I am participating in the 30 Days of Thanks by BoogieMum. What a great idea for making November a month of thanks instead of just a day!
I am thankful for the privilege of being a stay at home parent. It has not always been easy, but I have never missed one of my kids' firsts. For that, I am forever grateful.
The first year of staying home was very difficult. It is really amazing how attached I was to my career and how much I let that career define who I was. Giving that up, along with 8 years of effort building my career was hard.
I had a bit of an identity crisis.
When we moved and my husband changed jobs, there was a lot of paperwork to fill out. I was embarrassed to enter my newly acquired employment status as "homemaker". It sounded so old fashioned and more than just a little lame to me.
That word did not reflect my bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems.
That word did not reflect my work towards my masters degree.
That word also did not reflect the blood, sweat, and tears I had put into doing my job and doing it well.
It was as if all of my efforts were just washed away and replaced with that one little word: homemaker.
To be honest, my stating that I was a homemaker drew some nasty comments:
"Is that all you do?"
"No, I mean what do you do?"
"You are just a mom?"
It took me a few years to grow into these titles of homemake and mom. I now realize that even if others do not appreciate my choice to be a stay at home mom, I appreciate it.
I know my kids better than anyone else in the world. My husband and I are really and truly raising our children.
I know my daughter's best friends from school and at least one of their parents. I can go to the school with the boys for lunch with her and meet her friends because I am a stay at home mom.
If one of our kids is sick, there is no doubt about who will take care of him or her. There is no comparing schedules to see who can take time off work.
I don't want to start a debate about what is better working or staying at home. There are pros and cons to each of them.
It has been a process, but I have learned to appreciate being a stay at home parent. Like I said at the beginning, it was not easy and it was hard to appreciate sometimes when I had stayed up all night with a newborn and had to be up all day with two pre-schoolers. But I will never regret the years I have given up in my career to stay at home with my kids. Yes, I will most likely go back to work when they are all in school....
But for now I am just a mom. :)
