Carrying on the Business of Family {Honoring the Mothers Before Me}

I am the fourth (perhaps even the fifth?) generation in my family carrying on our family "business".  I come from a long line of hardworking, loving, fabulous women who have been carrying on the business of raising families for well over 50 years now.  Now, not all of these women in my family continued the business of running their households & feeding their families as their full-time careers for their entire lives.  My grandmother ended up working for the United States Postal Service after raising most of her children as an Air Force wife and mother.  My mother stayed home with my sister and I for almost 10 years until the loss of my father's job and necessity stepped in.  I, myself did not become a stay-at-home mother until just a little over a year ago after spending the previous 8 years teaching middle school and high school and living as a single mother to my son.  

My father's mother was also a stay-at-home mother and wife.  She raised four children and took care of the household.   She became resourceful when times got tough.  

I never met my paternal grandmother.  She died from cancer before my parents were even married.  But in my homemaking, in this work of mine, I feel as if I could be channeling a bit of her in all of this.  My dad tells me that she was always singing...  
You will often find me in my kitchen or around the house singing or humming. <3  I hope this is a little part of her showing up in me.  I hope this too will be something that my children will fondly recall about me to my grandchildren, their grandchildren when I am long gone...

I often find myself defending my choice to stay at home.  In this world of wanting more, bigger, better, many cannot understand why I would not be in the workforce, making more money, providing more things for my children, buying a newer car, taking a fancier vacation, buying a big house, getting the newest gadgets....

Honestly, I cannot put a price on what I am experiencing, what I am giving my children instead.  

I am HERE.  They know that I am here.  

And I am not missing a thing.  The greatest investment I believe that I can give my son and my daughter is being here with them.  

I believe my mother knew that.  My grandmothers knew that.  My great-grandmothers knew that.

Sometimes I feel alone being a stay-at-home mother and homemaker.   There are not very many mothers I know making the choice to stay at home, to make the business of family their careers.  I often find strength and comfort when I think of the generations of women before me in my family who choose (whether out of necessity, expectation, or choice) to become stay-at-home mothers.  There is tradition there.  There is a sense of feeling rooted, of feeling connected to the generations of mothers in my family before me.

This Mother's Day I honor the strong, creative, loving, amazing mothers that helped to guide and shape me into the mother I am today...

Thank you.

Four generations of women in my family, three of which have been stay-at-home mothers or wives at some point

I invite you all to stop on by the Baking For Kate Facebook page today and give it a Like, and help me to help another amazing mother, my dear friend Kate.  All the proceeds from next weekend's online bake sale will go directly to Kate and her family as she battles Stage IV breast cancer. You can find full details on the bake sale in my post HERE.