Wow!! I am stunned by the amount of pesonal email I've received regarding my post of January 26th, 2009. I shared with you how I felt, well, "suffocated" right now. Wishing I could do and be someone else.
So many of you have shared those same feelings with me. So many of you feel "suffocated" in your lives.... It's not that you (or I) don't love our families, our husbands, our children........... It's not that you don't want to be a mother, a daughter, a wife.... It's just that sometimes you just want to be a WOMAN - an individual with personal goals, needs, and dreams.
At least for me, that is where my dissatisfaction and need comes from. I've always had and always lived up to my "labels" - a respectful and dutiful daughter, a sister who adores her younger brothers, a wife who loves her husband, a mother that would give her life for her children, a grandmother that sees through the eyes of a precocious two year old.... But I've never had a chance to just be ME - just be a woman without all those labels... to just BE. I don't feel guilty about it. I have no reason to - and either do any of the wonderful woman who have written to me. I'm just finding my way around the solution - because there HAS to be one. None of us should have to settle for what everyone else expects of us.
Why is it that when we reach a point in our lives that we've given all we can give - a point where we want to take our life back from the hands of all those who pull at us in a million different directions - there is guilt involved? What in the WORLD do we have to feel guilty about? Why are we sentenced to a life of living for everyone else but us?
Thank you so much for sharing such personal feelings with me. Your stories, your fears and confessions have validated everything I've been feeling lately. But most of all, thank you for the hugs --- for every email has felt like a hug from a dear friend.
We'll figure this out........... at least for me, I know I have to.