Left Neglected

Left Neglected

I have been MIA for a few weeks! We just moved and things are a little hectic.  I have been wanting to blog, so I’m happy to get back to it:) I am feeling a little generous, so I think I’ll write 2 posts!

I recently joined a book club and we had our first meeting a few weeks ago. We read a book called “Left Neglected”. Pretty much, it’s about a woman who is a wife and mother who has a very busy lifestyle until an accident forces her to slow down and re-evaluate her life.  The clever book title refers to a syndrome called neglect, where your brain ignores one side of your body. However, it also refers to the things in life we choose to neglect to keep up with our lifestyles.

We ended up discussing how we balance our work-home priorities and a lot of questions came to my mind. Do I send Isabelle to daycare or get a nanny? If I get a nanny will she be more attached to the nanny than us? Is it possible for one of us to stay home with her or work part-time? If I can’t work part-time, how do I have a successful career but also spend a lot of quality time with my family? Most likely, I will work full-time when I go back to work in October and I know one thing: I love being a speech-pathologist – but my family is the most important thing to me. When I think about work, I get nervous because I want to make sure that once I step through the front door at home that I leave work on the other side.

We live such hectic lives these days, and honestly my biggest fear would be for Isabelle to grow up and feel like “something” else was more important than her.  There are adults who feel this way today, even though their parents may not have intentionally caused their children to feel this way. I think that most parents do so much in order to help their children have a better life. However, I think at some point we have to slow down and ask if something is being  neglected. Do we need to refocus our priorities and let some things go? What can we cut out so we can spend more time with our children?

I was lucky to have my grandmother live with me as a baby. Times have changed though. A lot of grandmas (or “Gi Gi’s” as my mom calls herself) have their own careers now and aren’t in the position to stop working. Therefore, knowing that I will be leaving my daughter with someone else for hours a day, I hope I can structure my lifestyle so that she grows up and feels that we were always there for her still. I want to go to the school concerts, music lessons, sports games, and dance recitals. I want to help her with her homework and teach her how to cook/bake or make arts and crafts. I just want to be present, because I remember first hand how that feels as a child. So though my parents probably felt guilty at times that they were too busy, I don’t remember that. I remember them being there. They somehow achieved a good balance between home and work life, and I pray we can do the same.