As a mom you're kind of conditioned to put your kids' needs in front of your own. You shower when they're napping, you go to Disney World instead of a cottage in Fiji and you share the last chocolate cupcake even when you're deep in PMS I'd-kill-for-chocolate mode. When you've been behaving like that for a couple of decades, it's not easy to come to terms with your dormant selfish side.
Case in point: I'm celebrating a big birthday this year. I won't say which but it's not 50 and it sure as hell ain't 70. Ditto my darling husband. We're also celebrating our 30th anniversary. Any one of these events would be worth celebrating (translation - drinking heavily through) but all three in the same year deserve some special attention - at least they do in my book. Naturally for me, that means a trip to Italy. And therein lies the problem. I want to go. I deserve to go. But I just may not be able to justify actually doing it. Not this time.
When your husband is "restructuring his career" (read temporarily unemployed), your two grown kids have set up camp in their old rooms, and you can't find a cruise itinerary that thrills you, maybe the universe is trying to tell you something. While I might like to kid myself into thinking that it's trying to tell me: a) he needs to get away, b) they'll be just fine and c) take that great deal anyway, I'm realistic enough to know that maybe it's telling me that this is not the right time; that my patience will be rewarded if I just step back and wait for the timing to be better. Maybe I need to put everyone else's needs ahead of my own one more time.
Or maybe I have to realize that there never is a perfect time to do anything and just go for it.
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