Finding an Identity

A whole month has passed since my last blog post.  I really have no excuses.  I admit that I have thought about blogging just about every day.  But you know, life just gets in the way.  But I have made some evolution in my blog.  I migrated it to WordPress this month and love it! I have also decided to name it “What it Means to be a Woman in Modern Times”.

I just saw the movie Julie and Julia last week.  What a great movie!  Says so much about the times we are living in.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.  I could really relate to the Julie character.  Thirty something struggling to figure out her identity. Amazingly enough she finds herself through writing a blog about Julia Child over the course of a year.  What was so wonderful was that she was able to find her voice and express it to the world. It turned out that people really cared and wanted to hear what she had to say.  Looking back at my first blog a couple of months ago, you may recall  that was the whole intriguing thing to me about writing a blog versus a journal entry.  Why not share my thoughts with other people instead of keeping it all bottled up inside and locked away in a closet.

Blogging truly is a beautiful medium for women (ok men too) to express themselves, find a voice and be heard. It’s wonderful.

Now looking at the other character in the movie, Julia Childs, it was wonderful to see the parallels of the two women’s lives.  Forty years before, Julia Child was also struggling to figure out her identity.  I wonder if at that time it was less expected that a woman really needed to find her identity.  She found her identity through cooking and eventually through writing a cookbook.

So, I too find myself in a constant spiral trying to find my true identity.  Who am I?  What is it that I was put on this Earth to do?  As a women in my 30′s who is childless it seems to be a deepening question.  I am constantly faced with the question of whether or not I will ever choose to be a mother or is that something that isn’t in this lifetime for me?  I have friends from high school who have kids already IN high school!  I am hoping that through talking about it and connecting with other women faced with this big question I will find the answer.

Being a mother wasn’t even a question for me in my 20′s.  I had heard of the increasing rise of global population and told my friends, I don’t want to contribute to the world population.  They were a bit older and told me just wait a few years til the biological clock starts ticking and you just might think differently.  Well, guess what?  They were right.  But I still don’t want to contribute to the world’s population!  And I am constantly plaqued with the quesitons: how does anyone possibly afford a child these days and maybe this world isn’t fit for a child.  What does the future of humanity look like? What will the world be like for my kids and grandkids in 50 years!?  Will I be able to continue to build my career, travel the world and be a mother?  Or do I have to pick one or the other?  Maybe I just have too many choices?!!

So being a women in these modern times, I find myself faced with finding my identity and wondering if that includes being a mother.  What do you think about bringing a child into this world today?  Are you a women struggling to find your identity and questioning whether or not it includes being a mother?