"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
It's a question asked commonly among parents, grandparents and educators of small children. It's also quite a heavy loaded question for such a small person. I know it's all meant well and there's typically no pressure to the question, it's just something we like to ask kids for a cute or sometimes surprising answer.
But after awhile it can feel like a burden to carry, the weight of making such an important decision starts crushing us.
Dramatic, I know! But I can remember taking a test in Middle School.... MIDDLE SCHOOL... to determine which career path suited my personality.
When I was really small, 3 or 4 years of age, I KNEW I wanted to be a mommy. Yes I became a big sister and observed my own mother at that age and it may be a common thing, that small girls of that age always say they want to be a mom, because of the comparison to them with their baby dolls to their own mom's and themselves. But my desire rooted, and it rooted deep. I played pretend that I was leaving my dolls home with a baby sitter and that "I'd be home as soon as I was done with work," which was just me going to school. I was a dedicated mother to my baby dolls and it was a "job" I took seriously.
In Elementary School I truly discovered my love of writing. I was always complimented when I submitted my work and got excellent grades in the subject. I thought I wanted to write books for such a long time. We even had an assignment in school, where we had to interview a person who was currently working in our "dream job." My mom helped me find a local children's book writer to interview and it was intriguing to know how to live a writer's life.
It was around this time that I also really enjoyed playing school. With two younger sisters at home I loved writing lesson plans, giving them homework, teaching them my own version of math and being THE BOSS of them ;)
By the time I was in High School, my writing dreams shifted into Journalism. I was going to be a real live Lois Lane and my news paper writing would be important and change the world. But by the time I reached Senior year, I felt that the safer option would be to change the world in a different way, by going into Education.
I went to college for a bit and had dreams of being a teacher, yet again. I loved kids and was feeling pressured to pick a major. But part way through schooling, I realized that being a teacher didn't seem to match what I remembered growing up seeing from my own teachers. My dreamy illusions of what it looked like were shattered (along with not grasping new math).
So I took on a few jobs, never completing my secondary education, I focused on work and making a living. I was 19 and on my own and had no clue what I was doing. I worked in a warehouse fulfilling orders but it wasn't my dream. I was having that horrible feeling that dreams don't come true and the "real world" was kicking me HARD.
Then someone at church told me about this daycare center where they worked and told me they were hiring. I cared for and educated toddlers and preschoolers for 2 years. But they were not an actual school and didn't have the staff to carry out their own desire to have consistency within the classrooms. If someone called in sick, I was pulled from my room and my kids, to fill in elsewhere. I made the decision to Nanny and found a few great families along the way to help in nurturing, loving and partially educating them in the process.
I tried some businesses as a side hustle along the way as well, which have never tilted in my favor, and now we are here, 2024. I am a co-director/teacher at church for our Children's Ministry, I am fulfilling my desire for writing here on my blog and contemplating writing a book about our journey to becoming parents and we are a few steps closer to becoming dad and mom ourselves this year!
I think it is really cool to look back at little girl Kaitlyn and remember all the dreams she had as a kid. Some days I wish there was a way to tell her that life doesn't always go the way we think it should go, but then I think "not knowing is what strengthened me to be the person I am today." Struggling is inevitable, some struggles feel bigger than others, but having dreams and goals is healthy and we all have to struggle to achieve them.
If you knew you weren't going to be successful at "X" would you bother going down the path you had? Would you have met the people you know along the way? Some of them being people that would be the reason you are who you are today, or being the reason you made great or not-so-great life decisions that made you the amazing person you are today.
I think we have both destiny AND decisions that shape where we are in life. Our mistakes help us learn and adapt and ultimately help us become the people we are. So if your childhood dreams have been shattered, and life is hitting you hard right now, I hope I can be one of the people in your life that persuades you to keep on your path, you never know where it will lead.
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