is a good example. When the kids are very young, that high level of sacrifice is an essential part of the job. You start out taking care of babies whose needs unquestionably must be met by you if they are to thrive. You gladly put your own desires aside because it is vital that you do so, and because it is absolutely worth the sacrifice, and because it takes almost no time to discover that you love them with a primal fierceness that you had no idea existed before they came along and you want to do whatever it takes to get them off to a good start in life. But as they get older, what was once a necessity can become a crushing habit of ignoring your own need to grow and develop in service to the family. It can be insidious if you've left a career that you don't intend to reenter (and you haven't settled on what you will do professionally in the future), and with each passing day a little of the known quantity of who you were in that role slips away until you realize that you aren't quite sure who you are anymore. The role of being Mom can grow so large that you forget what rounds out the rest of you. At least this is what happened with me.

Parenting is basically a delayed-gratification marathon. Let me be clear, I love my children and being their mother, and I don't regret my decision to be at home with them, but being a mother doesn't complete me. It is simply one dimension of who I am, and I want to continue to hone my other facets. I didn't long for motherhood as my ultimate life's goal, though I am so happy that I opted to take the plunge. Motherhood has been the most rewarding, and the most difficult thing I've done so far. I am not striving for perfection as a parent, but I make a serious effort to do right by my girls, and when I fall short, which happens more than I care to admit, I feel terrible about it and I try to reset myself so I will do better the next time. For me, what that often means is carving out some "me" time and finding some things to do that have absolutely nothing to do with my children.

I'm in the very fortunate position of not having finances require me to work, and about the last thing I want to sound like here is some privileged asshole whining about a life that many women would trade places for in a heartbeat. While I am grateful that I can be so present in my daughters' lives, feeding my own soul and guarding some piece of my independent self is what keeps me tethered to my sanity. So I've been making an effort to figure out what rounds me out in this phase of my life. Not me in relation to my children. Not me in relation to my husband. Not me in a role that is tangential to the family. Just me.

I've started claiming some time for myself, and when I'm not taking care of the kids I volunteer my time and effort for causes that resonate with me. It feeds my soul and my intellectual curiosity at the same time, and I feel like I'm leaving my corner of the world just a little better off than I found it. I am also starting to write - this blog, some essays, letters to my daughters for when they are older. A couple of years ago I started taking guitar lessons, which has been a fun challenge, and I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that I could learn to play music at my relatively advanced age, and that I do have some creative yearnings that want to see the light of day. When I can get away with it, I travel. I know, in the grand scheme these seem like small things, and they are, but every time I do something for me to define a new part of myself and recharge my batteries, I'm a much better Mom. It's also really important to me that my girls understand that I'm not just their Mom, I'm my own person too with hopes, dreams and desires, some of which include them and some of which don't. When I make me one of the priorities in my life, I come away having gained as much as I gave, and then I have something to draw on so I can keep giving to the family.

At the end of any given day, especially the tough ones, my sweet husband reminds me that I'm doing a good job and that when they are 30 and have their own children they are likely to appreciate us. As parents, we are middle-of-the packers, neither incredibly good, but far from neglectful. And as children go, ours are not statistical outliers - they could certainly be better behaved and more well-mannered than they are, but they could also be a hell of a lot worse too. And maybe that's one more good thing to remember about finding balance, that it's okay to be right in the middle of the bell curve where ordinary is just fine.

Getting Off the Dime

I was at the pool the other day watching my kids swim and talking with this friend who was there doing the same. Though she's a pretty new friend for me, we click. She's smart, funny, a little raunchy, trying to evolve, etc. We have some similarities, but she's different from me in a key way. She's a "doer". She has an idea and she moves forward with it. I too have some decent ideas, but my tendency is to think something to death and therefore never quite get off the dime with it. Fortunately, she's as generous as she is smart, and she suggested a couple of things that finally got me moving on posting something to this blog, which I set up a solid eight months ago.

Why is it that the first step of doing anything is the hardest? Actually, it isn't even the first step that I find tough, it's the anticipation leading up to taking the first step that is often the most painful part of something new - the cautious analysis, the trying to figure out all possible contingencies, the worrying. Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm this way with absolutely every first step I take, but if the thing involves exposing my soft, fleshy underbelly in the process, the pre-first step fretting over whether I might end up making big mistakes or looking stupid can overwhelm. And, to me, few things scream vulnerable quite like writing down my most intimate thoughts, hitting enter, and letting the world in on what's rattling around in my brain.

I've been telling myself for a long time that I want to write. Let me back up and get the basics out of the way. I've been a stay-at-home Mom to my two daughters for the past 8 years, am a former lobbyist, am reasonably intelligent, and also feeling a bit rudderless in my world where a lot of my life is centered around tending to the needs of impatient children who can't begin to appreciate the sacrifices I've made on their behalf. Though that, thank God, is improving as they age, well, until they reach their teen years and become as obnoxious to their stupid parents as I was to mine. I think I might have six more decent years before the combined hormonal surges of a pre-menopausal mother and two teen aged daughters in our house send us all screaming for the exits. But I digress.

Like I said, I want to be a writer. But what to write? I am not interested in writing fiction, and the part of me that questions why the blogoshpere needs one more voice adding to the din wonders whether I have anything to say that's worth reading. In my mind, the only way to get anywhere close to that is to write about what I know, and the thing that's been a constant for me for as long as I can remember is my struggle to find balance, and then to hold it for any reasonable period of time. Sometimes I nail it, and sometimes it's completely FUBAR. So my posts, and there is an entire universe of potential topics here, will be tied to that idea, even if the binds seem loose.

If I end up being the only one who reads this, so be it. I'm glad to have finally taken the first step.