I Dream A Little Dream For Me.

    Have you noticed how nowadays it seems as though no one has any real passion? Sure, there are plenty of people who go through the motions; college, career, house, family, but it seems like people have forgotten how to truly dream. We have started to put such an emphasis on the basics of life, the things that we should do, that we don't live our lives to the fullest. People are afraid to take chances to achieve their happiness. Since I made the choice to be a stay at home mother, I have caught a lot of flack for the fact that I am apparently "wasting" my potential. That for some reason, since I have chosen this life for myself, I am somehow not living my life the right way. Now I'm not going to sit here and give you the argument as to why this isn't true (I mean, we all know what I'm going to say), but it astounds me that people feel this way about stay at home mothers when there is a whole generation out there truly squandering their potential. How many people do you know that waste their days in front of a television screen, sitting in the dim lights of a bar, or searching for the answers to their problems in a club somewhere? Not to say that those things aren't good or entertaining in small doses, but what about the bigger picture? How many people are out there who don't even realize the things that they can do, or worse, know what they can do and feel as though their dreams are unattainable. Even those people who have a college education, a career, a home. How many of them are really living their dream? Or is it just that they did what they were told was the next logical step in life?
   I think that has been the hardest thing for me in my life. I made, at a very young age, the decision to put my deepest dreams on hold to fulfill a more specific dream; raising my children. It is something that hasn't been the easiest thing to do, but also something that I would never change. I know that what I'm doing at this point in my life is important, that is has a real purpose, and that is more than a lot of other people can say. The most important thing that I have had to remind myself of is that I am not wasting my potential or abandoning my other dreams, but that this is a chapter that I have to write in order to fully commit myself to my own future outside of my children. With each year that passes, I watch my children grow and mature. And as they grow and mature, so do I. The person I am today wouldn't even recognize the person that I was four years ago, maybe not even the person I was as little as a year ago. And the one thing that I know more than anything is that that person would have never appreciated the importance or the magnitude of the things she wanted to do for herself, had she not made the choice to stay at home with her children.
    The biggest thing that I have learned about myself is how intensely I want to achieve all of those other goals. I can visualize them coming true almost every day and I want it so bad that I can taste it. I'm thankful for that, for being able to at least acknowledge the life I want for myself. There are so many people I know who can't even answer that simple question; what do you want for yourself? Who do you want to be a year from now, five years, ten? And for those people that can see it, they are afraid to reach for it, to create for themselves the opportunities that will get them to their goals. You are the only person who can change your life. Not your husband, not your children, not your family, only you.
     Even as I sit here and write this, I know that I still have a long way to go. I know that a lot of what I want to do with my life is going to take time, years even. That does not mean though, that I am going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs until that day comes. I am taking baby steps towards them, doing small things a little at a time in order to lead me in the right direction. Set for yourself smaller goals in the attempt to achieve the bigger ones. That way it doesn't seem as daunting.
    So what do you see for your life? What are the dreams that you want to achieve for yourself? I know mine...

   I wake up every day in a home that I have sweat over, something I have re-finished with my own two hands. I look out my window to a beautiful landscape; be it mountains, ocean, or rolling greens. I drive to work and smile at the beautiful farmhouse we worked so hard for, knowing my three sons are happy and healthy inside. I arrive to a small town and pull up to what looks like a small cottage. It's my eatery, a restaurant that once felt a lifetime away. I serve beautiful small plates that are a mixture of classic french technique and my own point of view that I taught myself at home in the years before culinary school. I serve breakfast and lunch and then go home to make dinner for my own family. We have an evening of homework and laughter, maybe a bonfire. The night ends with a sit with my husband on the porch. On our free days we take advantage of all our small town has to offer. Boating if it's an ocean town, hiking if it's the mountains. I spend days alone with the man I love, or days filled with the men who complete me. Life isn't always exciting, but it's fulfilled. 


No one can tell me that that isn't something worth waiting for <3