Back to who I am

It's interesting when I sit and reflect back on the arc of my life, from being a little girl, to young woman, to aging adult. I started out happily being who I was, then, I wasn't sure who I was and struggled fiercely to define myself. Now I'm back to happily being who I am.

My generation are daughters of women who, for the most part, went straight from their parents' homes, to homes with their husbands, and straight from high school to marriage and motherhood. But many of the women I knew went off to college. We became part of a women's movement that busted the world wide open. We were making it up as we went, and the excitement in the air was palpable.

We were all a little happy, a little crazy, a little sad and confused all at once.

One of the unspoken side effects of our success on the career front was an underlying sense of loneliness and isolation that went unnoticed and undiscussed. That is one of the blessings of reading and writing -- words have the ability to reconnect us to our world. Books, and poetry, and articles and essays enable us to realize we're not alone. There are days when I feel as though I've stumbled into some weird cul-de-sac of human behavior, when along comes a story, or blog describing my exact sentiments.

Time has passed, imperceptibly. We made it through one day at a time, then looked up and realized months, and now years have gone by. But I, like many other women I know, have reached the conclusion that we've all done a pretty good job. We know who we are, what we want, what we don't want, and these days right now are some of the best in our lives.