Packing up stuff

What are you packing up this week?

While shopping the last couple of days, I saw lots of Mom’s with their college bound children picking out towels, sheets and comforters in preparation of the big day when it will all be packed up for the move. Without any permission, my mind was filled with questions that have no answers, still dare to be asked. What would Michael and I be shopping for? Would he be excited to move to college? Since we will never share this college bound ritual, I still find myself in need of packing up stuff.

I decided to pack up stuff that is not tangible but is still heavy to carry. One thing I am packing up is the intricacies about real job experience that doesn’t have a category on a resume. Work experience should include an additional section called life experience, allowing unique life occurrences to add value to a resume, making any mother like me, one of the best investments a company would make.

It’s easy to fantasize about what it would have been like to pursue a career over the last nineteen plus years other than expanding my medical experience portfolio. I have few regrets about that, but what I find frustrating is that having M-O-M be the only initials that appropriately follow my name, aren’t sometimes enough in a society that puts greater value to other, more expansive, titles. Definitely sounds like something I better pack up.

Another thing I am packing up is the confusion that surrounds this season of life. It feels like the things I struggled with years ago as a new mother are some of the very things I am once again struggling with now; they just look different on the outside. Familiarity, connections, routine changes, just to name a few. All of these formative contributors to life, often called something else, would like to steal the confidence that I gained and felt for many years in my full time job as a mother. Closing the box on these feelings will hopefully prevent that from happening any further.

In packing up some stuff, I am choosing to not allow any of my feelings to dictate or diminish all the exciting things that are about to happen this fall. August was certainly the same for many years. Each day filled with a long list of preparations for the new school year. Without even realizing it, I prepared myself as well as my children for a new start each fall. That's still possible even if I didn’t buy any new notebooks on sale this week.

Maybe my routine hasn’t changed as much as my mind would like to think. Packing up stuff, tangible or not, is hard work but when it’s done, a new space opens to Be the Change your heart desires.