Saturday, January 7, 2012

Joy of the Home - Not Just a Mother


My blog title "The Joy of the Home" may give readers the impression that I am always joyful at home. I'm very sorry to say that I am not. I have grown up in a world that has given girls so many double messages. One being that women have rights and freedom to choose their path in life.... as long as that path includes working. For as long as I can remember growing up people asked the same question over and over, "What do yo want to be when you grow up/leave school?". I don't know that my answer was ever a wife and mother. I knew that I wanted to be married and have children at some point, but I never really saw that as an occupation.

During my last year of high school I remember one time when our home room teacher actually asked us this question, wanting us to share with the class, our hopes and goals for the future after we left. There was lots of different answers, someone want to be a vet, another a farmer, a teacher, a doctor, and so on. All was going well until one of my classmates answered that she wanted to be a MOTHER! "A MOTHER!" Well our female teacher was most unimpressed with that answer. She belittled the female student, saying that was not a real goal and she could be so much more than that. At the time I don't think that I thought too much about it, but it really was a message that speaks of our social belief, that women shouldn't settle for being "just" a mother.

So my jounery began to make a career for myself. I studied my Bachelor in Perfroming Art and then went on to the next step of studying teaching... During that time I met my husband to be, we married, and our first child was conceieved three month after that. I had known I wanted to be a mother, but I had this impression that once she was born I would put her in care a few hours a day while I continued study.... But when she arrived the thought of putting her in care was out of my mind... there was no way I could do that.

It was then that my thought processes began and I started questioning, why do I have to be more than a mother? What is wrong with me "just" being a wife and mother?. Interestly enough anyone that is a wife and mother knows that there really is no "Just". When your a mother you actually take on so many roles, comforter, teacher, cook, cleaner, nurse, taxi, and much much more! To actually give this new role justice it takes a lot of time and energy. The role is extremely difficult, but amazingly rewarding. However there was still this darkness hanging over my head when people would ask me what I did. It didn't take me long to realise that it was my mind set that needed changing, I wasn't going to be able to change society but I could change me.

Since that time I have been on a journey to find the Joy in being at home. I am not always the best at it and I clearly have my struggles, but it is a journey. I had and am having to retrain myself. I have spent all this time in school "Learning" but never really being taught how to run a home, how to tend a garden to feed my family, how to cook nutritious meals that will benefit my family three times a day, how to disciple myself to put several loads of washing on the line, bring it in, and fold it. As well as read to my children lots, and play with them, listen to what they care about , and the list goes on and on.

So this blog in part is about that journey for me. Learning to find the joy in doing the mundane tasks over and over, and what I like to call "sucking the joy out of everything" experience every last drop and savoring it. Experience this role as much as I can, while I can.

I hope you too are on the same journey of learning to suck the joy out of every moment you get. You never know when it will end.

4 comments:

  1. Great blog with lots of practical and inspiring information. Well done Christina :-)

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  2. Thanks for the encouragement Roberto and Daniela! :)

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  3. I just adore your blog, I have just been introduced to it :) I am grateful to have found this post especially because all I want to do is be a wife and mummy :)

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    1. Oh thanks so much. SO glad others feel that way too. :)

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