self-portrait Sunday

family trip to the park

This is our first weekend since L started full-time work.  It means we're all home together for the weekends!  Family goes to the park.  Family bikes to the woods.  Family watches preschool edutainment about animals.  It also allows for individual-time more easily as well.  One parent hangs out with Little N and the other one can do yoga or surf the web or write or nap. The possibilities for family and for self-care are expanding for all of us.

I know that this is normal for so many families but it feels like a big deal, like a luxury, to me.  This new schedule is the result of a big changes - choices - that L and I have made and that's got my world upside down.  Because in the deepest kernel of my brain I still believe that being a mom means that you don't get to make any more choices for yourself.  That everything is a matter of suck it up and endure.  That you are bound to only what is safe and popular.  At least, that I am bound to those things.  So to discover that a conventional job at an up-and-coming company wasn't right for me and then choosing something else feels... selfish, wrong, luxurious, inappropriate.  On par with opening a burlesque school or joining a Vanagon caravan of homeschooling new agers. Different.

I understand that that isn't true.  I can peruse the evidence on-line and in life and understand that there are many ways to be a good mom.  Slowly but surely the lies and half-truths in my mind are getting shaken loose, turned upside down and inside out so something true can be perceived and acted upon for me and for my family.  Like this first weekend together.