Maybe it's just going to be the first few days or weeks of sharing my story, but I thought a lot about what I wanted to say today yet couldn't quite wrap it all together.
I grew up with a mother who stayed home raising me and my two younger brothers. This was very typical leading up to this period of time. Not once did my mother miss a thing - she was always there and didn't seem to show the tough days on her face or in her voice. God bless her for that!
Once I hit Jr. High, a strange pattern started emerging. Parents were getting divorced at an alarming rate. It was incredibly painful; not only were my friends coping with having two homes, but mothers started facing the tough reality of entering the workforce for the first time. This was scary and my age group all across the US got to watch it unfold...oh what fun the '80's were!
With these visions imprinted, fast forward to the mid to late 90's when most of us "girls" were now college graduates, several years into our careers. The need for and quest for independence, breaking glass ceilings and competing with men in the executive ranks was extremely high! Maybe, just maybe, fear of repeating history and ending up divorced with no ability to make a decent income to support a family has set in. Many of us have waited until our 30's to have a family, and some of us (including me) ended up with a first marriage that failed. Career focused, yes. Family focused, not so much.
Here's a discovery I made soon after becoming a mother and trying to juggle too much - maybe I don't have to let fear of failure dictate who I choose to be. When I became a mother, it finally all started to make some sense.
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