Motherhood

So many people have asked me the same question (I don’t know how many times) over the last 6 years. To be summed up, “What do you REALLY want to do with your life, you know, if you didn’t stay home with the kids? What’s your dream career?” Honestly? I’m living it! I never wanted to leave home and join the workforce when I was growing up. I’m not lazy, I just prefer a different kind of life and a different kind of work. I know where I excel and one of my personal strengths is the home. Family life is my dream career. And I certainly have not “settled for less”. When I was 7, then only answer I found acceptable to the question was “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was, for yours truly, “to hold babies all day and take care of them.” How can you argue with that? But society told me that “that was not real job” and I had to pick a “real one”. Dream crusher. I grew up, I went to college, I studied in my chosen field… But it was hardly as glamorous as the world portrayed it… I knew all over again this was not the life I wanted. So I cast off the idea that I had to give up my dream in order to “earn my place” in a competition-driven society, got married (I’m such a rebel when it comes to societal norms), and became a mother. And now I get to hold babies all day and take care of them. So here I am, a wife, mother to 4 beautiful children (they really are beautiful!) and I don’t feel bad whatsoever that my career isn’t what everyone else’s is. Actually, I enjoy it very much and feel extremely blessed to be able to do it. My husband and I made it a goal very early on in our marriage that he (of his own volunteered choosing) agreed that he would work had to acquire all necessary education to provide for our family so that I could stay home to build our family and raise our children to become moral, thoughtful, polite, intelligent, well-rounded, caring… you get the idea. We wanted to make sure our family had the best chance of success as possible (especially in the world we live in today).