Excerpt from Bowdoin Alumni magazine article, From Majoring to Mothering, 1996

I do not deny that at times I have felt out of touch with the outside world. I do not deny that I have gone out in public with baby food smeared on my shirt. Despite these side effects of motherhood, I know exactly why I am home with my children. I will have no greater accomplishment than raising two healthy, happy, and kind sons. They will be young and dependent for only a very brief time of my life. I will never regret staying home, but someday I almost certainly would have regretted not doing so. In the workforce, I can be replaced, but as mother to Noah and Eben I cannot.

The reality of my decision to stay home has been to continually battle my own history and preconceived vision of my adult life. It was not to be a harried woman teetering on the verge of insanity after listening to two whining boys for an entire day. I am part of a generation of women raised to believe that a woman’s American dream is to be a professional - be it a cardiologist, ornithologist, or architect. I broke traditional barriers as a child, playing both Little League and Babe Ruth baseball, and I expected to do the same as an adult.

Perhaps many of us find ourselves swimming against our own tide, in places we did not envision or for which we did not prepare. It can be a struggle. My former life as an environmental educator or Outward Bound instructor is now only intermittently visible, obscured by the whirlwind of motherhood. Sometimes I feel lost. Sometimes I feel naked.