Who are you behind your everyday label?
As parents, we wear so many different hats. First and foremost, you may be Mom or Dad, but beyond that perhaps you are an “athlete,” “actress,” “entrepreneur,” “friend,” “scrap-booker,” or “sports enthusiast.”
SO what about those other hats? Are they stuffed into the back of your closet collecting dust? Crammed in the attic since you had children or you got married? How’s that working for your mental heath?
It’s important for your quality of life that you feed what makes you vibrant and vital. It’s also important that your children see that becoming an adult doesn’t mean squashing your interests and the hobbies and passions that make you…you!
In the spirit of walking the talk, I’m currently in a Musical Review taking place at a community theater near my town in Massachusetts. People ask me often enough, “how do you have the time for such things?” The answer is: I don’t. But that doesn’t matter. As you can imagine, I find it important enough as a mentor to children to parents, and a well-balanced person and family member, to do it anyway. It makes me feel alive—it makes me laugh—or cry (in a good way)–it stretches me and gets me out from behind my desk. It’s so “outside the box” for me that it makes me less of a square! In many senses, in fact, it makes me better at everything else I do.
I get to be serious and sing my heart out:
And I even get to be silly in some numbers like this one. I mean, when in regular life do we really get to be this silly? Perhaps in this case, life can imitate art and I’ll take a piece of each number and take it with me into the everyday?
OK- so I’ve put myself out there to you– so how about you? Who are you beneath your parent or teacher label? Are you smothering your interests in order to be a “better parent?” Do you think feeding your own interests is important or selfish when you become a parent? If you’ve been holding off– why– and when will you feed that part of yourself again? Please share below. We’d love to know!
Filed under: Dr. Robyn Silverman, Mental Health | Tagged: Dr. Robyn Silverman, Musical, Oliver, outside the box, powerful words, Role Models, Theater |
Dr. Robyn Silverman's Blog 
[…] exuberant to the point of jumping on a couch and making a fool of yourself a bit? Whatever it is, do more of it. Whatever deadens this impulse, do less of […]
This is something I don’t consciously think about, but now that you mention it I think I’m going to be more deliberate about letting my girls know the many different layers of me. I’m a wife, mother, eacher, scrapbooker, seamstress, business owner…
I want my girls growing up knowing that they can be whatever they want to be, but should choose to take the path God wants them to take. Even if it’s like me–to get a BA in International Relations with a minor in French and not really use it as I had planned.
Thanks for making me think!