Finding my way...

When I was a little girl, I never imagined I would one day grow up to be mother to a child who would never breathe the same air I did.  I never thought my life would turn out like this.  I had always wanted to be a mother and have a family.  If you would ask me as a little girl, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, "I want to be happy."  Having a family to me was everything to me. 

All the same, I went to school and then on to college because I was suppose to.  I never truly felt comfortable as I pursued my bachelor's degree in what my purpose was.  I didn't know how this degree was going to benefit me because I never had big 'career' ambitions.  But, because I was suppose to go to college and graduate, I did it.  Of course, there were bumps along the way.  I now believe those, bumps were because I was passionate about it.  I wasn't 'me' yet.  I wasn't the person you know today.  I wasn't strong enough or insightful enough to recognize I wasn't pursuing something I valued, but instead I was pursuing something someone else valued, and something valued in our society and culture. 

For the past decade or so, I have bounced around from job to job, changing industries and pursuing less mainstream means of income. All trying to find what it was I was 'suppose' to be doing.  I need to support myself. I didn't have a choice. The pressure to survive left me feeling like I was trapped in a world that made no sense to me. I was still doing what was expected of me and in doing so I was failing miserable.  Not to say I would have appeared to be unsuccessful from the outside.  I would never put on that front.  But, I was unsuccessful in fulfilling my own happiness. 

While trying to find my way in my professional life, I tried to find my way in personal life as well.  I dated, and looked for Mr. Right. All the while, Mr. Right, wasn't to come for many years later.  I didn't know while I grew emotionally, my mate was literally growing up.  It wasn't until I decided I had nothing to lose and moved to Florida in another attempt to 'find' myself,  and the thing that would make me happy. That was when I met my husband in the most unsuspecting and unlikely of places.  Even more surprising, is he wasn't at all what I thought he would be like.  He was young, goofy, inteligent and charming in the quirkiest of ways. 

To make an all ready long story shorter, we married and having a family was important to both of us.  We both always wanted to be parents and have children.  It was until my son was born that I realized how off base I had been all those years. I was in search of something, that for me, didn't exist the way I had been led to believe it would.  I thought I was suppose to have a career in business.  I was good at business but it wasn't me, it was just a way to earn money. For me, I was meant to be a wife and a mother.  And still, even after having had my son, I was ashamed to admit that.  I think it is so sad that we put so much pressure on kids to fit into molds we put on them.  Rather than letting them find the people they were meant to be.  We superimpose our values and dreams on our children almost out of the womb.  We impose our ideas of who we want them to be, before they ever have a chance to figure it out for themselves.  If a little boy is 'flirting' with a little girl, we say he will be a lady killer, or if a girl is bossy and self assured, she is likely to be a lawyer; sometimes if a child is quiet and reserved we wonder if they will have friends in school or if they will pursue a more subdued profession, if a small boy likes to throw stuff and throws it well, he must be a future pitcher.  If we really think about the pressure, unspoken and spoken,  and the expectations we put on the little ones, it is no wonder there are so many of us lost and unhappy as adults.  We have to first unprogram the years of expectations and impositions before we can even begin to scratch the surface of what it is that make us as adults happy and fulfilled.  For me the journey has take 36 years, two miscarriages and a stillborn to begin to scratch the surface. 

I can know say with certainty, my family is my passion.  I am good at nurturing and get great enjoyment and satisfaction from caring for not only my family but others as well.  That is probably why I enjoy cooking so much.  Feed someone is an act of nurturing and nourishing them. Thinks are start to make more sense to me day by day.  I have been able to find this inner sense of peace and comfort in who I am, I can now begin to figure out what I am meant to do with it.