Ever since I was a little girl, I have dreamed of being a mom. I’ve always loved taking care of kids. And I’ve always had a way with them.
Not just kids. Animals, too. For some reason, they’ve always been drawn to me.
My dad is the same way, and so was my grandma (his mom), so I’m sure it’s at least partially genetic.
As far back as I can remember, I have pictured myself as a full time stay at home mom with lots of kids.
I imagine a lot of this has to do with my grandmother. She was a stay at home mom to four kids. She LOVED kids.
Once she was done raising her children, she became a nursery school teacher. In fact, she was my nursery school teacher. There were many, many days after nursery school when I would go home with her to her house and we would do all sorts of grandmothery-grandaughtery things together.
She introduced me to a thinking spot. We picked out a special rock that was just for me and she told me any time I needed to be alone and just have time to myself, this would be my special place where I could go. (It wasn’t until years later when I had my own kids that I realized this came from Winnie the Pooh).
She showed me how you could change the color of Queen Anne’s lace by placing it into water tinted with food coloring.
She showed me how you could flatten pennies by putting them on the train tracks and letting the train run them over.
She took me for walks in the woods and taught me what lady slippers were.
I never really asked her, but it appeared to me that being a full-time stay-at-home mom until all her kids were grown and out of the house brought her tremendous amounts of joy. It was completely fulfilling for her.
I also never really realized how big of an influence she had on me until I became a parent. We might have done things in a different order, but still, the similarities between the paths we took were pretty strong.
I think I was born really loving being around children. I don’t think that was something that wore off on me from my grandmother.
But the full time stay at home mom thing? Was that something that I wanted organically? Or was it more environmental?
I’m not sure.
I went to school and got my masters in elementary education, I got a teaching job right out of college, and I taught 6th grade and then 4th grade for a total of twelve years. While I loved working with children, the whole time I was teaching I dreamed about finding the right guy, getting married, and having a house full of kids who I could stay home with and do all that stuff that my grandma did with me when I was little.
And then that dream came true. I met my husband who was already raising two young boys. We got married, I gave birth to our first child nine months later, and then had four more kids in the next five years.
I was a full time stay at home mom to seven children. Everything I had been envisioning for the past forty years was a reality. I would finally be… complete.
Fast forward to 2015. My husband and I just celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary.
And eleven years later, I have realized something. Something that I haven’t wanted to admit, because I’ve been convinced for forty+ years that being a full-time, stay at home mom was my calling.
Being a stay at home mom is not enough for me.
It’s not that I don’t love being home with my kids.
I do.
But there are parts of being a mom that I thought I would like and now, eleven years into it, I realize I can’t fucking stand them.
I was sure I wanted to be a Girl Scout Troop leader. I’d go camping and hiking and do all sorts of girl scouty projects with my girls.
I tried it for one year.
And I loathed it.
Eye-opener #1.
When Number 4 declared she hated Girl Scouts, too, I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to be a Girl Scout dropout because I didn’t like it. I could blame it on her.
I also thought I’d be craftier. Not so much.
Eye-opener #2.
The more aspects of being a stay at home mom I discovered I didn’t enjoy, the more I started to feel disappointed in myself.
And so over the past couple years, more and more, I’ve been feeling a little bit like a failure, realizing that being a stay at home mom isn’t enough for me. Realizing that all these dreams I had in my teens and twenties and thirties ended up being more enjoyable to me in theory than in reality.
And I have been struggling with, by feeling this lack of fulfillment, whether I am sending my kids the message that being their mom full-time is not enough for me. That they don’t make me happy.
It’s not failure. And they do make me happy.
But I’m just still getting to know myself.
And I want more.
Whether we need money or not, I want something that is all mine. I want a career.
And that’s not to say that I want to put my kids in full time day care and work outside the home 60 hours a week. I know I don’t want that, either.
But what I am doing right now is not completely fulfilling to me. Being a stay at home mom is only a piece of the puzzle that makes up me.
I like fundraising. I like being involved in politics. I love competing. I love coaching and speaking and writing. I think there are things I probably haven’t even discovered that I love yet.
Regardless of what I’ve been telling myself for the past ten or twenty years, it’s okay for me to acknowledge that although I totally thought they would, having children did not complete me, and being a mom just isn’t enough.
Because the more pieces of the Susie puzzle I have in place, the better mom I’m going to be to my kids.
It doesn’t have anything to do with how many hours I spend at home during the day, or how many Pinterest projects I complete, or how many Girl Scout meetings I attend.
It has to do with being complete.
And I’m not quite there yet.
But I’m getting closer.
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Oh, Susie, I can’t tell you how much this resonates with me. I, too, am trying to figure out what I want to be when I “grow up”. Unfortunately, for me, I feel that grow up time is fast approaching.
Sometimes dreams change. Dreams change when people change, and people DO change. I’ve been a corporate accountant for 10 years. I’m at the point where I can see the top of the ladder, I’m so close…and I loathe it. Never in a million years did I see me not wanting the top of the ladder, but I don’t. The top of the accounting ladder is lots of hours, lots of stress, and less time for my 4 yr old son. So no thanks corporate world. Keep your boatload of money and health problems from the stress. Dreams change, and that’s totally ok. You know what’s best for you.
That takes a lot of courage to look at your life and dig deep to make the right decisions for your and for your family.
Cassidy
http://tuesdaystantrum.blogspot.com/2015/11/2-cents-at-grocery-store.html
I am a nurse and in my field we have lots of new middle age nurses. These are people who weren’t fullfilled in thier jobs and lives. Something about caring for people tugs at thier hearts. They felt the need, they made a choice, and like magic thier lives and thier patients lives have become broader. I encourage you to find what truly makes you happy and to use it to better your happiness, satisfaction and even finances.
This is a really incredible thing to say out loud. It takes courage, because how many times are we made to feel, as moms, that we don’t have the right to want anything else? What I’ve been learning in the past few years is that my husband doesn’t make me happy. And it’s not his job to. He needs to care whether or not I’m happy, but my happiness and fulfillment are entirely my own to create. And in the last year, as my son has become a toddler, I’ve realized that he doesn’t make me happy either. That would be a big responsibility to put on a little kid. He is a part of my joy. Being his mom is a part of who I am and I love it, but if I never fulfilled myself as my own person then I would be teaching him the wrong lesson. So I applaud your honesty, with yourself, with your kids, and with other moms out there.
I work full time outside the home. Sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed home with my girls. My oldest sister’s sons are now 28 and 30 and her husband passed away 5 years ago. She said life is very lonely when your children leave. The running/driving around from sporting events, band practice, and club events, winds down to dropping/picking up from college…to all of a sudden their married and out of the house. She is so thankful she has her job and the community of friends she built up through the years. Keeping her nursing career all these years also makes it that she can support herself after her husband’s passing.
There are many facets to a make a diamond sparkle. Don’t define yourself by one thing.
This really struck a chord with me. I have been a stay at home mum for 7 years and it’s always something that I wanted to do. But, my blog (which is 1.5yrs old now) is taking up more and more of my time, and I don’t feel so much like a stay at home mum anymore – I might be in the house, but my time is divided. I feel guilty about this and I have been angsting over what to. But the problem is, I like blogging. I never imagined it would become so important to me, but it has. Thank you for the reassurance that that is okay.
And congratulations because someone loved this post so much, they added it to the BlogCrush linky! Feel free to collect your “I’ve been featured” blog badge 🙂 #blogcrush
Look how far you’ve come since you first wrote this! Awesome!!