Re: Dear Family: … I’ve had a change of heart

I’ve been wanting to write this piece for a while now, but admittedly I’ve been dragging my feet. I didn’t know how to even begin to address the change of heart and mind that I’ve had. I think one of the best things about writing is the space to be vulnerable, and so that’s what I’m going to allow myself to do now–be vulnerable.

I have to start with a bit of context here. About 2 years ago, I published an article titled “Dear Family: Please Stop Asking Me When I’ll Have Kids.” I actually wrote the article about a year or so before that, but as I added to it, I felt that that was an important story to tell, and a valuable opinion to share. I knew many women that felt as I did; pressured by their families and somewhat mildly reprimanded by society to start a family ASAP. At the time I wrote the article, I was still in my 20s, thinking about the next steps in my career, and unashamedly living for myself. I enjoyed my freedom, and I whole-heartedly embraced the sort of selfishness that I convinced myself was actually self-love…but something kept tugging at me and the only way I can describe it as, is uneasiness.

A famous pop star once sang “if there’s nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?” (Thank you, Britney!) I asked myself, if I’m truly “living my best life” then why am I feeling incredibly unfulfilled? I couldn’t figure it out because I had been told by friends and society over and over that being a “girl boss” was the way to go–no kids to hold you down and take away your freedom! Career-first mentality! Brunch with my boss babes! No one took me aside and said hey girl, you’ve been fooled.

“Go to work,” they said. “Climb that career ladder, you’ll be happy!” they promised. Suddenly 32 slapped me in the face and I felt like a fog had lifted. I’m not fulfilled in my career–and let’s be real, what career? This is a job to make money to pay bills. I found myself being fatigued with the day-to-day mundaneness that left me feeling physically burnt out, mentally drained, increasingly irritable, and just…depressed. Work became my life. I had started to have no interest in doing the little things that brought me joy, like making art, reading books, seeing friends. (Shoutout to the women who can do it all, I envy you!) So I would work a full day, then be too tired to do anything else. I gained a lot of weight because I’d get fast food out of convenience, then zone out to Netflix until it was time for bed. Rinse and repeat Monday through Friday. Weekends seemed like barely enough time to do anything, and doing the things I enjoyed while in my early 20s lost its appeal.

Let me pause here for just a moment and say that if you’re a woman who’s thriving in your career and you feel fulfilled with the work you do, I’m not shading you at all–it’s a great thing to have career goals and to want to be successful. I do think there’s power in that. It’s important to do your job with purpose, but how can that happen if you feel like a mindless drone? If you’re not even feeling like your job gives you purpose, how can you find any kind of real fulfillment in what you do? This is just my personal story and I know a lot of friends who are also in their 30s who can relate to me when I say that our jobs do not give us a sense of fulfillment.

I personally believe that a major contributing factor to feeling this way is because we are coming face-to-face with the reality that we’re getting older, and that we really do only have so much time to make a decision here: do you want to have children? I put off even the thought of having kids because I was immersed in my youth, thinking I have all the time in the world to decide later if I want kids, that’s for future me to think about. Then as my 33rd birthday rolled around, my priorities changed. (As I think they should.)

I found myself thinking more and more about the reasons I was feeling empty. Unhappy with my job and feeling distanced from friends as they moved on with their own lives, I had an aha moment. Am I really going to let more time go by and wake up as a 60 year old woman with no husband, no kids, and no grandkids? Will my “career” be there to hold me at night and share the joy of Thanksgivings and Christmases with me? What am I doing with my life right now? What skills am I developing as a person that will give me true happiness?

I realized that what I wanted and what I needed was a family of my own. I do want to get married to my boyfriend of 6 years! I do want to have children! I suddenly felt like I had spent so much of my prime years living for myself and it gave me… well, nothing. I felt more empty than ever.

Now I’m going to say something that some might consider bold, and some might consider “cancellable” (if stupid cancel culture is still a thing) but it’s what I truly believe more than ever: modern feminism sucks. Yep–congrats ladies! We’ve been lied to. I’ve noticed many of these “empowered” women who look down their noses at other women who aspire to be wives and mothers seem so miserable. Because of modern feminism, we have to pretend that men and women are exactly the same. Some women who have bought into this ideology have also seemed to have convinced themselves that in order to be successful, they need to be just like men–working long hours, viciously competing for top positions, and in my experience within the tech world they’ve done this by stepping on other women to get to the top. So much for “girls supporting girls”, amiright?

As I get older I realize more and more that being a “trad wife” actually doesn’t seem like such a bad life. Another lie I used to believe was that being a wife is basically like being a slave. The 33-year-old me is cackling at this right now. In retrospect, I can see how I bought into this because of my mindset at the time. Living for myself, wanting my freedom, blah, blah, more immature viewpoints from a young and naive me. Another large factor of why I’ve had a change of heart on all of this is due to my growing faith in God.

I plan to share more about my walk in faith in another article, but for now I’ll try to keep my thoughts from running all over the place. If you can see where I’m going with all of this, I’m about to get in a bit deeper. I believe a wife has to submit to their husband (see Holy Bible for source/reference). This does not mean that women as wives are less than men. I repeat this point louder for those in the back–this does NOT mean that women as wives are less than men! Women and men are different and it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a beautifully powerful thing because we compliment each other. This helps society grow and function. This might be a hot take, but my growing faith in God reminds me that women and men have their God-given roles, and we should step into that, embrace it, and not turn away from it.

I understand the deeper spiritual connection with women wanting to be men and men wanting to be women, but we’ll get into that in another piece. For now, I’ll say that a lot of what I believed before and thought that I wanted, was really just doing nothing good for me. I believe we as human beings are first and foremost spiritual beings having a physical experience, and not the other way around. Because I was very much spiritually lost, this had A LOT to do with how I got so off track with my mental and physical health.

I feel like I’ve paid my dues when it comes to working, and even though I’ll continue to work because I have bills to pay, I’m ready for the next chapter of my life to start.

I’m going to step boldly into this next season of my life, and embrace it to its fullest. I don’t want to live for just myself anymore. I want my life to have a deeper meaning. If you relate to my words here, I want to encourage you to take that next step, too. I’m going to do so with purpose: to grow into my role as a woman and eventually as a wife, being selfless and not selfish, continue to treat my man with respect and care, and be in that loving and meaningful relationship with the ultimate goal of marriage. If I’m also blessed enough to have kids, give to my community, and glorify God, then this change of heart confirms for me that I’m on the right track to finding real fulfillment. ~