Sunday, June 15, 2008

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm Rachel. 39 years old, living in eternal summer camp with my best friend, Ohad, whose biggest fault is that he doesn't let me keep him up the whole night talking to him. Together, we're raising six children - Hadas (14-1/2), Matan & Lilach (12), Abigail (3), Nomi (2) and Yirmi (3 months) - the first three are from my previous marriage.

I started out blogging over at FertilityStories, but I think that with 6 kids, it's kind of hard to be an infertility blogger. Sure, I have the experience of infertility (IUI, IVF, FET, the works), but my story isn't an interesting one to follow in that sense. We don't plan to have any more children and since I have another way of helping people who want my advice, I'm moving on...

Being pretty deep into this motherhood gig (a total of about 44 mommy years!) I know just how easy to get lost in it and to forget that being a mom is just part of my life. For the first few years, I let being a mom completely consume me until at one point, a little over 10 years ago, I realized that there was no me left. Since then, little by little, I've worked at reclaiming and redefining my identity as a woman, one who really loves and is devoted to her children but feels it's important to have an identity beyond them too.

5 comments:

SheebyLeeb said...

You're a mom to 6 kids and you stayed normal?
unbelievable!

Leah Goodman said...

Sheebs: normal is a relative term.

Congrats on opening your new blog!

Anonymous said...

I love your new blog and I know that you will have a lot to say that is helpful. I agree that being a mom is a fabulous (and sometimes frustrating) adventure, but that finding oneself is sometimes a much greater challenge.

Anonymous said...

Aw crap. I thought that by having kids I got out of the whole "finding myself" dilemma.

That said, glad to see the new blog. This should be an interesting read. :)

Anonymous said...

Congrats on opening the new chapter of your blogging life.