Looking into their eyes as my own

From 2002 to 2020 I parented about 3 hours a day Monday - Friday and 8 hours a day on the weekends.  Once 2020 came around the quantity of hours I parented was WAY more.  The biggest shift aside from quantity was quality.  Being a parent for so many more hours meant I had to be a parent differently. 

The first thing I noticed was I got to know my kids differently.  It's like when you meet a new friend and you hang out a little bit and then you become better friends and you want to hang out more or even go on a vacation with them. You get to know them on a different level.  This is exactly what happened to me.  

In 2022 I retired from work and now my mind and body are focused on these child humans.  My identity was all focused on being their mom, not mixed together with my career.  I had to learn how to be me as a full time mom.   This has been one of the hardest times of my parenting journey.   I often yearn to be back into a career position so my energies are shifted towards that work and purposes.   I would feel awful that my kids need to go to public school for this to happen but just maybe I can switch work with my partner and then he can focus solely on the kids while I focus more on a career.

I originally wanted to look at this from a quantity vs. quality post on this blog but now that I've flushed out the journey above I realize that I only want more out of being alive.  Doing only parenting doesn't bring me fulfillment.  Doing parenting in addition to something else is the formula that brings me to feelings of being me.  Doing only parenting fosters feelings of being a version of me that I don't appreciate or enjoy.   That is why I'm always finding other things to do outside of my parenting role.  

So the quest really is to find the magic formula and fast because as the kids get older the window of time to be me while I'm doing the most "looking in their eyes" parenting is closing and it is important to me to look into their eyes as a whole me instead of a me that is yearning for a different existence.