Old Journal Entries and New Insights

I found this journal entry from back in January in a strange e-file titled Oprah.app on my hubby's lap top. I think this thought process was triggered by a show on Oprah and I just started writing. It was good to re-read it and reflect on my true definition and meaning of motherhood.

Jan 4, 2007

It is difficult to anticipate the life changes that come with having children. For a long time I thought that having my own kids would severely interfere with my plans for success. However, I wasn’t quite sure of what success really meant to me. When my 12-month old daughter Kaia was born, my perspective on just about everything changed in a big way. I went from feeling like I had all the answers and knew exactly how to get what I wanted, to deciding that what I had just about knocked myself out for, was empty and didn’t really mean much in the long run.

I was doing good things to help my community and was working hard toward my goals, but I didn’t feel like it was quite the right fit for me. I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose. Being around Kaia brought things into perspective for me. She teaches me new things every day, and I am learning more and more what my purpose really is. Though I don’t have all the answers I thought I had, I have definitely put a lot more thought and meaning into the decisions I have made. These decisions have really brought on a lot of change.

Rocking my baby in the wee hours of a January morning, I defined my priorities and for the first time, how assertively I needed to defend them. I came to the conclusion that Kaia is my legacy and everything I do needs to reflect what I want to leave behind. She is the most important thing I can do to leave a positive impact in this world. So, after much thought, budget maneuvering and a big leap of faith, I decided to quit my job and pursue a bigger challenge. The challenge of raising a responsible child according to the best truth I know, has brought more meaning and purpose to my life than I could have ever imagined. I still have big dreams and my plans for success may still yield some of the same outward results, but my priorities, motives and timing have changed.

I don’t regret leaving my job, though the transition is still quite the crazy adventure. When Kaia was born, my husband Ben was just getting started with the application process for an entry level position in law enforcement and we literally had no solid leads for supporting our little family. Without my job, we could not afford health insurance and there was a period of about 3 months before we had any real hope of being able to provide that. That alone was a stressfull transition, but there is more.

Only 5 months after Kaia’s birth, my husband was offered a position with the North Slope Borough Police Department in Barrow, AK. He began training immediately and I was left to my own defenses as a stay-at-home mom with no chance for relief for 8 months! I found comfort in the great outdoors and enjoyed what I could of the Alaskan summers and relied heavily on my family (3000 miles away) for balance and sanity.

In November, I packed our belongings and moved the household to Barrow where it is more than extremely difficult to get out in the elements for even a visit to the supermarket. I haven’t seen the sun since I moved here and from what I understand, even in the season of the midnight sun, we may not see it through the dense fogs of the arctic. So, the transition has had its little bumps on the trail of life, but you can't put a price on family.

I intentionally forfeited my job status, financial security and psychological escape route to take responsibility for the welfare and development of our baby. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t consider myself a martyr. I have lost much, but have gained much more. My decision to quit my job has given me the opportunity to evaluate and prioritize my life, and it has given me the courage to defend that decision in the face of judgment, ridicule and degradation.

It is amazing how judgment comes from all sides, even from inside at times. I have faced judgment from peers at my old job in that I am not woman enough to juggle work and kids at the same time… even though many of them admitted to working too hard or too long and being “spent” before they even make it home to the kids. I have also faced judgment from peers at my old church in that I am not fulfilled with the traditional subservient role as wife and mother. But the judgment that hits me the hardest is my own. I never imagined that it would be so tough to know the right thing to do for the welfare and development of a child, especially when it requires taking care of the child's mother.

The ridicule I have faced from women’s liberation propaganda and women who have chosen different paths to fulfillment are also a challenge. I have been mocked as a traitor to the gender for giving up my potential to have a successful career for a go-nowhere babysitting job. I have also been laughed at for finding meaning in teaching my child to love and forgive and share or learning from her how to giggle and play and enjoy life again. But the hardest thing to take is not the judgment of my decision to stay-at-home or the ridicule for finding fulfillment in it, but the degradation of the occupation itself.

Motherhood has been degraded to life of servitude in diaper-changing, laundry-folding, toilet-bowl cleaning monotony. Jokes about watching soaps and eating bon-bons minimize and desecrate the awesome beauty and responsibility of providing all the tools for building the character and essentially the potential of another human being. It can be a full-time job to manage the day-to-day operations of an average household, but those are only small peripheral tasks that fall under “other duties as assigned” on the job description of MOM.

The way I see it, my job is NOT about servitude, though it can feel that way sometimes, it is about teaching my children to understand right from wrong and make a difference in the world in their own way.

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Today, I feel the same and am encouraged by my January self. However, I can't help but think that I have learned something since then. Here are a few new insights.

1. I learned that I can't put all of my worth in my baby and any future babies because they are only in my stewardship and will some day achieve what I am working so hard to teach them... and they will leave at best, but may reject what I teach them or be taken from me at worst.
2. I learned that I must take control of my identity as a person first, then balance my definition of the motherhood role with that. Tricky concept, but I think it is more of a journey than a destination.
   
3. I also learned that there isn't much else I really control. Yup, it's kind of depressing, but being a mom only complicates the hell out of developing my own personal identity. I think that it can be done though, and I am looking forward to a more focused journey to that end.