I still remember that girl who dreamed of becoming a Vascular and Thoracic Surgeon. I still remember going to school while I worked two jobs, had a son that was almost four and another one on the way in my womb. I was a woman with a lot of ambition and determination. Somehow while I was busy planning for a life I did not yet have the life I was living changed my course. As choices were made the costs of those choices had to be paid. In those moments I was the one that paid the cost of those choices with my ambition, my education and frankly a lot of my self-worth. I fell into motherhood a role that I had always taken very seriously but a role that had changed and not at all what I had planned for. Staying at home with my two sons was a temporary fix for a problem that soon would be resolved. When two sons became three that temporary fix needed resolution for a longer term. I fell deeper into motherhood a role that I adapted with but a role that now was becoming harder to fulfill. Staying at home with my three sons should have been a temporary fix for a problem but soon it seemed less like a problem and more like the role destiny had always intended for me to build upon.
Yet, inside the mother that the girl became there are still dreams, ambition and determination. It may be hard for a young woman that has yet to become a mother to understand that. It may be hard for a woman that has become a mother but chosen to stay on course with her career to understand that too. They may ask questions. Where is your ambition? Didn’t you used to have dreams? Didn’t you used to be (insert title here)? The questions and comments these women ask and make might be received like an arrow straight to the heart. They might pierce, sting and hurt even the most confident mother that is happy at home raising her children.
But if you are TRULY happy why would words hurt?
It is all in the metrics. When I worked outside my home, attended school or designed web sites for others I had measures of success. Now that I just take care of my sons, homeschool them and take care of my home I have absolutely no metrics. I have no idea if I am doing the right thing. I have no idea if all the time, energy, love, and effort I am putting towards raising men that will not only grow to be ambitious, determined and successful but also good husbands, fathers and citizens of the world in fact IS going to produce any of that. I wake up each day to the same four walls, to the same three sons and many many times to the same chores, problems and lessons I solved the day before. I don’t get to leave my work and come home to my joy. My joy is my work. It is exhausting unpaid joyful work. Let’s not even talk about the worry I feel that my constant presence and influence at home might actually BE what messes these future men up. If you are yet to have children you don’t know the pain that comes with the worry that you might just possibly mess up your child inadvertently. If you are a mother you know this pain too but your worry might come packaged differently.
Choosing to be a mother is a costly role which each woman decides to pay for in her own way.
Motherhood so far has cost me some of my dreams that I will never recover. Motherhood has cost me a large chunk of my future retirement income. Motherhood could eventually cost me a very difficult return into the workforce. Motherhood has cost me some family and friends. Motherhood has cost me some of my self-worth which I am rebuilding. Motherhood has cost me these things because I made the choice to stay at home with my children to homeschool them.
My choice has also paid me. Motherhood has paid me with I love you’s, thank-yous, kisses, hugs and compliments. Motherhood has also paid me handsomely when it comes to the incredible friendship my three sons share. Motherhood has paid me in skills that I did not know I was capable of and in confidence. You’d be surprised how much confidence a woman can build traveling from coast to coast alone with three children. Motherhood is the role that I have chosen as a woman to be my PRIMARY role at least for now. It is my burden to bear, my cross to carry but it after all was my choice whether life might have thrust upon me the situations which led me here or not.
For now my ambition is to stand in their shadow as I raise them. To lead them by being that nurturing, loving, encouraging mother to each of them equally that I wished I had as a child. I choose to not cast shade on them with my own successes or failures but create a space for them to drown me in their achievements. Even though I still dream of a future in which I am a success as a woman the success of my three sons serves a greater good and comforts my heart more. Their success > My success.
My ambition is to build a foundation to stand on as a woman when being Mom is no longer the primary role for me. My ambition isn’t up for questioning. It is alive and well even if it doesn’t seem to be rushing towards the finish line like a hare. We all can’t win the race but we all have mothers.
