I am

Who am I?

I am a woman, a wife, a mother, an employee, a lover, a friend. I am a Virgo, a homeowner, a consumer, an accountant. I am a pet owner, a housekeeper, a caretaker. I am a writer, an artist, a voyeur. I am a liberal, a leftist, a conservative, a radical. I am a literalist and an interpreter.

I am a feminist, a modern woman, a high heel and pair of stockings. I am unshaven legs and lipstick. I am the epitome of emotion and the definition of rationality.

I am a giant belly laugh, a witty smile, and a tear running down my face. I am brazen, yet fearful; strong, yet weak. I am happy yet frustrated, fulfilled yet striving. I am wise and knowledgeable yet naïve and ignorant.

I am a walking contradiction. I defy logic.

I am a woman who is struggling against the labels that society has assigned to me and trying to reconcile those with the ones I ascribe to myself. I am a woman on an eternal shopping spree for meaning and definition. Sometimes I rent, sometimes I buy, and sometimes I return the labels and adjectives in my life.

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Most recently I am the mother of two children with special needs. My daughter, a delightful toddler, has Down syndrome and my infant son was born with a very serious heart defect that was repaired just after he entered this life. I am a woman whose only two children were both born with what are considered to be birth defects – an extra chromosome and a malformed heart.

I am a woman trying to balance my gratitude for the health and well being of my children against my fears for their futures. I am a woman trying to balance my awe for their beauty and my amazement at their accomplishments against my anger that they have had to struggle.

I am a woman whom was grateful that my baby daughter didn’t have a heart defect when she was virtually expected to…I was a woman whom was too grateful. Now I am a woman whom is tormented by wondering if my immense relief and self congratulation was just too tempting for the fates to leave alone; that they couldn’t resist sewing their ironic thread through our destiny as they wove my son’s birth on our family loom.

I am a woman still coping with the shock of my son’s diagnosis. I am only just now able to reach into my heart and touch some of those emotions; emotions I had to tuck away in the darkness of my soul for tomorrow while I dealt with the crisis of today. Those were feelings I was afraid would swallow me whole if I allowed them to see the light of day, and now their day of reckoning has arrived.

I am a woman who feels victimized by circumstance yet at the same time I am a woman who feels blessed by good fortune.

I am a woman that is probably pitied by strangers and whose strength is exaggerated by those that lead different lives.

I am a woman haunted by the tick tock of the clock, the constant reminder of how short my days are and how much needs to be done.

I am a woman who often just wants to cuddle with my lovely and amazing family and let the world pass us by, yet I allow myself to get so caught up in the mundane tasks of daily life that the moment can slip through my own fingers until its gone.

I am a woman whom loves life but sometimes forgets the adventure it should be.

I am a woman struggling to find myself yet trying not to forget myself either.

But most importantly I am me and I love me. I may not know who that always is as I wade through the labels of lifetime, trying them on like accessories for my soul; rejecting those that are just too expensive and finding perfect matches at the same time. My window shopping would just be so much easier if I could separate what I want to buy from what has already been purchased for me, but this, then, is just another life struggle…and it’s a good struggle. The struggle of self-evolution is never ending and I know that the moment I am able to define myself in one sentence is a life ending moment. Once I have stopped growing, I will begin to die.

For now I continue to shop around always wearing my favorite items on my sleeve …my husband, my children, my love, my truth, and, of course, the fullness of me.

Now…who are you?

What do you wear?