A Career Worth Choosing, Part 3

Seldon Connor Gile (American, 1877-1947); Arks Along the Lagoon

Boosted with confidence that my stay-at-home-mom career choice was truly nothing to be ashamed of, there was a decision to be made. If I was going to be confident about this, I needed to realize that the main reason I was even bothering teaching piano (when I had many other things on my plate to tend to) was so that I could have something to say when I was face to face with female professionals, specifically female ob/gyns; those women who seemed so strong, like they had it all together, like they could do everything, and save the world in the process.

I confided in MH my desire to be more confident about my decision to be a stay-at-home mom, and start claiming it with pride (the good kind); which meant I needed to close my small piano studio. Conveniently, about the same time I turned up pregnant with our third child, which made the reasoning behind it all much simpler.

I remember the first time we went to a function after this decision of mine, I literally had to give myself an internal pep-talk before we arrived about being confident about what I do.  And when the first person who asked me, "Now what do you do, are you a physician as well?" I responded confidently that I stayed at home with my two, almost three children, and that I loved it.  And I forced myself to say nothing at all about what I used to do. And it went over just fine.

But these are the things we wives have to deal with, right?  And not just wives of doctors.