“Do you know who you are? Do you understand what has happened to you? Do you want to live this way?”
If you’re a lover of Thursday night TV, you’ll recognize that line from Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy, just a few weeks ago. As crazy as it sounds, those words from character Dr. Cristina Yang resonated with me, as I journey through figuring out what’s next for me.
When you’re a young professional, you define yourself by your career. You know who you are, you likely have clear and maybe goals. You feel you have lots of time to accomplish them when and how you choose.
When you become a mother for the first time – and especially the stay-at-home kind – your world changes in a wonderful way in just a heartbeat as your life becomes largely centred about your child, and time is less your own. Add a couple more children in the next 3 ½ years and despite the complete joy you feel with each addition, the utter chaos and exhaustion that comes with it means it’s entirely too easy to lose yourself and to lose touch with who you are and what you wanted out of life.
Days become a wrestling match of diapers, playdates, nursery school board meetings, elementary school volunteer days, homework, soccer games, laundry and bedtime stories. When the kids are young and napping, you might try to shoehorn in some freelance work so your skills don’t get too rusty. By the time everyone is tucked in for the night, there’s little time left to analyze what’s happening to you, outside of being “Mummy”.
Add a divorce into the mix, and the sudden terror when you come to grips with the fact that you are now the sole breadwinner supporting those three little ones financially and emotionally 24/7 and there’s even less time to think about whether you want to live the life you’re living – you’re simply too busy with the reality of doing what needs to be done to keep all the balls in the air in the complicated juggling act in which you’ve somehow become the star. Watch a friend pass away far too young, and your mortality becomes more real. It can all get a bit overwhelming.
Eventually, as life gets a bit easier, the clouds part and slowly you come out of the haze to realize that you’re not quite sure who you are any more or how you got there.
Albert Einstein is often credited with saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And one day, about a year ago, as the metaphorical clouds began to part in my life, I woke up and realized that definition fit me to a “T”.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I really like my life and I wouldn’t change it, but I got here more by good luck than good management. I have three great teenagers, a job that most days continues to challenge me and a handful of really good friends who’ve seen me through good times and bad. Now that my kids are older, I’ve started carving out more time for me, filling it with exercise, volunteering and other new experiences. It also means I finally have some time to muse the same questions as Dr. Yang:
“Do you know who you are? Do you understand what has happened to you? Do you want to live this way?”
It turns out, I kind of like who I am, where I am and generally like the way I live my life. Even though I may not know quite how I got here, it’s a good place.
But good place or not, I’m determined to ensure I’ve got my hands firmly on the steering wheel and a clear roadmap to better understand the how as I journey forward. There will be side trips along the way, for sure, but as the next chapter opens up for me, it will be as purposeful journey.
