Invisibility

I now know how stay-at-home-moms can sometimes feel - the sense of isolation and invisibility. Recently, the govt was lambasted in the press for not giving sahms part of the budget financial goodies. But nearer home, even to the one's family, one can be invisible. Particularly to one's spouse.

A woman today has to wear so many hats that sometimes she herself loses track of which one was her original hat, her favourite look. She is someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's colleague, someone's wife. But who is she really? Stripped of all the labels, what is left?

And particularly so for women who choose to stay home to care for their families, who have no income, how invisible are they? It might help if at least, to a spouse, they are visible. After all, we all hope to mean something to someone special. It can be disappointing when one realises that this special-ness is gone, that she too, has become invisible to this person.

So when the kids are grown, the last one out of the house, what is left? Who is left? To expect a woman to regain all her identity at that point is tough. Like learning to walk all over again. We have to get to know ourselves. And hope that that is enough to get through the aura of invisibility we now have.

I guess it might now be prudent for me to start relying less on how others see me and start seeing myself for who I really am. And while others will still inhabit different parts of my life, sharing my identity, I will still have a sense of who I am. And better for me now to understand that despite the painful awareness of invisibility from the one I love, far better to realise this now than later.

Ah well, time for dinner. Time to put on the mother hat and go...