Recently I saw this term SAHM = Stay At Home Mom. It's a badge that a new generation of women now seem to wear proudly, who have given up their high power careers for another set of priority in life. In contrast to the stigma of "sacrificing your career"/"wasting your talent" and other negative connotations that this decision was once associated with, more people struggle with the balance and eventually find a new place for themselves that they are comfortable with.
Mic and I chose the path to be SAHP (Stay At Home Parents), both, at the same time. It's an unusual choice for people our age, and we often get very mixed reactions from people we know about this decision. Some cannot comprehend what we are leaving behind -- seemingly wonderful careers and comfy lifestyles, while most are rooting themselves more deeply into the community, jobs, lives they have at this stage, we are choosing to uproot ourselves completely and move into completely unchartered territory. Some say with deep envy, about how great it is to enjoy an early retirement and spend time traveling and enjoying time with our child together.
Mic and I called this our "Journey", a dream with its seeds planted over 3 years ago after our first vacation to NZ, and since then Jack-Jack joined our family and fast tracked this dream to reality. We had an idea initially of jointly keeping a weekly journal on a new blog, recording the thoughts, struggles and highlights of "The Journey", but that quickly got barried in the never ending chores of childcare. Now that I am starting this "new chapter" blog again, and since our journey is closely linked with our lives on The Journey, I figured this is not a bad place for me to record some of my musings.
In reality, life is neither that good nor that bad as our friends secretly worries/envies for us.
It's for sure not as rosy as it seems when we are casually meeting up with our friends, as the women who have high power career husbands on business trips Monday through Friday say with deep envy how great it is to raise your child together. Yes, that aspect is great, and from the surface of both parents accompanying Jack-Jack in the playground it seems like a rosy perfect picture. I enjoy having mic as a partner in the process and I am not sure if I want to do this completely on my own. I know we are very fortunate to have to ability to make that decision while most people need to divide and conquer on the responsibilities of childcare and money making in a family. But just as every coin has two sides, behind the sunny playground drowned in Jack-Jack's laughter and our smiles as proud parents, there's also the hard labour of childcare, which we choose to do and not outsource to anyone. That means being 24/7 on call for a child that wakes with nightmares in the wee hours of the night, not have a moment to ourselves for the 14 hours that he's awake during the day, changing his diaper, brushing his teeth, preparing his food (and our food), cleaning up after, keeping up with the endless energy a child has to play during the day, even when we are exhausted or simply just don't feel like it anymore and simply prefer to lay down on a sofa and read a book quietly. It's an endless loop of house chores, even though it is a labour of love, it does get tiring and repetitive after a while.
The other thing that became very clear is even without a job, as adults, we still feel the strong desire to find meaning and fulfillment in life. Of course being a parent is part of that, but there's still a hole that needs to be filled on defining who we are, and what we are on earth for. I found while I was working, that question doesn't get asked so often, because most of the time I chose to ignore it, since there really isn't much energy left after work, and keeping up with achieving at work occupied much of my mind and created that false sense of meaning and accomplishment. Now that we have left that world and slowed down, I first realized how quickly I disconnected from that corporate work world. Apart from a few friends, other people that nod and smile and chit chat at work I find very little desire to stay in touch with since there was very little deep connection to begin with. What seemed to have mattered so much for the past 15 years vanished so quickly. The network, the promotions, the pride. While cleaning up my old office, I had a stack of "deal toys", which are mementos of transactions you completed in the past sitting around, loudly announcing what I have done and accomplished, now I look at the box sitting at home and wonder if they even quality as recyclable plastic. And with that aspect of priority/accomplishment of "work" disappearing in our lives, finding a new focus, routine, sense of self-worth, pursuit, is our new challenge.
The third aspect is time we spent together as a family. Now I scoff off the love-birds vows of "wishing to spend every moment in life together". No, no one wants to spend every minute of the day together, no matter how much you love each other. I thought mic and I could spend a lot of time together, and I think we can, probably beyond the ability most couples can (though I have no place to judge/verify that), but on this journey we still discovered the challenges of being in each other's space all the time, and not having a clear division of labour when both of our responsibilities and "stage" are at home. It took quite a while to find the right place and balance for us to get along, which was a challenge I never imagined we would face.
But overall I would say the journey has been very rewarding. Spending time with the people that matters most in your life, is hard work, but worthwhile hard work. The time that we were able to spend with our extended families has also yielded great fruit -- we helped both families do a huge clean up of the old family home, moved Mic's parents to their new flat, and I had such a breakthrough with my own father that I have never been closer to him in my entire life. I cannot put a monetary value on these things, but I can only say how grateful I am for God's provision of these beautiful fruitful relationships in our lives.
And the journey continues....
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