Dansons in Delaware

My friend Mary wrote this on her blog recently about her thoughts after a vacation (without kids) in Norway.

I can completely relate:

"I came back with the certainty that things need to change. Childcare for Mazen. A job for me. Extra income for the family. I want to be a woman who has some self-esteem about who she is as a whole person, not just in her role as a mother to small children. I want to have the energy and the ability to bring beauty back into my daily life.

This trip, coming at the end of a particularly long, hard and stressful summer, has allowed me to see that my life is radically out of balance. I feel like I'm peripheral in my own life. It's time to make some changes, to move forward.

It's time to remember that if I choose to bring beauty into my life it doesn't need to be justified or explained. It's time to remember that I am an adult and I don't need to justify or explain myself to anyone. It's time to discover who I am now, having been living in a parallel world for the last five years.

Scary stuff."

I oscillate very often between feeling happy that I have the privilege to stay at home and hang out with Michael - and Mary's paragraphs above. Some days - I embrace my life of service without complaint. Some days - I think the above.

And I really don't know what to do at this time in my life. It's like a midlife crisis but without the car.
P