In high school I was a straight A student; President of the Drama and Debate teams. I was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Utah. I loved school and devoured my classes as an English major. I also was able to indulge my love of theater with a part time job at a theater box office.
After one year of studies, I was more than halfway done with my undergrad degree when I married my high school sweetheart. He was going to school on an ROTC scholarship which required him to take a full load of classes, plus his ROTC duties. I wasn’t in any big hurry to finish school so it made sense for me to cut back to part time studies and take on a full time job at the theater writing study guides and arranging field trips for local schools. I was well suited to the work and loved my job, but I was young and very in love and was soon overcome with a desire to start a family.
Growing up in a small Utah town, I had very few working mother role models, so the idea of keeping my job after having babies never occurred to me. My dear husband took on a full time job, in addition to his full school and military schedule, so that I could stay home to care for our baby. I would continue school on a part time basis, attending classes during his lunch hour. This worked for about a year until I became pregnant again and our son, then just over a year old, developed severe asthma. We were spending days in the hospital with him. Meanwhile, I was suffering from severe morning sickness (more like all day and all night sickness). School just had to be set aside.
My husband graduated college and was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy. His job was very demanding. He was at sea about 50% of the time; when he was in port, he was working 70-80 hour weeks. I was largely on my own, in faraway places, very young, and raising small children. I thought often of my hopes to finish school, but just couldn’t see a way to make it reality. I found other ways to keep myself engaged and interesting. Everywhere we lived I started or joined a book club. I took a small role in a community theater production of “The Music Man.” I kept busy with church callings.
In 2004 we took orders to Yokosuka, Japan. There I found an amazing support network of women and developed friendships unlike anything I have experienced before or since. The mutual support we were able to lend each other allowed me to develop as an individual in a myriad of ways. I taught English as a Second Language to Japanese women in my home and used the money I earned doing that to complete an online course to become certified as a doula, qualifying me to lend support to women giving birth far away from their families and support networks. I also spent a lot of time traveling, sometimes with my husband or my friends, sometimes just me and my children. I drove all over Japan and soaked up as much of the culture as I could in the two years we had there.
Four years ago my husband separated from the military. We’ve lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC for six years now. We’ve settled into civilian life and had two more babies. I have filled my time here with a lot of volunteering-teaching art and literature classes at my children’s schools and working in the PTA. For almost a year I volunteered on a committee appointed by the county to advise the school board on overcrowding.
I am 33 years old now and have begun experiencing a mid-life crisis of sorts. I occasionally become overwhelmed with the feeling that I am a failure. That I have achieved nothing in my life. I look around and see women who have “Made Something of Themselves” and I feel small and insignificant. I have no degrees or titles, I never wrote that book, I haven’t earned a paycheck in over a decade.
This year I decided to go back to school. I’m going to finish that English degree. I think a part of me really needs to feel that sense of accomplishment, of completion. I calculate that I should finish my degree just before my oldest graduates high school and just after my youngest starts kindergarten. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do with it. Some days I feel like I am nineteen again with all these possibilities open to me and I decide that I’m going to become a journalist or a diplomat and save the world. Other days I remember that I really like being able to go to the gym every morning (without waking up before dawn) and I like being able to help my kids with their homework and drive them to sports and music practices. I’m not sure I’d be able to do all that while also saving the world.
I do know that the process of applying to school has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my life. My application required me to write a resume. When I sat down and did that, I realized that I have done some interesting things! I am a valuable member of society!
I’ve also realized that while my life hasn’t followed the path I thought it would, or any of the path renovations I imagined along the way, I have been blessed with the ability to be flexible and accommodate the needs of my family while still carving out some pieces of my life for my own personal growth. I look forward to seeing where this next turn in the path will take us.
–Submitted by Chelsea
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Chelsea, it’s interesting to me that you felt like you weren’t valuable, that you had not “done” anything in the world (because obviously, you are and have!). For many Mormon women/moms, the church provides a lot of positive feedback and support for the stay-at-home-mom choice. I’m curious as to how/why that wasn’t the case for you?
That’s an interesting question Heather! I guess the short answer is that I’m not a very good Mormon. ;)
The long answer though is complex. As a child my parents were incredibly supportive of me and always told me how smart I was and what a great writer I was. My mother MANY MANY times told me that she felt like I was a Special Spirit. That I had some Unique and Wonderful Mission to accomplish. So I grew up excited to see what this mysterious amazing Thing I was going to do would be. And while I am certain my mother is not disappointed with my life, it really doesn’t feel very unique or special to me to have just done exactly what every other Good Mormon Woman has done. (Raising babies, keeping house etc)
Then as an adult I have spent a great deal of time in the Non-LDS world. All of my best friends have been non-Mormon, and usually significantly older than me. And while most of them have been SAHMs, it has been a temporary break in their careers while their children are young or their husband’s work has disrupted their lives. In Japan, for example, my support network consisted of R, who had been an officer in the British Navy when she met her husband and while in Japan was taking online courses to complete her second Bachelor’s degree. C, who is the most ambitious person I know and already had five college degrees and had pursued several rewarding career paths and was deeply resentful that her husband’s orders to Japan had required her to give up her job in DC with the Red Cross. And E who gave up her job as a Machinist Mate in the US Navy when her babies were born and is now (several years later) in her final semester of college before becoming a teacher.
At the same time, I have been living my life with my best friend for the last 20 years. My husband and I were teenagers together. We took the same advanced classes in high school, studied together and had a friendly academic competition. We were very evenly matched too–I scored a little higher than him on the ACT, he beat me by a couple points on the SAT. I was president of the drama and debate teams and he’d come be on my tech crew if I was stage managing or step in to fill roles when actors dropped out at the last minute. He was president of the Math and Science team and I’d quiz him for competitions and help him study. In college we also supported each other and even continued taking classes together. But after babies our paths diverged widely. He went on to have this amazing career doing many of the things I would love to do–he’s been to every continent but Antarctic (travel was a VERY important dream for me), he’s literally pulled refugees from the sea, been the sole US representative on foreign vessels, counseled young sailors dealing with legal, financial and personal crises. He’s almost done with his second college degree. When he decided that his work in the Navy wasn’t everything he wanted from a career (mostly because he wanted more family time) he changed careers. And found many people eager to hire him and pay him lots of money. He puts on a suit every day and goes to work in a shiny building I’m not even allowed to enter (except on Family Day when everything important is carefully locked away). I meanwhile, have struggled to make this job of mine work for me. And, honestly, I kind of stink at the whole Mom Gig. I hate cleaning and while I have learned to keep a sanitary and attractive home I am never going to be featured in better homes and gardens. I have learned to enjoy cooking, but it isn’t something I love. I struggled for many years with PPD. My oldest child has had some pretty severe behavioral issues which have landed us in psychiatrists offices (which in turn earned me a great deal of strife from my parents who were sure that psychiatry would “deaden his soul”) and while I love my babies I sometimes feel like I am suffocating at home with them all the time. I feel sometimes like he has this fabulous interesting life which INCLUDES our lovely little family (which really is more good than bad, I promise!) but also includes other really cool stuff. I meanwhile exist in this little compartment of his world (the family compartment). And that compartment is my WHOLE WORLD. At the same time, the nature of his work has placed me at the periphery of some genuinely COOL stuff. He has worked with (and for) amazing women. Many of whom have managed to have great families and raised awesome kids at the same time as they have pursued amazing careers. And here in DC, even many of the Mormon Moms are out there contributing to the Greater World.
So the positive feedback and support of the LDS church contrasts with my life experience which has allowed me glimpses of a bigger world that I haven’t really been able to participate in.
Chelsea,
You have had an incredibly interesting, productive life already–and you have decades ahead of you with reduced family demands on your time. Whether you choose to further your education, to work for pay, or to continue volunteering, you will accomplish that valuable contribution to the world which your mother predicted.
Thanks Course Correction! I do believe that is true.
What an amazing story — thank you for sharing. I live in DC and I was born when my parents were stationed in Yokosuka … even these 38 years later, my parents remember that base for its kindness and generosity. You are YOUNG! Midlife crisis, HA! You’ve already accomplished so much, and you can accomplish so much more. Tell me when you get your degree, or before then, and let’s network. You can EASILY get a job, which will lead you to another, and then another, and then your special mission will be clear to you (though raising four kids seems like an amazing mission to me). Keep on!
Thanks Elizabeth! I wrote this post over a month ago, before actually starting school and now, only a few weeks into my first semester I already feel about a millon times better about myself and my life and all the choices that led me here. My midlife (1/3 life?) crisis has evaporated. I think maybe it was just the impetus I needed to make a little change of course.
I will definitely keep you in mind for networking! I really still have no idea what comes after school. Hoping that will work itself out as I get closer to the end. For now, I feel like school was definitely the right next step for me!
Thank you for sharing your story. I agree with everyone else that you have done amazing things so far. My mom started college young but didn’t finish her bachelor’s degree until she was 40. She spent those years in between working assorted jobs to support my dad through college and grad school, then had kids. After she finished that bachelor’s, she went on to earn two master’s degrees, and has taught from kindergarten up through college. She only just ‘retired’ (now works 50% time) at the age of 74. And she loves it.
Thanks for the encouragement Joanna!
Like everyone here, I think that you will be fine. You are 33 and you have done the hardest part of the work, having the children and raising them. Although “raising” never ends, they are more independent and that gives you space and time to do other things. I am 33 too, have a baby and am a full time working mom. I feel like the hardest part of the work is ahead of me. I want to do so much in addition to have more children.
Each journey is different. Don’t count the jobs, titles and degrees. People do different things at different times. A lot of women slow down a little in their 30s when they are trying to have a family. You have already done that and can concentrate on career and school. At the end, we all end at the same spot.