Most moments of every day…
Someone is loving me.
Someone is asking me questions.
Someone is asking for hugs and kisses and cuddles.
Someone doesn’t want to be alone.
Someone wants me to play and read books and color and find the play dough.
Always.
I am quite literally always in demand.
And yet why do I feel so lonely?
It would seem like this vocation of mine would be the antidote to loneliness. After all, I am never alone. But oftentimes it feels like I am loved but never actually seen.
Ordinarily this doesn’t really bother me. I enjoy dedicating my life to helping these three little ones feel loved in theirs. I find my greatest joys through their joy. I find the most meaning when I help them make sense of things.
It’s just that every so often, I want to go up to the roof and scream out my name and say that I am a person and I have things that I like and don’t like. I have passions and ambitions, likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams. Most of me is their mama, but a part of me is a person too, autonomous and individual.
And I really want my girls to see that. I want them to see me being their mom but also being a person.
Sometimes I think they were sent to teach me more than I could ever teach them. Because just as I am feeling most invisible, I am reminded that I have a responsibility to them to be visible and to teach them that it is okay to be seen.
They push me to be more, to do more, to want more. They push me to be the best version of myself.
I hope one day they will see that.
I felt like that for so many years. Little ones demand all of us and eventually we are left figuring out who we are again. My kids are 9, 12, and 13 and I feel that as they try to figure out who they are in this big world, I am doing the same after sacrificing so much of myself for them for so many years. It is a fun discovery for all. I enjoy watching them become visible and their own people in this world and they need to see me real and having a place in the world too. Linking up with you at the Seaman mom! Blessings to you! Love, Rachael @ Inking the Heart
I can certainly see where you’re coming from… I don’t know this from any experience of my own (I don’t have kids) but it seems like it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day when you have young ones. They love you unconditionally, but they also see you as Mom the Demi-Goddess that oversees their world rather than a person with hopes and dreams of your own and a desire to connect to others and to be seen.
While I don’t have the kids, I know I certainly can relate… I work at home and work’s been slow recently. I’m caught up in my day to day routines that sometimes aren’t terribly fruitful… and honestly? Most days I just want someone to hang out with and talk to, but don’t have much of anyone these days…
I love this post! I feel the same way at times.They will see iy one day, when they have kids for themaelves. I apprrciate my mother tons more now that I am a mother. It’s hard work and sometimes I just want to hibernate. You are more than a “mother” always remember that. 🙂
I can so relate! For years, I was someone’s mama. That’s how I was introduced in public, at church, school. I felt as though I’d never be seen as me. Then they grew up. Now all are married with children of their own. And I’m introduced as Gramma. But the rewards of the plethora of hugs and kisses more than makes up for the renewed invisibility . . . 🙂