Personal Cacophony

The other day, my friend D. was talking about a workshop she attended where all of the participants had to say what they were most proud of accomplishing in the last year. She said that some of the women there said they were most proud of something relating to their families. Yeah, I thought to myself, no surprise, and well they should be proud. Raising children, continuing to develop a relationship with your partner --- neither of those are any small thing. But.

D. was most proud of having established a successful collaborative between three non-profit agencies in Paraguay. Wow.

After parting ways with D., I spent the rest of the evening brooding over what I was most proud of accomplishing in the past year. The things that most readily came to mind all fell under the "personal" category – in particular the growth of my relationship with my boyfriend, and a relatively successful transition to a new city. But these answers didn't satisfy me; they just intensified the brooding. What have I accomplished professionally? The question is still echoing in my head and getting louder with each reverberation.

It's duly noted that I'm creating separate, artificial categories: personal and professional (as if there aren't a million ways that these all overlap and intertwine), but I'd say this particular dichotomy is pretty pervasive in our society, and if not in our society, then at least in my current framework. My generation, or at least I have gotten the message that you can't be stellar at BOTH your professional and your personal life – nope, something has to give. Why, just look at those women who focused so hard on their career and neglected their eggs. Now that they want to have children…well, good luck with that IVF treatment. Oh, and those women who tried to both have a high-powered career AND raise children at the same time, did you enjoy the ride – can you even remember any of it considering how sleep deprived you were? How high are your child's shrink bills? Of course, there is another option – being a mom sans career outside of the home.

I've bought in. I've already raised my hands in defeat. I won't blast through any glass ceilings AND be able to nurture children the way that I would like to.

I pay a lot of lip service to how much I value family over all else. Wanting to live close to my family, very real. Admiring women who are stay-at-home moms, also true. But I also remember the reaction I received in college when I told one of the women (who to this day remains a close friend) that ultimately the thing I could most clearly see myself doing – what I most aspired to -- was being a mother, either with or without a career. There was an uneasy silence, and then began the probing questions…

So the frustration that I felt, being most proud of things I've accomplished in my personal life, where does that leave me?

It's an awkward confrontation between what I value (family), and self-conception (I AM a high-achieving go-getter who should want to not just play the game, but win it). I've grown comfortable with this self-characterization, and my frustration about not being proud of anything I've done professionally has me itching to dust off that piece of the puzzle.

Yet the dissonance that I'm feeling has me questioning whether perhaps I've outgrown some of the ways I define who I am.