Reintroducing, myself.

It’s been a few years of craziness around our home. Two little feet running and jumping are the soundtrack to our daily lives and we are grateful every single day. Those same two little feet have kept me on my toes – absorbed all of my energy, attention, and my heart. I left teaching to come home and be a mommy, a wife, and to learn how to be myself again.

That might sound silly or cliché. How does a person ever forget who they are? The truth is, we’re all changing every day. Some of us grow with the changes, but some of us hit a bump in the road during the changing and have to catch up. Some of us pile so many things on our daily/monthly/yearly plates that we can’t see, think, or figure out what’s what. I would be that kind of person.

Why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we become so fixated on what we can or can’t do instead of who we could (and should) be? I don’t know when it happens, or why, but at some point in life I think we all have to push pause and look around. We have to figure out what’s important and worth holding onto, and what’s not. As sad as it may be, sometimes the life we’ve built around us doesn’t grow and change with us. Maybe it’s a way for adults to have growth spurts the same way children do. It hurts sometimes to let go of our former selves, of friends who are no longer walking on the same path with us, and of ideas that maybe weren’t cultivated at the right point in our lives. I think it’s painful to let go of what you’ve known in order to grow into something better. At the same time, maybe sometimes we let go of things that we think aren’t imperative to what make us individuals, and instead retain the things that stifle our creativity or originality. Making decisions about what to move forward with or without might be based on how we feel at that time instead of who we are, and who we want to be.

Writing and keeping up with my blog didn’t fit into my life for a couple of years. I still wrote from time to time for myself, in the privacy of my own pages or files. I let go of it because I couldn’t give it the attention and the growth that I wanted to, so in my eyes writing/blogging lost it’s validity. I didn’t want to write and post entries about things that I didn’t wholeheartedly – want – to write about. I finally got to be a mom, almost all of my writing prior to that was about the journey to have a baby; I thought my credibility as an infertility “blogger” was sort of null. There came a point where everything I was writing was spinning in a circle, revolving around one stale topic. I’ve said it all before. I’ve written about pain, disappointment, heartache, anniversaries, loss, and so on – it’s been done. The only time I would sit down to write would be when I was hurting, and the words were all reminders of things I had already said, time and time again. I wanted to grow, I wanted to change. I didn’t want to be the kind of writer I was turning into. I stopped.

So here I am, learning and growing right alongside my two and a half year old. Some days it’s beautiful, enlightening, and magical; some days, I want to open a bottle of wine at 9 am, hug my body pillow, and cry myself to sleep. It’s quite the beautiful mess. I look around and think to myself, “what was life before this?” and I remember, it was my first life. I am so thankful for this second life, for this motherhood, and for the new (slightly messy, disorganized, caffeine addicted, and puffy-eyed) me.

Photocredit; Gambol Photography, NC