A heartfelt question

Dear Daffodil,

Today I was asked a very interesting question....

 
It was a considerate question. I appreciated it being asked. It was also a thought provoking question. One that I answered happily enough at the time. But it has stopped me in my tracks for the remainder of my day.

This morning I had a lovely catch-up with some friends that I first knew when I was a just a young slip of a girl. We hadn't seen each other for over a decade. So that's a lot of catching up to do :-) It was just great to find out about their lives and share our current personalities with each other over good coffee and some yummy food.

Amongst this catch-up were a million questions. Asked by all of us, of each other, with all care and consideration. With good manners, but as only old friends can ask. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole question session :-)

So, the question that's stopped me in my tracks?

"Do you miss it?"

'It' being the job/work/career that I had/did before small people entered my life.
Or BC - before children, as Mr Co-Parent puts it. 

And you know what? I do miss it. And so I replied in the affirmative. Yes, yes, of course I miss it. I smiled as I said it. And I meant what I said. I still mean it. Desperately! I miss it from the bottom of my heart. Maybe I haven't acknowledged or thought about it much/enough until today. But I certainly thought about it for the rest of the day. And it's made my heart ache. 

Not that I regret, not even for a moment, the small people in my life. They are a part of me. Nor do I feel undervalued. Or unchallenged :-) No, it's more complex than that.

In my considerations/deliberations today I've realised just how complex it is to decide what is right to do as a mother. What is right for you? And for your family? Do you stay at home? Do you go back to work? Do you try and do it all? Do you give it all up? It's up to each family to decide what is right for their situation.

And, what is right for the situation as a whole may not be right for all of the individuals within that situation. Or perhaps there are just times when individuals, ie. mothers, feel a gap of their multi-faceted personality! Get that? Please tell me, bright daffodil, that this is normal! That all of us feel these gaps sometimes, that all of us need bits of brightness in our lives to fill those gaps.

Oh, and daff, thanks for being a bright spot on my kitchen bench!
Especially today, when I felt that gap in my being keenly.