Approaching 40

I've been thinking on my life a lot lately. I guess that is what you do when you are about to turn a milestone birthday. I've been thinking that I have been with Doug over 1/2 my life and can't imagine a day without him now. Also that I am not the wife or mother that I hoped to be when I was younger. Not that that is good or bad, just different than I imagined it would be. I've spent a lot of my life trying not to be the kind of mother I had, and unfortunately, am 75% like her anyway; despite my trying. It's a year for reflection and forgiveness I have decided. Because if I am having trouble being the mother I thought I was--then I can imagine that maybe she isn't the mother she wanted to be either. That maybe she tried her hardest (like me) and maybe she struggled (like me). I'm not about to give up trying to be a better wife and mother though, but after almost 15 years of being a mother, I will admit that it is the hardest job I have ever had. That sometimes being a wife and mother takes a backseat to everything else in my life. I often worry about myself--that I am not appreciated enough, that I do more than 1/2 of the work in this family, that I don't have enough me time and that I am invisible. Maybe my problem isn't any of those things, but more of a reflection of how I feel about being a wife and mother. Maybe I have been looking at it wrong all these years. Maybe being a mother and wife should be treated like a job and the payment for that job is love--not time for myself, not appreciation, not acknowledgement from others. The acknowledgement I seek shouldn't be from others--it should be from myself. I should know in my heart that I am a good mother and wife--and if I feel I am not being those things then I should change myself to accomplish it. I should quit trying to change my family into something they are not. (I often think my family growing up tried to change me--make me something that I was not--I knew I wasn't cut out to be a college graduate, I knew that I wanted to be a young mother, I knew that I wanted to stay home with the kids--but over the years I have let their opinion of me change who I knew I was.)

Here's who I am: I am a mother who had both her children before she turned 30--just like Doug and I wanted it to be. I am a person who never finished college, but never really cared one way or the other. I am a wife to a wonderful man who takes wonderful care of me and our children. I chose to use cuss words to express myself and I am okay with that. I love to use nicknames for the people I love in my life. I frequently call my kids by names that are not theirs and girlfriends by the nickname "woman!" and I am not going to change. I have the best intentions for everything in my life, but intentions are sometimes misplaced or not valid and that is okay. I just need to know that I do the best job I can every day and live with that.

I can say that every big decision in my life I have made without regret: college, husband, children, every job opportunity I have had. I need to live the rest of my life that way. Chose correctly so as not to regret later. That applies to being a wife and a mother. One day my children will be grown and leave my nest--I need to look back on this time in our life without regret. I need to be okay with the fact that maybe my children will resent or need to forgive me later in their own lives because of choices I made about their upbringing that they don't agree with. But I need to be okay with that because despite everything--every choice, every decision, every thought I have ever had about them has been with the best intention of making them the kind of person I want them to be. I hope that they are loving, successful, peaceful, self confident, and live their lives making decisions that they don't regret. I want them to love and be loved most of all. I want them to have peace within themselves. Hopefully 40 isn't too late to find it for myself.