Ok, friends. I love brevity. A good haiku is a treasure. KISS – keep it simple sweetie – is a constant reminder I breathe.

But this post is not short. It can’t be.

It’s too foundational to skimp on. So bear with me. Like my uber-long labor with my first little, it may be painful, but worth it. That is, if you want to know where this mama elefant is coming from and the bit of the larger life elephant that she has touched.

Here we go. I’ll throw in as many pictures as I can to keep you awake. And to help you remember where you left off if you’re reading this each time you stop to nurse the baby or wipe a bottom. 🙂

…

Somehow life had led me down paths on the early side. I was bullied by third-grade classmates for causing the Iranian hostage crisis before anti-bullying programs were common. I then legally changed my name while still a minor. I started my period before my sister who was three years my senior. I was married within a week of graduation from college. I got into Harvard’s graduate education program with only a measly two years experience under my belt.

And now I was twenty-seven years old. I had just started my job at UCLA as the director of their international education program. All my equivalent directors at the other UC campuses were at least ten years my senior. Most were double my age. It was unheard of.

How had I gotten there?

Maybe it was a heavy dose of determination, sprinkled with earnest prayers. I badly wanted to move my role as sole-breadwinner from DC to LA to help my screenwriting husband follow his dreams and break into Hollywood.

Perhaps it was the raw combo of experience and qualities I had that the UCLA team sought to turn their foundering ship around. Their eyes had lit up many times during the interview.

A lot of folks, myself included, thought it went back further. That doors had opened because I’d followed my former boss’s advice and hustled out to California to work every connection I had. And that’s how I snagged the interview.

Whatever it was, I had landed my dream job.

Or so I thought.

But a little over two years later, I found myself unfulfilled.

Sure, I’d revived and grown the program I managed. I’d also survived work drama flung at me by a jealous team member and learned at ton in the process. And, yes, I was grateful for the honor of receiving a departmental award and bonus for my contributions to the university.

But something was missing.

It was my thirtieth birthday and my sweet husband had planned a late October pumpkin-carving party with friends at our home. Most of our circle had young children. Children who lit up the room. Children we babysat when siblings were born. Children who made me smile.

The ladies – nearly all a few years older – and I were enjoying  a quiet moment undisturbed. One of the older gals asked me how I felt about turning 30.

“I thought I’d be a mother by the time I turned 30,” I sadly blurted.

The words surprised perhaps only me. The disappointment hung in the air for a moment that maybe only I noticed.

They rallied and cheered me on. Sure my time was around the corner.

But the sting lingered. I had just given voice to the sadness that lurked. That life had not presented me the blessing I intuitively craved.

Let’s be clear. There had never been any pressure on my husband and I to hurry up and make babies. Well, maybe just a handful of hopeful references from my mother-in-law or an encouraging friend. But nothing that felt like pressure to me. And that’s amazing given that we’d been married over 8 years already.

That night I went to sleep aware. Finally aware. That I deeply wanted to become a mother. That I had another purpose in life waiting to bloom.

The awareness had been building. Sweet hubs and I had on some level known our goal of parenthood was approaching. When invited to join our friends in a Spiritual Parenting course, we’d jumped at the chance. It was the highlight of each week for me. Immersing myself in Baha’i guidance and soaking up the lessons learned from the weathered parents was awesome.

But my husband’s slowly unfolding career – his dream to make movies in Hollywood – was a 900-pound gorilla in the room. It was unspoken, but we both knew we wanted him to make it. At least a little bit more than the teaser success he’d had, before the parenthood chapter started.

So we waited.

But we also started to gamble a bit with life. No protection. No calendar-watching either. Somewhere in the middle ground of “when it’s meant to be.”

Little did I realize that God’s will had been done already!

The weekend before of gambling had made us rich. 😉  We just didn’t know it yet.

I can imagine if my first son’s budding embryo had been able to talk, it would have echoed in it’s itty bitty living space of a womb-world: “Mama! I’m here! I’m growing as fast as I can so I can come play with you and Dada!”

The science-and-religion-agree-geek in me loves this mind-blower:

I wonder if conception happened right after I voiced my yearning to the universe in the presence of my female tribe. This mama elefant had more than just yearning. I had the support of my ladies, the magic from my man, and ultimately the blessing from on high – a perfect recipe for things to unfold.

So, that’s when and perhaps how I snagged my dream job.

Nine months later, I was still somewhat oblivious to this. I had just trained all my staff on the responsibilities they’d cover while I was on maternity leave.

I had a week and a half left till my due date when it hit me. I was going to have to birth the butterball in my belly. I sat on the hard floor in Barnes and Noble, surrounded by books on birthing, cursing us for forgoing birthing class on the basis of “I watched my sister birth my niece. I get it.” Duh.

But God provides the lessons we need to learn, whether we prepare ourselves or not.

It still amazes me how unreal was the rewiring that my brain and body endured over a 68-hour labor that slid from scary and unbearable to relaxed and miraculous. I was a piece of clay that was reshaped between Thursday night when pre-labor hit and Sunday afternoon when my babe emerged.

Rewired. Reshaped. Made new.

I will never forget the pivotal moment on release day from the hospital. My midwife sat down and locked eyes with us new parents.

“You are now the center of your family,” Susan said to me.

“Emily is now the center of this family,” she told my husband.

She stared deep into us, letting the message engrave on our inner walls.

Not the sweet baby. Not my dear husband. But me. Messy, tired, elated postpartum me. It was a raw truth that had yet to be discovered by us. But it was there. Planted and waiting to sprout.

A couple months later, I struggled to merge my new life as a mother with my return to work at 70%-time mostly working from home (thanks to a most supportive boss!). To outward eyes it may have been working. But it didn’t seem right to me.

Deep in my fascia, deep in my soul, I knew that full-time motherhood was what was right for me and our sweet baby.

And thankfully, my husband had treasured that idea since before we exchanged marriage vows. As Baha’is, we’d discussed the vital role of the mother as the first educator of children. We agreed we wanted to shape our future family life with me at home with the kids in their early years.

We both cherished the noble role of the mother upheld in the Baha’i sacred texts:

“O ye loving mothers, know ye that in God’s sight, the best of all ways to worship Him is to educate the children and train them in all the perfections of humankind; and no nobler deed than this can be imagined.”   – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Sometimes in life, we are a little slow to wake up and move. This mama elefant sure can be! We were during that survival chapter of early parenthood.

Until the mama elefant in me raised her call. The primal voice of motherhood blasted out as tears streamed from my sleep-deprived eyes. I needed to hand over the reigns of primary-breadwinner to my dear husband. He needed to take them up and carry that role for this chapter. Not that he hadn’t tried. But his six-month search for a full-time job in LA had come up short. What now?

A couple weeks of heart-dumping, desperate-praying, and job-searching later, he had an interview back in Virginia. Two weeks later, he had a job offer in hand and we were house-hunting. The doors had flung open for the next chapter. Confirmation!

Was it scary? Sure, a little. And it didn’t help that colleagues at UCLA were completely shocked. My staff said they never, ever imagined I’d be one of those women. Didn’t I realize how lucky I was to have climbed the career leader so high already? Didn’t I appreciate the coveted position I’d landed?

Didn’t they know that motherhood is a noble and praiseworthy job? Didn’t they know that I’d been handed the opportunity of a lifetime?

Any fear of taking an off-ramp in my career was overtaken by the pure excitement I had about taking the job of motherhood to the full-time level. It felt so right. How could I not trust in God when I’d been witness to and participant in the amazing miracle of life and birth now?

And while my colleagues didn’t get it, I knew I was not alone. I smiled each time the New York Times featured another article on how Ivy-League degree-holding moms were leaving corporate America to tend to their littles. I remembered my friends near and far who were treasuring the gift of full-time motherhood with their little ones.

I have worked part-time for several years since then, fitting in work when the kids are asleep or with my father or husband. And the thought of going back to work full-time is no stranger. Sometimes, when I’m worn out with the kids and crave adult interaction and seeing different fruits for my efforts, I dream of returning to the work world. Many times when we’ve struggled to make ends meet, I’ve felt the need to seek full-time work.

And philosophically, I know that is okay. The Baha’i guidance also support mothers of young ones in the workplace, if that’s what the circumstances of a family require. And the Baha’i writings are clear that the engagement of women in all the professions will help advance humanity in a way never seen before.

I don’t think full-time motherhood is a requirement for or guarantee of good mothering. At all. I think a connected, mentally-healthy mother is the ideal gift for a child.

But for me. At that moment. Diving in to full-time motherhood was what felt right in the universe.

And that’s when my dream job jumped to the next level.

UCLA moved on to replace me and eventually promoted one of my staff to the position I’d once loved. I couldn’t be prouder of him and happier for that office.

But no one could replace me as my baby’s mother.

Deep down I had an instinctive knowledge of this. It drove my desire to be full-time with my son. I knew I wanted to be there for the first five years of his life, as much as possible. I knew I wanted to give him the gift of a present, balanced mother. That was something my siblings and I had lacked at times in our childhood. And for me the best way to do this was to do it as full-time as life would allow.

This was the way my husband and I decided to best put into practice in our lives the guidance found here:

O maid-servants of the Merciful! It is incumbent upon you to train the children from their earliest babyhood! It is incumbent upon you to beautify their morals! It is incumbent upon you to attend to them under all aspects and circumstances, inasmuch as God—glorified and exalted is He! — hath ordained mothers to be the primary trainers of children and infants. This is a great and important affair and a high and exalted position, and it is not allowable to slacken therein at all!

If thou walkest in this right path, thou wouldst become a real mother to the children, both spiritually and materially.  – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

It’s been over twelve years now since we moved back east to live on one income, nurture our new family, and live closer to our extended family. I’ve since had four more pregnancies and homeschooled our three children in this world. It has felt like promotions in a dream job that’s both incredibly grueling and fulfilling.

Has it been all rainbows and unicorns? Definitely not. Do I always feel confident in my choice to dedicate so many hours of my life to messing up being with my kids? Heck no. Do I feel supported by society in my choice? Nah. Well, sometimes, when sweet strangers at the grocery store stop to drop words of encouragement. Thanks, guys!

But I wouldn’t trade the last twelve years of full-time motherhood.

And I know deep in me that the next twelve years will lead me to new contributions to the larger community. I will most likely brush off the resume, create a profile on LinkedIn, and reenter the paid arena by the time my youngest reaches adulthood, if not sooner. I feel it likely coming.

But it will be an added layer on this onion, who will always have Motherhood as her role of a lifetime. Forever changed by it to the core.

Ok, lit nerds, this one’s for you: I feel so Joseph Campbell about my life. I’m one of the thousand faces of the hero who leaves the ordinary world to journey to a supernatural one, survive life-or-death adventures, and return to the first world a changed person — one who is now able to do greater good in the world.

All us mamas are. Rock on, powerful heroines in this life drama!

So is motherhood your dream job? How has it changed you? And what inspires you to embrace it, amidst your equivalent of laundry and lego piles and whatever outside work aspirations or commitments may claim your attention?