Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ever feel YOU aren't fulfilling your potential?

Ok, I know (think) we all want to give our children the best so that they can fulfill their potential and get their needs met.

But what about our needs? Do they get lost in the shuffle... or not necessarily?

I'm 27. A guy I went to school is an experimental physicist. He just created something that could seriously change the face of medicine if everything goes well. He messaged me to tell me congrats on my family and I asked him about it. He was polite and asking me what motherhood was like, but I was really just dying to talk about his discoveries.

My husband came home from work right after I found out about it and I explained to him, through tears, what my friend had done. I was crying because I feel like I've completely let myself down and squandered any potential I might have had.

I am 99.9% sure that no mommy I know in real life would ever cry over something like this lol.

I know being a mom is an important job, but I also know that almost anyone can become a mom and work hard at it. I don't feel like my entire purpose in life is to be a mother. I have been craving intelligent conversation for a few months now and the only place I get it is on internet forums.

How do you all deal with these feelings? Even if you don't stay home, I think having children requires you give up quite a bit of yourself. If you are a SAHM, well, I don't know. I feel like only a tiny piece of me still exists.



PS. PM me if you know of a better forum on the internet for posts like these. I don't want to mess up the feng shui of these forums.

I think you've asked a good question (and a hard question, in so many ways).

Life is a struggle for everyone, and it's so hard to see what the consequences of your decisions will be at the time you make them. It's easy to criticize your choices or feel bad about them after you've made them, but you might have felt the same way if you'd decided to do something else. Re-evaluating your decisions is a sign of a thinking person.

Please don't judge yourself too harshly. Just remember one thing: if you want to change the direction of your life, you can. It's just that changing will be hard (but this means that it will be like everything else in life that's worth striving for). My mom started a business in her 40s. It ended up supporting the family for 25 years.

I struggle with what I do and am very concerned that I made some very bad choices, yet don't know how I could have done things differently. So I just keep plodding. A few years ago when I didn't get a grant I wanted very badly, I put a sticky post-it on my wall that says "DON'T GIVE UP!" It's still there and I look at it all the time. A couple of years ago, my little girl wrote another sticky post-it that says, "Don'T give UP MoMMY!" and another one that says, "I love you forever." Am I being maudlin? Maybe, but I don't care. I look at them both all the time, too. They help a lot.

You're right that having kids means you have to give up a lot, but so do many other choices. But you also get a lot. Remember that.

It's perfectly reasonable to want more out of your own life than what you have right now. It's okay to re-evaluate a decision and make a change (it's often a good thing!).



Val (who keeps on plodding)

I would cry over something like that, in a heartbeat. Heck, I nearly cried just now reading about it.

I used to feel like I was not fulfilling my potential all the time. I still do, at times. I find that I have to remember that "my potential" is more than my intellectual ability. It is a combination of many factors, and changes over time (sometimes, it seems, from moment to moment). My time, my material and social resources, my community, my energy, my health, my executive functioning, and my personality all contribute to the equation of what I can reasonably expect myself to accomplish.

It took me a long time to realize this.

Be gentle with yourself. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do more than be a full-time SAHM. At some point, probably relatively soon, the nature of the demands will change, and you will have a little more time to do the things that engage your mind and make your heart sing, even if you aren't making scientific breakthroughs before breakfast. There are trade-offs that come with every decision, and one of the trade-offs in being a care-giving parent of a high-intensity child often is is a having a few really grueling months or years where nothing much else gets accomplished.

You are 27. By the time you are the age I was when my first child was born, yours will be almost school-aged. So I count you as ahead of the game, from my perspective. Serious illness took a huge chunk out of my productive years, and left me with a career path that resembles a meadering cow track strewn with tangled barbed wire far more than it resembles the smooth, glorious, meteoritic arc that I envisioned in my youth. But it has been a grand adventure, and, looking back, I am incredibly grateful for (almost) all of the experiences I have had along the way. Cow paths, after all, have a lot more latitude for exploration, discovery, and enjoyment than expressways or ballistic trajectories do. It was hard to have that perspective at the time, though.


Hang in there.

(hugs)

I think that is a hard place to be. Just by circumstances, I did not have a child early, so I had a career. Having a child later, I can say "been there, done that" for a lot of career stuff. But it doesn't mean I don't miss my brain. When DD was 1.5 years I was offered a 2 month gig. I flew to Brussels for 3 days. It took me 2 days to figure out what anyone was saying. I was shocked at how out of shape my brain had become.

I had to come to terms that I wanted my child more than anything and I was smart enough to pick up the pieces when I needed to. In the spring, I was thinking about working again. But then I thought I had to travel. I sat back and figured out what I could do as a SAHM. I looked at the options and figured out a path. Not one I would have done otherwise when I thought just a job. Your friend may have developed something, but you are still just 27.

You did close some doors having a child now. But there are many paths ahead. You are smart enough to figure it out, after you get through the early years. There isn't enough sleep, at least not for me, in the first 3 years. You are not finished until you are dead. That is my slogan. As long as I am not dead, I can try again.

Ren

It is tough. I had my child late so I had career success first, but becoming a mother meant reprioritising and I see friends in different circumstances achieving more than I do now. Mostly I don't mind - I've made my choices with eyes wide open - but occasionally it does get to me. (What gets to me more often, but this is a different topic, is seeing DH have more energy to put into work achievements than I do because most of the parenting etc. falls to me. I'm the one spending time on this website, for example; he just comes to the meetings. It's my choice to be here and I get a lot out of it, but it's time he's spending thinking about his work...)

I think you're at a really tough stage, particularly given that you're younger and haven't had so much time to do the BTDT stuff pre-baby. It will get better.

Hmm. Thinking a bit more, are there two different things going on here for you, wanting to achieve and be recognised, and wanting to get enjoyable intellectual stimulation? Which is more at issue, would you say? Is part of the problem the difficulty in getting both from one activity? The first is tough when you don't have much time, although I know you have a fledgling business and maybe it'll make your millions in due course, good luck! Would it maybe help to add some purely-because-you-want-to learning into each day, even if only for a few minutes? E.g. maybe pick a Great Courses course you like the look of and watch an episode while your DD feeds, if that's easier to fit into your life than reading?

FWIW, now that DS is older, I feel much more that it's intellectually "different" rather than "less" than what I'd be doing otherwise, because he's learning all the time and often it's things I don't know myself and I get to learn things too.

It is hard to know what to do with life. I did not have my one and only child til I was a month away from 40! I sort of feel like I have lived 2 lives: a child-free professional, and now a working mom.

For me now, I wish I had had my 1st child earlier so I could have had time to have a 2nd. I did not know how much I would love having a child. When I didn't have kids, I actually felt bad for women pushing strollers and holding their toddler's hand! I never realized how wonderful the mother-child bond is. I thought it was all hype.

Having a child complicates schooling, but doesn't rule it out. I'm in school for yet another graduate degree and wish I had started that 10 years ago! My life is full of hind sight! But I do remind myself regularly of everything I have done and do now. Having a full life with lots of interests is a great life.

(So I didn't mean that to sound all preachy and inspiring-like ha ha!)

I'm personally trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the next 30 years of my life, now that I'm 37.

My life is basically one big regret at this point, and it will probably stay that way for some time. I'm on the "empty life with no interests" career track.

I think that regretting all of your major life choices is normal for many people. I'm pretty much devoid of any purpose in life at this point beyond family. My major career goal is to not get fired or commit malpractice, so that I continue to draw a salary. I actually have very little interest in my own life.

Although life is better now than when I was in college and law school, where I basically slept, played computer games, read fiction, and ate pizza, having no interest in being either in college or law school.

Jon, you sound like my ex-husband (also a lawyer...) except you are 10 years too young

I think family is a good purpose to have, so good for you!

It's a feature of lawyers.

There are some really funny bitter lawyer blogs out there.

Island, you are a young person. If you want to go back to school, you can. If you want to find a job, you can. You have a lot of options. And most people haven't (don't ever) discovered something huge by that age.

FWIW I found it very difficult to have little kids. They try my patience. I am doing much better, feeling more balanced and in control, with bigger kids. Any choice you make should come in the context of "this is all going to gradually change over time."

From this and your other posts, I'm wondering whether you are feeling kind of depressed. If you are, maybe seeing a cognitive-behavior therapist would help you get over past stuff and enjoy what's happening now?

I think your choices include learning to enjoy what's happening now, or changing the situation so that it's more enjoyable. Either way is good...

DeeDee