Mom is Just a Nickname

I’m lost. Lost in my children.  Lost in their wants, their needs, their activities, their days.  I’m lost in the way they think, in the way they act, in the way they learn.  Becoming lost in them was a natural occurrence.  Most moms I know have done it.  Even as our children were slowly distinguishing themselves as individuals, we were walking an opposite path into the world of interdependence.

I woke up one day and wondered who I really was.  All I could think of is, “I’m a mom.”  Surely, my brain said, surely I’m more than just a mom! Surely I have interests outside of motherhood!  But I didn’t.  Every single thing I’d taken the time to learn about in the years I’d been a mother had  to do with  some aspect of my children or motherhood.  I became knowledgeable about birth, breastfeeding, diapering alternatives, child development, child entertainment…well, the list goes on.  The things I used to spend hours caring about had fallen to the wayside.

I didn’t do crafts anymore, not even child related crafts!  I didn’t read much that couldn’t be put down easily (a la magazines or Harlequins) and I didn’t go anywhere unless it was a child-friendly place.  I couldn’t have a conversation about current world events, politics or even recent movies.  All of my conversation topics centered around my kids; and let’s face it, most people don’t want to hear about my kids’ latest illness or potty training successes!

I realized that I had lost myself in my children; I had let my role as their mother define who I am as a person.

This discovery has led me to a new season of my life and new chances to grow.  Since beginning on this new path, I’ve learned how to make jewelry, how to paint a mural, how to knit and I’m learning other things every day.  When I go to the library, I search out new genres of books, I pick books from the nonfiction section, I seek out things I don’t know about so that I can learn.

Through the process of learning new things, I’m learning about who I am. I relearning what I find enjoyable for myself, instead of for my kids.  I’m relearning all of the joys of living life as a person, not just as a Mom.

I’m trying to put a new website up right now. A self hosted Word Press blog along with a forum and some other things. I’m struggling a little bit with the design aspects, simply because I’m not sure how I want it to look.

Although I have a thought out view of what I want the content of the site to be, including a handful of articles already mapped out, I don’t have a clear idea of the tone and feel the site should have.

Tone and feel are so often set by the color and graphics on a site. When I tried a white background on this site, my friends told me that it looked cold and sterile and totally unlike the tone of my writing.

So, I’m taking that into consideration as I make the new site. In the past, I’ve preferred white backgrounds when designing sites. It’s easier in many ways to have a white background, at least for an amateur designer/coder like me. All backgrounds are set to white and it’s no big deal! I don’t want my new site to feel cold though, so I’m still playing with it.

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This morning is going to be busy. I’ve got X’s Mommy and Me class followed immediately by lunch and book fair at J’s school. It’s supposed to get downright hot here today, in the upper 80’s, but with storms and a weather change overnight. It’s kind of weird, because I can already feel the weather change coming in my hands. They’ve been fine for almost the last week, but this morning I woke up with my knuckles feeling swollen. I had even dreamed that they were stiff and sore and swollen.