One Woman. Two Worlds

Today I get an email from a friend, "I am getting married!" I chew on that for awhile and then email back with congratulations. Later, I get an email from another friend, "Sorry, I have been so busy. I don't want to be at work. They have downsized and I have to pick up the slack........." I email another friend who has been apart from her husband for two months asking how she managed when it has only been four days for me. "It was hard but I had the kids and my mom so I stayed busy."

All of the sudden it hits me: these conversations are illustrations of what I myself have been dealing with: wrestling with how I define and redefine myself as "you can be anything" competing with "you can't have it all." Living as a woman in the beginning of the 21st Century is a creative act. The task is to fit together the pieces of romance, children, and ambition to form a satisfying life. "Now it is time to find a career, but don't forget to find a husband. Hurry, have a child, the clock is ticking - but what do you mean, you're going to become a single mom or need more time at home? Don't loose yourself in your child or your spouse or you'll never find your way back - but what if you work too much, you'll ruin your kid. What will he say about your trade-offs? What's wrong with you anyway? Weren't you suppose to do anything?"

The conflicts I feel - struggles between autonomy and togetherness, pleasure and pleasing, ambition and being an affiliate - do not resolve. The preasure has intensified. No matter what I do the contradictions between a career or a traditional role get me right in the gut.