I wish I could get away for awhile, but that is pretty much impossible since we are moving in TEN days. Jeff doesn't seem to understand that I am a woman outside of being a wife and mother. He criticized my online time recently and the time I have spent this past week moving my journal. He doesn't understand that this is mine, all mine, outside of being a mother, outside of being his partner.

This journal has actually given me freedom to be who I am outside the realm of those titles. Here, on these pages, I am just a woman, an artist and a writer, I am me. It is my outlet to the outside adult world, separate from play groups and couple get togethers. He just doesn't understand. He doesn't understand the jealousy I often feel when he is recognized for his hard work as a teacher, and his professional abilities. That he is out in the world everyday with adults, communicating past Barney songs and manipulative toys. He is rewarded with awards, good grades, and raises while I am in the background changing shitty diapers and cleaning apple juice off the floor.

I know the greatest reward I have received is the beautiful intelligent daughter I have raised, that I have been here for her and not stuck her in a kiddie kennel for others to raise. I have been there for every booboo, the first words, the first steps, and I have laughed and felt joy with every new thing she has accomplished. It would be nice though to be recognized by your partner as doing an excellent job, and treated as if it is just as important as the job that pays.

I would like to be able to tell people I am a stay at home mom, and them not tell me I am lucky. My partner and I made a decision before we had children that we would not shove them into daycares at six weeks old, or hand them off to nannies, even if it meant we did not have a lot of money. Staying home was a choice, not luck, and I hate for it to be even implied as such. Then I look at professional women, who talked down as if I have sunk to the bottom of the barrel because I didn't move forward in my career in social work, and that by choosing to stay at home I have wasted opportunities and the brain the good lord gave me.

Only here, in these pages, I am allowed to completely be me without shame, without regrets, and with confidence -- I can be a wife, a mother, a lover, an artist, a writer, but above all else a complete woman not divided by roles.

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