Define Yourself

I recently had a dream about meeting R and B singer Tank.  In my dream he asked me what I did for a living and instinctly my first response was that I was a mother of 3.  Wow the chance meeting of a lifetime, and of all the wonderful accomplishments I have made and accolades I have achieved, at that very moment all I could come up with is that I am a mother of 3.  Its crazy but even in this dream I have discovered, how you define yourself is how you are viewed by the world.
I failed to tell him that I was a Life coach, Mentor, Business owner, and Licensed Insurance Agent.  I almost forgot that I graduated with a bachelors degree from Norfolk State University.  I told him simply that I was a mom.  I say this not to downgrade my duties as a mom. I know this is an extrodinary position.  Children are truly a blessing.  I am blessed and ever so grateful for the ability to conceive and give birth to such glorious and wonderful beings.  I honestly cannot and do not want to picture my life without them. Trust me it is a hard task making sure they are well mannered and respectful, they maintain good grades in school and perform well sports.  Thank you, Thank you no need for all the applause.  Just doing my job.  As you see this is a roll I take very serious.
I still can't help but wonder if this is the total sum of what I have become.  I know this is not all I have accomplished.  Let's be clear I am not bringing this up to down grade or make stay at home parents seem not important.  I say this because as a parent, mom especially we allow that title to take over our lives.  We simply cannot see ourselves as anything but that.  We lose ourselves.  We stop living our lives and start caring simply about theirs.  I know this may not seem to be a problem on the surface but long term it can be. 
Personally speaking I have been trying to find Passious in all this mothering. I am working on living my life and making sure I help them define and live theirs.  The question becomes how can you help someone find and define themselves when you can't find or define yourself? As a mom we want to feel as though we have it all under control.  We have the answers to everything.  Yeah right.  Together we can figure out how we can define ourselves, be ourselves, love ourselves and make time for ourselves and be a mom also.  I have for years lived under the cloak of being just a mom for a long time and it truly hasn't made me feel complete.  Life is too short for us to continue on this path.  We have to define ourselves.  If we don't what examples are we setting for our daughters.  We are just training them to follow in our footsteps.

I challenge you to define yourself today.  Figure out how you want the world to see you.  Speak that into existance.  Introduce yourself to people as such.  If Tank were to ask me now what I do I would say I am a Life Coach, Mentor, and Business owner.