Changes

I realized that big changes really aren't given proper time in our culture. We rush from place to place, from event to event, etc, without stopping to breathe. I recently finished What No One Tells the Bride and while it speaks from a more narrow viewpoint of the author (a cis woman in a hetero relationship) she makes some very excellent points, about recognizing some changes take time to acclimate into our lives.

I felt that way. I still feel that way sometimes. I've been married two years and some days, it still feels odd to be a 'wife'. I don't know if I ever will ever find a satisfactory definition of that word. But I try to make it my own each day.

A lot of my hesitation and confliction comes from my identity being tossed around like a ship on high seas ever since I was a child. From abuse survivor, to being diagnosed with a mental disorder, to struggling with an auto-immune disease, to therapy and then to wife, it was a lot to handle. I feel like I've really gotten my identity back in the last two or three years. But then as soon as my husband and I were married, the baby questions started. I've always wanted children, but more in the abstract. Now there is the very real possibility of becoming a mother in the next two years and it has me running for the hills. I worry about being a child of abuse, worrying whether history will repeat itself. (Not that there is a likely chance at all.) I worry about having my identity upended yet again, just as my life has become calm again. Especially when my FIL makes comments like he did yesterday:

Me- "I don't think I could be a SAHM. I love my job and after a week of little adult interaction, I think I'd go stir-crazy."

FIL-"Maybe you should rethink motherhood then. Children should really be with a parent." O_o

But reading this article was a breath of fresh scented air. I can have my identity and just add another aspect to it, if I want. I like knowing that workable options are out there and that people have made them work.