Motherhood: An Outsider’s Viewpoint

When I first decided to leave a thriv­ing fash­ion career in New York about 13 years ago, one of the main rea­sons was to be near my sis­ter who was going to be hav­ing a baby soon.

It was def­i­nitely not an “A-HA” moment where I was sud­denly the girl in the Licht­en­stein paint­ing that declares in her thought bub­ble “Hey, I for­got to get mar­ried and have babies.”

I sim­ply was ready to be near my fam­ily again.

What I wasn’t ready for was the feel­ing of being left behind.

While I was away pur­su­ing my dream of being a fash­ion designer, I didn’t remem­ber mak­ing the con­scious deci­sion NOT to get mar­ried and have a fam­ily. It just kind of evolved.

In New York you are sur­rounded by a mass of human­ity. They’re a blur of faces, indi­vid­ual and a mass at the same time. But, I was one of them. We were mak­ing it together in a harsh city.

When I moved home or back into sub­ur­bia, I was sud­denly defined as sin­gle, never-been-married, no kids. Basi­cally, an unde­fined life, by the stan­dards of my new surroundings.

And it has remained so for the last 12 years. As my sis­ters’ and brother’s fam­i­lies grow, I’ve become a dot­ing aunt. Some­times I hold that new baby or hug my grown niece and think wow, I’ll never have one of my own. I even shed a few tears over it. But, truth­fully, it doesn’t weigh me down for hours on end. I move onto my own goals and endeav­ours and try to be a good exam­ple and pro­duc­tive mem­ber of soci­ety. Trite but true.

Funny thing is, I found with a lot of Moms that they some­times feel like they’re on the inside look­ing out. They love their fam­ily. They love being a Mom. Yet, some­times, my free­dom to make my own deci­sions, run off to the wine coun­try, stay out for din­ner and a movie, with­out talk­ing it over with a spouse, rear­rang­ing day-care, soc­cer prac­tice or wor­ry­ing about skip­ping laun­dry for the day (or week), looks enticing.

Stop right there if you think I am lump­ing all moms/married women into a Step­ford Wives com­mu­nity of life­less zom­bies with no con­trol. I have the high­est respect for what Moms do and how hard it is. Harder than I can imag­ine with­out ACTUALLY hav­ing kids, as I am often told by women with kids (note: this is REALLY annoy­ing to hear– it goes with­out say­ing– so don’t say it.)

This is not an us against them sit­u­a­tion. Just like most things in life– there are pluses and minuses on both sides of the fence. I cre­ated La Dolce Diva to rein­force that point and to go a step fur­ther– Embrace it.

What­ever your “defined” sta­tus, women and girls need to sup­port each other. Remind each other of their own per­sonal inner indi­vid­ual iden­tity — not one that soci­ety places on us.