One Less Key

I had my last day of work on Friday, March 7th. My plan is now to stay at home with our daughter and with any future kids we have, so my "time off" is kind of indefinite. It's a weird feeling.

On my way home from my last day at the office, I felt overcome with unexpected emotions, and I felt the need to write them down somehow. So I dictated the following (more or less) on my phone:

One less key on my key ring. Why do I even care?

It's interesting, but as I drive away from work for the last time, I find myself less excited than I thought I'd be. It's harder to walk away than I expected.

Don't get me wrong; I'm very much looking forward to a new chapter in my life, and I don't regret my decision to stay home with our baby. And yet, I feel an unexpected sadness. I feel as though my life is never going to be the same. I feel like I am actually, in fact, giving something up and making a real sacrifice. Before this moment, it didn't feel like a sacrifice at all, but I'm slowly realizing that it is.

I actually will miss working in a job outside of my home. I'll miss being able to look at a magazine and say, "Hey, I did that." I'll miss applying the skills that I spent years learning and paid thousands of dollars to gain. I'll miss feeling like I own things and have a handle on them.

Because I can't think of anything more out of my control than having a kid. There is something very controlled about an office environment. Even though you can't control the people around you, and things are always changing, and they get crazy and busy and messed up sometimes, there is still a cycle to it all. There is still a predictability, and you can generally know what to expect. And while I don't think I have any terribly misguided notions about being a parent, I don't really know what it will be like when it's me and when it's my kid. I don't even know what our baby will be like. And for someone who likes to be in control of her own situation, all of that is pretty daunting.

So okay, the point is that there are things I'm going to miss about having a career. There are definitely some feelings of loss here. But they are not the typical feelings, the ones I'm sure everyone expects me to be feeling. I do NOT, for example, feel like I'm giving up my sense of self to be a stay-at-home mom. And I refuse to ever feel that way.

I hate it when a woman who quit working to stay at home says she feels like she has given up her identity. (And sorry if that offends anyone reading this.) Staying at home to raise kids is definitely a sacrifice, and I can absolutely see why women might feel this way, but I really think that such an attitude approaches things from the wrong perspective.

I had a friend who once told me that she didn't want to be defined by the thing she did best. She didn't want to be thought of or described as "the piano player" even though she has great musical talent. At the time, I didn't understand how she felt that way. I would have given anything to be so proficient at something--anything, really--that people would think of me in such a narrow way. But now I think I understand.

I don't want to be defined by one particular thing. I don't want my identity to be wrapped up in one single aspect of my life. I don't want to be thought of as nothing but a mom, just as I wouldn't want to be thought of as nothing but an editor. Who I am is the combined result of all the things I do and think and feel. No one thing can define me.

But in our culture, stay-at-home moms tend to be thought of as nothing but stay-at-home moms. And it's really unfair. Being a mother (stay-at-home or working) is just one part of a woman's identity. It adds to the person that she already was. It doesn't erase her former self; it just enhances it. Every woman that I knew before she became a mother is the same person she was before she had kids, only now she is more. Now she has another (albeit very important) layer.

The problem is that in today's world, we focus so much of our attention on what a person "does." It's one of the first things we ask a new acquaintance: "So, what do you do?" The expected response is one that indicates a chosen career, and the answer received is automatically used to determine that person's identity. And it's always a single marker. He's a teacher. She's an accountant. She's a stay-at-home mom.

The even bigger problem is that of all these identity markers, only one carries with it the feeling of a loss of self-identity: stay-at-home mom. Women who are married to their jobs could say that they, too, feel a loss of personal identity, but they don't. At least I've never heard a working woman say such a thing. So why is that?

The only answer I can come up with right now is that in our society, a career is considered an acceptable reason for "giving up" your identity. If a woman fully devotes herself to her job, she is driven and motivated. But if a woman fully devotes herself to staying at home and raising kids, she is not reaching her full potential or is failing to be all she could be. Worst of all, she herself often feels that she has lost her sense of self as a result.

Personally, I think that you can "lose your identity" with anything that you really throw your whole self into, be it a job or charity work or church service or anything that takes a lot of time. But those pursuits are more socially acceptable than stay-at-home mothering. And that's just ridiculous to me. It's just plain insulting.

For me, I don't feel like I have lost or will lose my identity simply because I'm choosing the path of a stay-at-home mom. What I'll miss about working are the people and the work itself. I really do enjoy editing, as it turns out. And it's okay to miss these things. It's right, even. What's not right is to allow myself to feel less important, less special, less independent, or less anything, really. I still feel like I'm making the right decision for me and for our family, and that is what really matters most.

So although it was hard to remove the office key from my key ring today, it's not because--as I originally started to worry--I am somehow less important now. It's because change is always difficult. Moving on is always bittersweet. And the end of a life chapter always brings with it some feelings of loss.

But I'm still me. And I will continue to be me, even if our baby is crazy and my life spins out of control and I sometimes feel like I made the wrong choice to stay at home. And if I ever catch myself feeling like I've lost myself, maybe this rambling blog post will remind me: I am more than what I "do" or don't "do." My identity, like Shrek and onions, has layers. And I choose, in this moment, to spend the next several years as a stay-at-home mom discovering them all.

This should be interesting...