life

a friend of mine posted this on his facebook wall:

"There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” - Nelson Mandela

this resonated with me and it's been in my mind the past few days. i discovered that it's been in my heart for so much longer. this is exactly how i feel. life is meant to be lived big. for some people that means fame, fortune, admiration, etc. for me it simply means giving myself to my passions and creating a life, a family all my own. 

i remember a few years ago feeling that my life was a fraud. that every day i went to work, i was inferior to those around me and one day i would wake up and everyone would discover i was a fraud and take away everything i'd been given. for those that know me, there is a disconnect here because i have worked so hard for everything i have in life. whether it is my education, my job, or my relationships, i have worked so very hard. but yet i couldn't shake this feeling. imagine my surprise when doing studies on women in the technical workplace and discovering that so many women felt the same way i did, specifically i even saw the "fraud" discussion being raised. i was blown away. blown away. this is apparently a typical feeling for technical women in the workplace, to feel less than. what a rip off really... to work so hard in school and land a great job, only to feel inferior nearly every day of your working career. or at least, that was true for me for so long. so very long.

so do i still feel that way? sort of. not as much. what changed? i started looking at my life. the truth is i fell into engineering. as funny as that sounds, it's honest. i'm just good at math and such. i love math. adore it. it's my first love really. my dream job would be to be a college math professor, but alas, i don't think it's in the cards. i guess you never know. never say never. but i just found myself good at technical things. i don't have a passion for them though, and that's the problem. i think when you lack passion, you doubt yourself. small seeds can grow so very large over the course of 17 years. the next thing you know, you've got this huge tree towering over you, shading such a large area that the light that tries to shine through is obscured... sure it makes it in, but it's not glorious and overwhelming. i really want glorious and overwhelming, if i'm honest. and i pride myself on my honesty so there you have it. i started thinking about what i do have a passion for. oh that's not as easy as it sounds. so many things. so little time. but when i look at all the things i have passion for, it comes back to family, children and helping others.

i love my family, and it's no secret that i come from a broken home. so broken i'm not sure how me and my brothers survived sometimes, but that's the irony of it all... we did. we ended up on different paths and it seems maybe our paths are criss-crossing over time and maybe i'll be able to weave them a little closer in time. i adore my children, they have made me, well, me. not too long ago, when we were adopting our girls, i wrote about parenthood and i decided i'd update it now that the girls are home:

parenthood has always been one of life’s greatest blessings for me. i have six of the most amazing children, all of whom i adore. they are each unique and hold special keys to my heart, inhabiting spaces where only they fit. i absolutely believe they’ve contributed enormously to the person i am today, carving away some of my rough spots and smoothing me out to tread more lightly upon the world. brother K has taught me that i am strong and capable of moving mountains when necessary; i had no idea. sister K has taught me to pause and take a deep breath and look at things from a different perspective; i’m getting pretty good at that. C has taught me to be inventive and act quickly on my feet; indeed i am quite clever after all this practice. L has taught me the resilience and beauty that one tiny human being can possess; she makes me re-examine my own limitations. M has taught me it's never too late for love and life and growing and becoming all that we can be, no matter how hard the road to here has been; i see this reflected back from my childhood to now and it's powerful. N has taught me that no matter the age, our struggles cannot be forgotten nor brushed aside; instead we must acknowledge them, grieve them and set them free. and with everything i have learned, i find that i still have incredible amounts of energy that appears to regenerate with each new day. i am eager to bring another child into our family, for i am positive i continue to have so much to give, and so much learn.

i want to live my life big. i don't want to settle for a life less than i'm capable of living.