What you need to know

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I am a mother of two beautiful, grown women. I believe sarcasm is the sixth love language and I read like it is my job. I read close to 200 books a year and I love talking about what I read and great authors I find. I usually don't go for the books everyone else is reading. I love authors that are funny, but can be serious when they need to be. Romance is my favorite genre, but fantasy romance is not for me. I love building things and repurposing old furniture and building materials. Sometimes I just need to be creative. I'm also extremely ADHD and neurodivergent, but that just makes me more fun and interesting. As long as you can keep up. I am extremely honest and am not afraid to share my opinion. I try to do it in a nice way though. Constructive criticism is good, being flat out mean when you share your opinion is unnecessary.

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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Who am I?

I have been married for 13 years and I will admit it has not been
easy. I love my husband and I love our two girls, but for years I let
them be my world and I was just there to serve them. I had no identity
other than Ace's wife or Lennon and McCartney's mother. My husband is
in radio and I would go help him at events before we had the girls and
I actually had a name tag made that read "Ace's Wife" I didn't bother to
ask for one that said Bethany because no one knew who that was, not
even me.

I'm a Christian and early in our marriage as we moved around a lot and
found churches, I would see the other Christian women and think I was
supposed to look, talk and dress like them. I rarely bought myself new
clothes, but when I did, I didn't know what I liked so I had to take
someone with me to help pick out the "right" clothes. Sweater sets and
capri pants if I was with friends and big t-shirt and jeans with I was
with my husband. I was hiding who I was behind all the supposed to's
and should be's.

It took a big hit to my marriage for me to even see that this was
happening. My husband and I nearly divorced about three years ago. I
had been a stay home mom for 6 years. We had moved so much with my
husbands job and I had been home so long that my teaching license had
expired. As I thought about my life as a divorced woman, I was
terrified, first because I didn't want to be a divorced woman and
second because I didn't know how to be anyone besides Ace's wife and
Lennon and McCartney's mom. What could I do besides take care of the
house and children? I ended up getting a job at a Day care because it
was all I knew, no one else would hire me because I didn't have
experience as anything else.

We ended up reconciling, but I still didn't know who I was. I knew
that I enjoyed photography, but all I did was take pictures of my
kids. I knew I liked to write, but all I did was blog about my family.
It is three years later and I still ask myself who Bethany is. I have
changed to dressing like I want to instead of how I think everyone
thinks I should, but I have not picked up my camera except to
photograph my kids. My husband and I wrote a workbook on marriage. Can
you guess what I wrote about? It was about being a wife :)

I do want to have an identity and I will admit that I am closer to
being Bethany than I was three years ago, but I still wonder what
people see when they look at me. Do they see Bethany or do they see
Ace's wife and Lennon and McCartney's mom? And if they do see Bethany,
who do they think she is? Who do I think she is?

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