My legacy

As tradition has it, we take family pictures each year during the fall months. We started this tradition, just Handsome Pants and me, back on our first wedding anniversary and I vowed to make it stick. And so far, so good. I cherish these pictures that we take year after year and I can't help but stop and stare at them hanging throughout our home. I marvel at how much everyone has changed and how swiftly children can grow. I survey how time has aged HP and me, too, and usually decide that the years have been pretty good to us, less a few new wrinkles or what not.

After 15 years of doing this, I could show you so many beautifully-posed family portraits from session to session. And chances are, you might even be sick of seeing them. But you all know by now how much I love to share and show off my family. They make me more proud than anything in this world.

And yet today, I want to put the 'perfect' shots aside and talk about this picture. It’s, unequivocally, my very favorite from our session last year. One of the last taken, it captures an instant where I was truly ‘in the moment’. As a mother, I’m constantly thinking, and planning, and fixing, and fine-tuning. And the day this photo was taken was no exception. I was frazzled getting everyone ready for portraits. I probably yelled more than I should have and maybe even threatened to call the whole thing off. That’s what us mothers do when the pressure is on. I know I’m not alone in that. We had hit traffic trying to get to the photo location and we were literally in a race against the sunset. We arrived stressed but grateful that we made it. We were making memories, after all. And we got some gorgeous shots to show for it. I’ll always cherish them.

But back to the frazzled part, because I am committed to being authentic with you all. It’s no secret that I live my life in service to my family, and quite honestly, it can be exhausting. It’s a decision Handsome Pants and I made a long time ago. This old-school notion that I’d be a stay at home mother and housewife, despite a developing career and multiple advanced degrees of my own. For the good of our family, my husband’s career and to fulfill a personal, lifelong dream of my own, I left it all. I closed the door on my own professional development in favor of fostering theirs. And most days, I’m at peace with that and I’m grateful for the ability to do it. The work I do in our home and for our family is priceless and I know that. This is not to disparage the working mother, either. I see a whole lot of importance and value there, too. I respect all the decisions that can be made in mothering. And in the time since this picture was taken, I, myself, have dipped my toes back into the working world, upstarting my own virtual assistant business and taking on several writing ventures. We all find the balance that works for us, and right now, this one works for me and I'm happier than I could dare to imagine, even if I'm just working part-time still and dedicating most of my efforts to wifing and Momming. I'm happy, though, so that's all that matters, right?

But sometimes, I let doubt creep in. I wonder if I made the right decision all those years ago. I question how the world sees me, as a woman who holds two master’s degree but doesn’t have a flourishing career to show for it. A wife who staunchly puts her husband’s success above her own in a world where the art of being a homemaker is dying. I have my freak outs. My ‘What am I doing with my life?!’ moments where my husband has to talk me down off the ledge. And the value of that talk down being without condition is not lost on me. HP never pushes me one way or another. He always listens and tries to provide insightful feedback and suggestions. And in the end, I come away feeling assured that this is what I’m meant to be doing with this season of my life. And someday, I’ll figure out what I want to be when I grow up, even if it’s long after my children have grown up, too.

Life isn’t linear. We don’t have to achieve it all on a prescribed timeline. And while my 20s were marked by high heels and a steady salary and advanced academic degrees, my 30s can be marked by yoga pants and meal planning and feathering our nest and nurturing our children. It’s not a race and it’s not a competition. I love each of you for where you are on your own journey and I look forward to seeing where we each go as time progresses. I’m not measuring you against a checklist, so why do I sometimes do that to myself? I shouldn’t, and I’m resolved to stop doing it.

After all, when I look at this picture, I see that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, in the arms of three people who don’t see me as anything other than who I am in any given moment in time. Surely they’d long forgotten the stress of getting to this moment and they were just as happy to be done with the perceived ‘hard part’, the picture taking. I’m confident I matter to them and they matter to me, and at the end of the day, that’s the very essence of what I want my life’s work and legacy to be.