Jumping Back into the Blogsphere by Maureen Eich VanWalleghan

A bit about myself. I have a five year old daughter (H.) and have been married for almost six years to my husband (K.). I came to the babymaking scene late. I had my daughter when I was nearly 42 years old. I was actually surprised to find myself pregnant with my future husband since I didn’t actually think I could get pregnant at that point.

Then in 2008, Robin invited me to be a guest blogger here at Motherhood Later than Sooner, but I just wasn’t ready. Rereading my first post, I remember all I was feeling about myself and the still new role of wife and mother. I so wanted to be writing and yet what came up every time I sat down to start were complaints and more complaints. Complaining is mostly what I have been doing for the last five years.

To quote myself is to see that moment for how painful it was…

I feel like I went from a power babe to a dish washing slave. Life as a wife and mom is all about cleaning. Who knew? My single life and careers did not prepare me for the reality of homemaking. And I’ve watched way too many light romantic comedies to have an real sense of marriage. Don’t get me wrong, I am, on some particular days, very happy with my life, but the cleaning has reduced me to an invisibility that has been difficult to overcome emotionally. I think the issue at hand is feeling like my power as a human is nil because I am not a major income earner as I was before marriage and baby. If one considers that for 25 years I have been defined by my work and by proxy my paycheck, not having much of either has been a blow to my ego and myself esteem that I am only now beginning to understand.

At that time, living a very rural life made the isolation of motherhood at a late age even more isolating. All of the women I knew then, who were my age, were already grandmothers. I often during those intense times found a bit of solace reading the blog here at Motherhood Later. Even though I couldn’t write about my experience, reading about other late-blooming mothers did help. It also helped immensely when we moved to a small city, Prescott, for my husband’s work and enrolled our daughter in the local college’s preschool program. Finally, I met other mothers and a few were closer to my age.

I am so glad to be on the other side of those times and my plan for this blog is to talk about what I decided to do that made it possible to live the life I imagined for myself.