I'm a what now?

For almost nine years, I have been a stay-home mother. This has caused some consternation among some people I know who think that I am wasting my time and talents or that I should be out in the workforce contributing to society and to our family income. (My husband will argue that I am helping out financially, since we don't have to pay for daycare and the government sends us a little cash every month just for having procreated)...

Many times I have felt that I am invisible to others-especially on those occasions when someone I've only just met (usually through Brian's fairly high profile job-he's a reporter on Parliament Hill) asks me what I do for a living. The anticipation in their faces quickly dims when I reply, "I stay home and look after our four children." It's as though I suddenly start fading from sight right before their eyes. I even had one guy turn his back on me (really!) after finding out that I don't go out of the house to work.

Most days I don't regret my decision to stay home with the kids, but I will admit that there are times when I feel as though I am Brian's shadow. It happens when I hear about the accomplishments of people I know, sometimes of people I've never even met; it happens when I've spent the day doing load after load of laundry or have been constantly picking up after the kids (and sometimes Brian); it happens when I've got pms and I don't like what I see in the mirror.

I started this blog because for as long as I can remember, I've had the urge to write. I've written little stories for the kids; I've started screenplays; I've written poetry (most of it embarrassingly bad)...my grandmother told me when I was 10 years old that I should be a writer-this after reading the start of a story I did about a soldier in the trenches during World War I...my sisters have encouraged me to write, so has my husband. I even had a drama teacher tell me during my university days that I should consider writing as a profession.

I ignored all of them.

Now, at the age of 40, I'm a published author. Granted, it's only been four articles, but nonetheless, they have been published. That those four little pieces have been accepted by someone who isn't related to me (and therefore has to be nice to me), means that maybe, just maybe, I need to rethink the labels I've created for myself...I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend...

And now, I am a writer.