I’ve been reading some of my old posts. I came across this one and remembered how much I loved it. I remembered how much I loved writing it and how good it made me feel. I’ve decided to give it one more time around the block. Hope you enjoy it.
Every year on New Year’s Eve, I sit down and I set some goals for myself. I refuse to make what everyone else calls resolutions. I have had too many years where I have failed at those rotten things and then felt horrible about myself because of it. This year, I set a pretty lofty goal for myself. I said that I was going to make 2013 my bitch. I was going to have my way with her and not vice versa. I was going to spend the year finding me and taking care of me. The real me! And believe it or not, that is exactly what I have been doing.
If I was going to be finding me, I had to realize that I had been playing hide and seek with myself for a very long time. I have been hiding behind my titles for a long time. I love being a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a teacher, etc, etc, etc. But, I put every one of those titles ahead of the one title that I should love the most~~~just being me, Nancy.
I came on the tails of a generation that always put the woman of the family last. Not that she wasn’t loved, but she was always putting everyone elses needs ahead of her own. When I got married at the ripe old age of 18, I thought that was the way it was supposed to be and I just followed right along in the pattern.
I married a man that I had known for two years. We started dating when I was a sophomore in high school. After I graduated, we married that fall and have been together ever since. We will celebrate our 40th anniversary in September. I love this man more than I did then. I can’t imagine my life without him. He is my biggest supporter in all things I do now, but it wasn’t always like that. You see, he came from a family who had also bought into the whole woman last pattern.
At 18, I was a stay at home wife. My husband didn’t want his wife to work and I was okay with that. I cleaned house, shopped, did the laundry and all the other wifely duties that wives perform. At 20, I became a stay at home mom. I loved it! With the exception of doing some in home daycare, that was what I stayed until the age of 37 when my youngest child started school.
With an empty nest of children all in school, there was only so much I could clean and I was bored silly. I started doing lunch duty at the kids school. I told the principal that if there was anything she needed help with, I was her girl. Two days later, she said she needed help in the new preschool. The girl that was doing mornings, couldn’t do afternoons and they were starting afternoon classes two days a week. Preschool is the one place that doesn’t require you to have a college degree. Woo hoo, I had a paying job where I worked five hours a week. By spring of that year, the other girl quit and I’ve been there full time ever since. I start my 21st year next month.
As I look back now, I think getting that job was the first tiny step in finding me. I had to start thinking about me in the littlest ways. Things like what was I going to where to work? But, I still worried about everyone else needs first. It was just what I did. Of course now, I also had added the needs of the people at school to my list. One step forward, two steps back.
As my girls got older, there was less need for me to be around all the time. I began to get involved in other things. I was elected to parish council at our church, I joined a bunco group (which I am still in today), I went to some out of town conferences for school, started going out with girlfriends for dinners and shopping. Just another step in the finding me process, but I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.
Fast forward to January 13, 2009. I entered the world of blogging. If finding me was the goal, blogging would be the means or at least the springboard. Blogging made me question things I had thought were right. It made me question things I thought were wrong. It brought me the means to make amazing friends that I may never meet in person, but I still love them as if I had known them my entire life. I have even been lucky enough to meet some of them in person. Who knew that some of them lived so close. Blogging is what brought me right here to the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.
2009 was also the first time I saw Wicked. I’ve seen it three times now. I so identified with Elphaba when she sang Defying Gravity. As I listened to those words, it was just how I felt. This verse especially spoke to me.
Something has changed within me Something is not the same I’m through with playing by the rules Of someone else’s game Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!