Which one is me?

When I was 20, if you would have told me that someday I would be sitting on my couch blogging during nap time with a sleeping (and adorable) two month old on my lap while my boob is hanging out (tmi?  That is how we roll in my house) I would have looked at you like you were nuts.  How times have changed!  And yet they haven't in a way.  I feel like I am still searching for myself.  In my early twenties, I was a dancer, college student, sorority girl, and lover of all things rambunctious.  Now, at 29, I am more into my children, cooking...you know, being your basic overall domestic goddess.  When did I change so much?

I used to laugh at the idea of a stay at home mom.  I was raised by women who were in the workforce.  Two strong women (my gran and mom) in an all female household that we christened the "no penis palace".  Girl power!  I dreamed of graduating college and moving to some exciting place to start my spinster hood.  I never was one of those girls that dreamed of getting married and being dependent on someone.  In high school and college, I was one of the only girls who didn't give a crap about having a boyfriend.  And yet, when I was 21 a friend set me up on a blind date with my husband and I never looked back.  I guess he tamed the shrew?  I was a hard catch and I gave him a hard time but eventually he won me over.  And we were married in 2008 and had our son in 2010 followed by our daughter in 2012.

And now I am a mom.  Now that I have a girl, I am mortified by the things teenage girls do and wear, even though I danced hip hop in bare midriff in college.  My children have made me into a hypocrite.   I still love to dance even though I never get the chance and I still love to have a good laugh with friends. I still love to hike and camp and be outdoorsy.  Now I have all of these other likes as well, like yoga, knitting, cooking everything from scratch (although that isn't a surprise because my mom and gran are amazing cooks).  Did my college self just get tamed into an actual adult?  I know other
moms go through these same experiences after having a child.  It is like you give birth to an awesome human being, but a piece of you dies as well.  Or maybe that is the wrong way of looking at it.  Maybe as we women give birth to our offspring, we ourselves are reborn, recreated, remastered.  I had a natural birth with my second child and it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life.  I guess when you go through something like that, you are bound to change.

So the answer to my question is that the real "me" is here right now and everything else was just transformed, evolved.  And the beat goes on.  We are always changing.  The Buddha was a wise man when he spoke of impermanence.  Life is impermanent and I guess I can expect many more changes to come.