A sentence in a book says it all...

Every once in a while I think that I am not me anymore. I am someone else. I'm no longer Corey and I am a title. I am Aidan's mom. Audrey's mom. Andrew's wife... etc. For some women that is everything. They don't mind. And most of the time I do not mind. In fact, as I write this memories flood into my brain of how much I adore my family.

I don't know how to explain it really. I read a book where a mom leaves her family for the life she didn't have because of her family. One daughter understood why the mother left because of two things: a look she saw on her mother's face one morning and a picture of her mother before she was a mother. That passage in that book hits me sometimes. It hits me when the sky is grey and the laundry is as high as a mountain; when the dishes seem too much, the kids too loud, ... when everything seems too hard and I wonder about that life I wanted before children.

In the book the mother decides to come back. She realizes that she missed a lot being away from her husband and kids and it wasn't worth it.

I will never leave my family. I love htem so much but I recognize that there are days when I need a break. And I still have dreams. I am who I am.