What I Know

I just got back from my annual Retreat weekend. It was wonderful and as in the past I spent most of the weekend scrapbooking, in a sense. My scrapbooking has changed into blogging and my blogs get turned annually into a book that I publish just for my family, like a scrapbook. So I spent the weekend copying posts from the year 2010 into a book that I will publish when I'm finished. I've been enjoying reading these past posts and as I'm going through the year I'm feeling a sense of identity and pride in who I am. I look back on that year as particularly hard because it was the year I chose to have my last baby. It was a hard choice and a hard pregnancy and that's all I seem to remember. But as I've read these posts and looked at all the pictures of the places we traveled to and the activities we did I am amazed at how much I accomplished and how much of it I did with a smile. I was pretty sure I didn't smile at all that year.

I've also noticed something else. I've spent the last thirteen years of my life raising children. I often feel like that's all I've done and that's all I am. But reading these past posts has shown me how much I've grown and how much I've learned. I am a mother but I have also become a teacher, a fashion coordinator, a chef, a mass production manager, a photographer, an event planner, a project manager, a cheerleader, a psychiatrist, a veterinarian,  a doctor, and most of all a writer.

I am so grateful for these posts or in other words, a written account, by me, of what I have accomplished. Otherwise I know I would have forgotten these things. Especially the day to day experiences that disappear if they aren't written down. It's the little stories that I have found touch my heart the most. The funny things the kids have said or the small accomplishments I have made. All these little things are adding up as I read and I can't help but feel a sense of self worth. I know who I am through the deeds that I've done and the things that I learned because I wrote them down.