Who Am I?

With my youngest daughter starting college and my other daughters married, I have involuntarily been pushed into a new stage of life. Over the past months, I have mourned the absence of having my little ones around, as they bustled from jobs to school and dates to friends. I found myself consumed with their lives, hoping for a return to the family life I remember. With the birth of my first grandbaby and preparations for another daughter getting married, I found myself hurting and mourning realizing that I am no longer the center of their world.

So, I threw myself into my occupation to boost my self-esteem and give me something to talk about with friends and family. It didn’t take long to realize this was a shallow, fleeting attempt at finding self-worth.

Having experienced being a daughter, sister, wife, ex-wife, mother, mother-in-law, stepmother, grandmother, student, teacher, coach, homemaker, breadwinner, employee, employer, friend, neighbor, confident, leader, follower, journalist, author, genealogist . . . I have been defined by many people to be many things. Now I face the hardest stage for me — defining who I am now?

Finally, I have accepted the fact that life is:

• too short to live in the past

• too precious to live precociously

• too freeing to let work define me

As I define this new stage of my life, I choose to give up the responsibilities that are no longer mine, turn the sadness of loss into the joy of beginning anew and enjoy the fruits of earlier labors by empowering those in my current circle of influence.

So, here’s to life all over again!

Feel free to drop me a line on where you are in your life cycle. Are you in the middle of juggling responsibilities with no end in sight? feeling the pressure of having to climb an impossible mountain with college, divorce, abandonment, or completely smothered as life passes you by?

Write your personal mission statement for where you are in life today. Feel free to download the “Who?” graphic to write your statement on. Place it somewhere you will see it every day.

Let’s chat next week about empowerment, giving our mission statements strength.