Life lessons

I strongly believe in life lessons.  For almost every situation, I think, "What can I learn from this?"  Sometimes, it's easy things like "never put banana peels in a garbage disposal" or "giving warm chocolate milk to children before bedtime is not the same as giving them warm regular milk."

But generally, the lessons are broader than that.  For the longest time, especially before I had kids, I believe my lesson was to let go of fear.  I had to learn to make decisions based on my heart as well as my head, and not to let fear of negative outcomes dictate who I was becoming.  One of the bravest things I feel I've ever done was saying yes to Jonathan's marriage proposal after two months, because it was such a divergence from my life plans at the time and I didn't know what life would like look afterwards.  It was my very first real leap of faith.

The leaps continued, especially as I had kids.  The author Elizabeth Stone once said,  "The decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide to forever have your heart go walking around outside your body."  I read that quote well before I had children, but I only understood it once Xander and the other boys were born.  It felt like every day as they developed I was (and am) forced to let go of fear, fear of something happening to them, fear of not providing what they need, etc.

This week, the life lesson has morphed a little, in a very tangible way.  While closely related to the general "fear of not being a good enough mother," I've realized that this lesson is less about fear, and more about acceptance: acceptance of who I am, and letting go of who I want or think I should be.

It began when I took two self-quizzes I found linked on Facebook. On one of them, I scored 16 out of 16 for being Type A.  On the other, I scored 3 out of 23 for being an introvert.  I was actually a little surprised by both, as I hadn't thought of myself as having those extremes.

It started a ricochet of self-reflection.  Yes, I'm Type A and an extrovert.  I thrive on being with people in groups, interacting with others and having adult conversations.  I love being with my children... but I also can only take the 2 and 5 year-old bickering for so long.  I've always known this; that's the reason why Jonathan is the stay-at-home parent and not myself.  He has more patience and enjoys it more.

My not-so-new epiphany is that I have trouble with that.  Apparently I know who I am, but want to be someone else, someone like the home-birth circle women I knew in Cincinnati, or my Mormon cousins, or even a rabbinical friend who owns chickens and does craft projects and makes homemade yogurt.  I'm not that person and never will be... but part of me still thinks that person is the better mother than the Type A extrovert who honestly enjoys late-night Board meetings.

The next few years, then, must be about self-acceptance.  It's one thing to say I have a good self-esteem and have a lot to offer my children, but quite another to beat myself up because I want to be the primary parent and hippie-granola in theory, but not in reality.  I can't have both.  I am NOT that person.  Maternity leave has been hard because "caring for a baby" is a really difficult goal for me to enjoy, no matter how much I believe in its value.  (It's also at the root of much of my marital conflict, too, I'm realizing - I have very firm ideas about how to address kid conflict, what to make as a healthy dinner, etc, but then I don't want to do it and so criticize Jonathan for doing it wrong.)

So my next life lesson?  To let go of my ideal of who I should be, and what I should do, in order to be what I consider a good mother and wife, and just accept who I really am.  If I can do that, I think I'll be much happier with my life.  And most likely, that means my husband and kids will be happier with theirs, too.