Who do I want to be?

Why is it when you become a mom, you lose the rest of yourself? It's like nothing else matters - it takes up your entire being. What you once were - a lawyer, a teacher, an accountant - becomes ancillary. People no longer say "Oh, that's Nadia. She's an amazing financial planner. She does my portfolio." Now it's "Oh, that's Nadia. She has triplets! I don't know how she does it."

Think about it. If you run into an old friend, one of the first things you ask is if they're married and have kids. If they do happen to work, it's a job that you consider an afterthought instead of a career you envy. If you are a mom that works outside the home, people always assume you need time off to take care of your kids or that you'll have issues with pumping or emotional phone calls. If you're a stay-at-home mom, you are expected to think like a mom, act like a mom and work your ass off like a mom 24/7. Then, when you're lucky enough for a girls night out, you spend most of it talking about your kids!

When did this become the norm and why doesn't it happen to men? I guess we can blame our parents and their parents and so on and so on.

So, I need to figure out who else I'm going to be. I want my kids to have a great mom, of course, but I also want them to look up to me as something else too. I don't want them to just see the Girl Scout leader or the PTA member, because those things won't last forever. What can I be until I'm old and gray? "That's my mom. She's a writer."