Shifting
For 10 years I was a stay at home mom. I was most comfortable with other moms and could talk endlessly about my kids, children in general, and parenting. It was fascinating, stimulating, and invigorating. I was happy and fulfilled. Oh some things were hard. I sometimes felt trapped or housebound. I sometimes longed for sleep or more freedom from infant care. But I felt it was the best my life had ever been.
For the past 9 months I have been a work from home mom. The shift is subtle, but it is sending ripples through my life and changing how I feel about many things. I’m no longer content to sit with other moms and just talk about kids. I also want to talk about them. I want to know what they do when they aren’t being Mom. Perhaps I am seeking validation. Perhaps I just need to know that it is okay for me to want things that aren’t related to parenting. Perhaps I’m wanting to provoke these other moms to stretch in ways that I have recently stretched.
I remember being completely happy as a stay at home mom. I remember when that completely fulfilled me. Now the thought of going back to just parenting makes me feel mildly claustrophobic. This does not mean that I was foolish or deluded or oppressed when my only job was household and child care. This only means that I have changed and that role does not fit me the way that it used to.
This shift in my interests and self perceptions has created something of a social disconnect. Most of the women with whom I share social contacts are stay at home mothers. They are happy and fulfilled taking care of kids, decorating their houses, cooking, cleaning, canning, making crafts. I still do many of those things, but they fit differently. I feel differently about them. And I have these other things about which I care a great deal. My sahm friends will listen as I ramble on about online stores and book mailings, but they don’t understand it. They understand when I ramble about potty training or braces, but not the business stuff. I tend to not ramble about the writing that I do. I’m not sure why I don’t talk about writing.
I just thought of a visual representation of what I am trying to describe. It’s a venn diagram. My personal circle used to completely overlap the circle of the typical sahm. But my circle has shifted sideways. I still do sahm stuff, but I also do these other things. I like that image, because the thought that somehow I’d “grown up” and being a sahm was too small for me feels offensive. Who knows, perhaps in the future I’ll shift back to being a full sahm. Perhaps I’ll shift to something completely new.
I guess the short version of this long ramble is that I’m in a new place and while I like it, it isn’t entirely comfortable.