chana's Profile

With four young children and a husband, my life is exactly what Erma Bombeck described: "Cleaning the house while the children are growing is like shoveling snow while it's still snowing." And I am so thankful for the mess and the chaos and the lack of alone time. People...what is life really about? Is life really about making yourself as cozy, unhassled, and free from others' demands as possible? I work in hospice and have seen what really matters as people are dying. What matters is relationships. Connection.

Family life--busy, hectic family life in all its permutations--allows everyone to grow and mature. You have to learn to communicate with the people you're living with, compromise, you become aware of your flaws and learn to work on them. (I always thought I was a patient person until I had kids!) I don't know...I just think that despite the drawbacks of living with others (and I'm an introvert who definitely needs my alone time, so I relate to all of you who say how great it is to live alone), life is for living, and living is messy and complicated and that's okay. More than okay. I wouldn't want to get to the end of my life and have lived a serene, independent life, but never have really been forced to step outside of my comfort zone, to have set boundaries around my relationships, to have limited how much I would show of myself to those I loved, to have guarded my own comfort too zealously....

To quote an old Garth Brooks song (yes, Erma AND Garth!): "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance."

YMMV....