Why Chickens?

In my first month of being a SAHM, I decided that we needed chickens.  Yes . . . chickens!  Thankfully, my husband usually goes along with my crazy ideas, but I’m pretty sure he thought I was completely nuts with this one.  However, he ordered us eleven Barred Plymouth Rock chickens (cute ones) and they arrived in the mail a few weeks later.  When we went to pick them up at the post office and I could hear them chirping in the back, I thought to myself, “what on earth have we done?” They arrived in a tiny cardboard box with little holes poked through so they could breathe.  I anticipated that a few of the chicks would not survive the USPS trek from OK to TN.  I then wondered if it was too soon to teach my children about death at ages one and two and envisioned having a funeral in the backyard for the chicks that didn’t make it.  Thank goodness all survived the trip.  We opened the box and they were adorable! One of the chicks startled Charlie while she was holding her and she launched it across the room.  Can you imagine being a little chick surviving the trip from OK to then be tossed across the room by a one-year-old, sigh.  

Although I may not appear to be the “chicken mom” type, my education was in agricultural economics and my first job was working for Farm Credit.  We financed chicken barns and I quickly realized how disgusting they were.  The average chicken barn holds more than 20,000 chickens that stand body-to-body and have no room to move around.  When one of them gets sick or dies, the others around it follow suit quickly.  They pump them full of antibiotics to prevent sickness and quickly wiping out an entire crop of chickens.  Let me be clear, I am no animal activist, and we consume a lot of chicken in our home.  However, you cannot unsee that type of thing, and you realize what you are consuming is gross and not “healthy.”  As you can imagine, the egg industry isn’t much better (or any other commercialized livestock sector in our nation).  We eat a ton of eggs because they are nutrient-dense, an excellent source of protein, easy to prepare, and cheap. Therefore, since we had the time, resources, and interest to do it ourselves, seems like a reasonable endeavor to undertake, right?

Additionally, parents in our culture are raising spoiled brats that believe the world revolves around them and everyone is here to serve or entertain them.  From my experience, the best way to “get over yourself” is to focus your time and energy on someone else.  My children are too young to turn loose and tell them to go volunteer, but they are not too young to learn how to take care of animals.  My son can be a spoiled brat and it’s time to change that. I take full responsibility for his bratty behavior because I have sometimes taken “the easy way out” with parenting when I was working full-time.  Parents can be exhausted at the end of the day and it’s easier to put on a show or hand children a device than it is to put in the hard work and actually teach them something that will serve them well in life.  

So, when I go outside to take care of the chickens, the kids go with me.  Sometimes Mac whines and complains, but he is starting to understand that the chickens rely on us for food, water, and shelter.  We have been doing it for eight weeks now and he’s starting to enjoy it.  It also gets us outdoors every day regardless of the elements and then we typically end up playing outside.  Another added benefit has been that Luke has gotten into it too and we’re learning new skills.  It’s been very therapeutic to be outdoors working with our hands and spending time together.  Becoming a mother is how God really got my attention and is teaching me that the world does not revolve around me.  I have to wake up and take care of my kids every day regardless of how I feel or what I want.  If the chickens can be that on a much smaller scale for my children and they learn a valuable lesson regarding putting someone else’s needs above their own, then being a weird chicken mom is worth it for me.  And we’ll get some free-range eggs out of it too!

How did I get here? Pt II

After trying every possible option I could think of to hold it all together (being a working mom and a good wife),  I arrived at the same conclusion. This isn't working and we are all suffering. So why am I still trying to force it, expecting a different outcome each time? Is it money, my potential loss of this "identity" I believe I've created in my career, or am I just scared? If I'm being completely honest, it is probably a combination of the three. 

I am proud that I have been financially independent since leaving my parents’ home. Money also provides freedom and opportunities.  A large part of my identity is wrapped up in the career that I have built.  I am absolutely terrified of starting a job that I know nothing about, I'm not an expert at, and having to rely on my husband for total financial support.  It's a very humbling pill to swallow.  However, we could not continue down the path we were on without major consequences, so something had to give.  It was time.  I knew it and so did Luke.  The next step was breaking the news to my boss.  He was sad, but took it very well overall and said he would do anything he could to support me.  That was a huge relief.  Also, not what I expected because our society tells us that men just want to "keep us down" blah blah blah.  My experience within my career couldn't be more opposite.  My boss told me that I was making the right decision for my family and that he was proud of me.  He also told me not to look back and give it my all like I had in my career. 

So here we are.  I will officially be a stay at home mom beginning in January and I've been backing off of work the last two months.  The transition has been difficult and rewarding so far.  Luke jokes that he's had more home-cooked meals in the last two months, than the entire time we've been together (but he's accurate).  I feel like I'm getting to know my kids on a whole new level. This saddens me because I am realizing how much that I missed out on while they were with nannies, babysitters, and at daycare previously.  It also makes me so thankful that I have the opportunity to do this and gives me the motivation to do my best and not screw it up.  I am learning who I am without my career.  What do I like, how will I spend my time, who do I want to become?

The money part.....well, I haven't quite mastered it yet.  We're still trying to figure out what is reasonable, and what makes the most sense for our dynamic.  It didn't help that Christmas fell right in the beginning of "learning" how to do this.  We will start the year fresh and try to establish a new baseline.  The day-to-day schedule has also been difficult so far.  My hope is beginning the new year, we can get into a good rhythm and nail down a daily schedule that we stick to.  It has also been challenging  trying to figure out what my new role/job description is within the home aside from taking care of the children.

Overall, I am at peace with the decision that we made (and I haven't been able to say that many times in my life).  I am thankful, excited, and motivated.  I have SO much to learn, but I am ready. I'll be honest about my successes and failures.  We can laugh, cry, learn and grow together along the way.  I can promise you that I will not be a conventional stay at home mom because that's not me, so maybe I'll provide some entertainment as well. I hope you join me for the ride.

How did I get here?

Like most working moms, I didn’t foresee this.  The feelings of being overworked, spread too thin, failing at everything, anxious, exhausted, upset, and angry weren’t in my “plan.”  I achieved a successful career, I became a mom, and I had a good husband, but I never really thought of what the day-to-day of motherhood would be like.  Why is that?  We are told (by society) to go to school, plan our career path, meet a man, then start a family.  Why does the family part seem to be an afterthought?  It hit me one day that I didn’t want my tombstone to read, “she was a damn good loan officer.”  My family is what matters most to me.  I want to be remembered as a wife and mother who loved God and gave everything she had to her family and those around her, but how could that be possible if they were always getting only my leftovers?  

Women are fed this BS lie that we can have it all.  And from my personal experience, you absolutely cannot.  When we realize that we are falling short in everything and that we are not superwomen, then we feel like we cannot live up to what society says that we can and SHOULD be.  This results in feelings of depression and isolation when we compare ourselves to the fake superwoman personas that we see on television and social media.  And so, the vicious cycle begins.  We start to post the “perfect” moment highlight reels on our Instagram while leaving out the reality of what the day-to-day looks like, and we contribute to this giant lie.  We lie to the world, and we lie to ourselves.  For me, I had to stop lying to myself first.  That is a tough pill to swallow because if you are going to be truthful with yourself, then change must follow.  Now that is the hard part.  

So, what do I do?  Do I sacrifice my career? The thing that has been my identity, that all of my planning and preparation in life have built up to.  No, surely that cannot be the answer.  So, I exhaust every possible option to maintain my career while also being a wife and mother.  A revolving door of nannies, daycare, babysitters, you name it, I’ve tried it.  And yet, I kept ending up in the same place I began.  After more than a year of agony, my husband and I decided together that I would quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom. To be continued….