A feeling of lost worth

It started out as a harmless comment.  I received an advertisement in the mail from Elsevier, a text book publisher, about a new virology text that is coming out.  A friend of mine saw the advertisement and in a joking way said, "Did they ask you to write a chapter?".  It's one of those comments where you had to be there for it to be funny.  It fit what we were doing and talking about at the time and I thought it was pretty clever myself.  But it got me thinking.  No publisher is ever going to ask me to write a chapter.  I'm a SAHM.  That's what I do.  And it's terrible, but I've been thinking that a SAHM is all that I am.  I've even recently had to tell some friends that I lost my job and I was embarrassed.

There is NOTHING wrong with being a SAHM, so why am I feeling like I've lost value?  I'm still the same person.  The place where I spend the most of my day has changed, that's all.  I have less stress in my life, I know my kids better, my house is cleaner (usually) and I've been able to help out others.  It's been great and I honestly have no desire to run out and find a job.  I just want to feel interesting again.  Being a lab scientist made me different.  Now some one has to get to know me to discover how crazy, fun I am.  Maybe that's the problem.  Maybe being a SAHM makes it necessary for me to rely on "who I am" instead of "what I do".