Maiden, Mother, Crone talk

As I've mentioned here, Aaron and I have been going to a weekly Pagan discussion group dubbed "Tea and Talks". This past Tuesday, there was much talk of the three phases in a woman's life, The Maiden, Mother and Crone. There are two women in the group who really should be in the Maiden phase, still, but somehow got their way into the Mother phase prematurely, and it's sucking a lot of life out of them.

While listening to this, I realized that I got into the start of the Mother phase much earlier than it seems. It was pretty obvious when I decided to marry a man who already had two children. However, I was sort of my brother's mom in high school already, because of my parents' work schedules. Thankfully, my bro and I have always been close because of this.

In those days, I remember being told on a regular basis that I would make a good mother someday. The thing is, I was already on my way. I was the one people would go to for advice, if they dared getting caught talking to me at school. I was the one making sure my brother had his homework done and helped with the dishes on occasion. Even my senior year of high school, I had a boyfriend who was two years younger than me. At that stage in the game, it was a big difference. It just seemed to be there so early.

Now, it's so apparent that I'm in fully mommy mode. But I realized that I'm still not willing to give up a part of the Maiden life. I think I got a little hosed out of the Maiden life that I should have had. I think I feel a bit ashamed of that. I'm not proud of it, at least. I mean, I'm married with a kid, the whole Mother thing is what I'm supposed to be doing, right?

That said, a new issue has come up in the household. Aaron's parents has been encouraging him to go back to school for a Pharmacy Technician, which would take about a year. Yesterday he attended a seminar to get more info. At first, I felt very weird about it, and couldn't pinpoint why. Last night, I figured it out; I'm jealous because I've had plans to go back to school for years, but wanted to wait until Autumn was in pre-school so figureing out her care would be less of a problem. It seemed to be the right plan. And now this thing comes up out of the blue and Aaron gets to jump ahead of me?

Well, the negativity has subsided. Aaron and I talked it out last night and we both came out of it very positively. However, his mom is not quite seeing it this way. She called him tonight while I was at work. He tried to explain how I was feeling, but then also tried to explain that we've settled on the idea that this is a good thing. The last time I was talking about this whole thing in front of Aaron's parents, I was still very leary, and that's all his mom knows. In a nutshell, Aaron tried to defend how I was feeling and logically explain where we now stand, and she wouldn't hear it. So to the point that she kept talking no matter how hard he tried to stop her.

I just keep getting the feeling that Aaron's parents, his mom at least, are starting to see me as another Samantha-Aaron's ex wife. In a nutshell, he was a doormat in that marriage and was borderline verbally abused. Yes, I have the "leader" personality in this marriage, he and I will agree to this. But Aaron is allowed a say in what goes on under this roof. He is allowed to make his own decisions. If anything, I'm the one who is always saying "I'm thinking about doing ____, what do you think?" I'm very frustrated that they don't seem to see the difference between a leader and a pushover. And I've been the pushover before, and it's been pointed out to me on many occasions.

I really don't want there to be a rift between Aaron's family and this home. There was one during his first marriage, and it's not fair to let that happen again. By and large, I love his family. They've been super supportive through every bit of crap we've been through. And they're fun to boot. I just hope this is resolved peacefully.