Not just a mom

Here I am, standing in my kitchen, writing about anything other than my children, the little loves of my life who have inspired me to work toward being a better person more than any other person in my life (sorry Husband). I’m NOT going to write about the fact that they’re on summer break or anything about any of our activities.

Because this whole thing is about having my own individual identity! Even though I spend most of my waking moments thinking about them and planning for them and worrying over them and laughing about the funny things their little faces do.

Yeah, not writing about kids or parenting or how sad I’ll be when they outgrow Bluey. I’m going to write about work! Nope, that’s boring. I’m going to write about running! Nope, no one actually wants to read about a (near) middle aged woman’s mediocre attempts at athleticism, it turns out. I’ll write about what I’m reading! Well, in truth, I could go on for a while here because I’m reading the first Percy Jackson book because my older son is reading the series, and I wanted to see what it was all about. It’s actually really good, but I am literally reading a kid’s book recommended to me by my child. I’ve read other books recently, but if I’m being absolutely honest about the book I’m reading at the time of writing this post, it’s that, which clearly runs counter to this identity-outside-of-Mom thing I’m looking for.

But I am my OWN PERSON, dammit. Not JUST a mom. Obviously.

I’ve always been, or at least since being pregnant the first time and watching others mentally transfer me to a different category of person – or maybe it’s a thing you can feel rather than see – I guess, afraid of being pushed into the identity box of “mom”. I need to acknowledge here that I’m probably doing some judging of women who do embrace “mom” as their whole identity. If this were a therapy session, this would be a good time to dig into that, but it’s not, so let me just say I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to cause offense. I’m just a person, and we’re all highly multi-faceted. Isn’t that wonderful?

The fact is that I love being a mom to these two boys. I love mine because they’re mine. I don’t love the role. It’s a lot, frankly, and raising kids in this world is scary and involves lots of stuff way outside my previously held comfort zones, like conflict-filled emails to swim coaches and worrying about who keeps guns in their houses and how to navigate mom friendships. But I want my kids to have the best lives and become the best people they possibly can, which involves finding a balance between helping them and getting them to navigate challenges on their own so they don’t become entitled jerks. And thinking about all of the things it takes to raise these boys into good people takes a lot of effort has taken up a lot of my time recently. I guess it’s become a big part of who I am, and that’s ok.