These Are the Days of Our Lives

Time seems to be flying by at lightening speed. It feels like just yesterday my husband and I welcomed our first baby into the world. I looked down for just a second, lifted my head back up, and now she is 5 and starting kindergarten in 1 month. It seems impossible. I fought the good fight of potty training with out beautiful 3 year-old son. He is now completely potty trained and, while it certainly makes life easier and I am so very proud of him, it also comes with a sense that he is no longer my baby boy... he is growing into a young little man everyday. That also seems impossible. And now I am watching our 16 month old become more of a toddler and less of a baby everyday; walking, making her attempts at talking, and having her own opinion on what she would like to do and where she would like to go. This seems incredibly impossible.

But all of this growing up and gaining independence on their part is teaching me something very important about myself... I need to find my own identity outside of just being their mom. In hindsight, I realize that I have always struggled with knowing who I am... truly who I am. I think when we had Michaela that I latched on to the role of being "mom" and didn't look back. It was a built-in identity.

This past April, I turned 30. I am going back to school and working full-time again. I learned to knit and crochet and am making an attempt at learning to sew as well. And while I love all of these things, they are not who I am. I think that my inability to connect with my true sense of who I am is one of the things that has contributed to my weight issues throughout my life.

So here I am, 30 years-old with beautiful children and an amazing husband; with talents, gifts, and abilities that I am very proud to have; with responsibilities and duties that I enjoy doing; but none of which are my identity. I recently watched the film Julie & Julia (which I loved) and it struck me while watching it: it seems from an outside point of view that both Julie and Julia were searching for themselves and, in some way, found their identity through food, but in a healthy way that created something beautiful through the process. This is what I am looking for; a healthy way to find my sense of who I am that creates something beautiful and worthwhile to share with the world.

And maybe I can find a way to lose some weight while I'm at it. Because I'm not seeing a lot of success just sitting in this same state of ambiguous wandering.