I hope I don’t look back and see that the majority of my writing, in response to prompts, leads back to “being a mom”. That sounds so boring and typical. However, the answer I came up with this morning is ninety-nine percent about being a mom.

I do believe I was direction-less before I had kids. I was so indecisive. Throughout junior high and high school I’d changed my mind about what my career would be, countless times. I couldn’t seem to stick with anything. Also, my parents were not the type that pushed me or my sisters to go straight into post-secondary school. As per my dad, you left your mark on the world with finding a job and going to work everyday, even if the job was pumping gas. Didn’t matter, as long as you’re showing up everyday, earning an honest living.

So when I graduated and most of my friends and class left our small town for bigger centres to attend college and university, I became even more lost. I think I was a little depressed to be honest. Anyway life did get better when I found some older friends who, like me, had not yet gone to college or university and were just working and having fun. A few years later I got tired of making minimum wage and did apply and attend college, moved up north and started my career as a nurse at the hospital.

But life still made me feel aimless, when I was alone with myself and my thoughts. My partner didn’t bring me complete happiness and neither did my job. Becoming a mom was what did the trick. When I say that now it sounds slightly pathetic. You know, that I felt I couldn’t be just happy with myself, but it’s true. Really all I had wanted ever was to get married and have kids. The getting married part didn’t do the trick but the having babies part sure did.

I finally felt like I was on course. I finally knew what to do each day. I was a mom. My days were planned out for me. My world revolved around them. It was a busyness I had always needed. Not much down time and little time to wallow in my own thoughts. Perfect. And I loved every second of it. These three kids gave me the direction I had always been missing. The wind in my sails.

And so that’s how I lived my life for more than ten years, on the basis of being a mom. It was my compass. Would a mom do this? Would a mom wear this? Would a mom go there? Saying it now, it sounds like I completely lost my identity in being someone’s mom. But I say, it’s when I found my identity.

Two years ago I was looking down the barrel of empty nest syndrome. Two of the three were gone, Cordelia was entering high school. I had a lot of spare time on my hands. I didn’t lose my mind, I was exercising regularly, doing yoga and I took up writing. And then, we became parents of an eighteen month old. So now I am living the busy mom life all over again. I love it. This is going to carry me another ten years.

Ten years of knowing exactly which direction I’m going.