Reinventing the Abbotts...

It's a movie line but it brings to mind a conversation I had with someone in my "circle." They were musing about making a change in their workplace. The discussion moved to the fact that we all reinvent our lives continually through our lives and that is a sign of progress. I am going through my own "reinventing". My eldest is leaving for college this year! (No, I can't be that old!) My youngest is turning 10 this month. (So much for "baby fat" excuse!) So I am no longer that mom who drives the Van-go and has only one pair of Levi jeans that has to be used every day of the year and 10 disposable t-shirts. (I actually have some  dress up clothes now.) I don't need to lug around car seats and extra diapers. I am not wiping runny noses or reading while sitting on the toilet as my little one plays in the bath. I am not setting up play dates and swapping babysitting. I am not making funny faces with chocolate chips on pancakes. I am slowly becoming a "River" instead of "mommy". (Oh, don't get me wrong, I am still mommy, just it looks different.) So now I am wondering who I am going to be for the next twenty years?! I have to reinvent my self. I did it when I had babies. I went from "worker girl" with dry cleaning needs to mommy with t-shirts that showed that we had had spaghetti for lunch and also indulged in the finger paints that day. Now that specific phase is passing, who am I?. We all make changes. We may sell our house for something better or change jobs as what we are doing no longer serves us. We may change friends that fit our needs now not "then." Reinventing shows that we are evolving and growing and getting to know ourselves. If we don't make changes then we grow stagnate. (That is no fun, believe me I know!) We are not meant to stay the same. I know some who repel change. They want to live in the same house with the same friends and stay at the same job. I pause to think if that kind of life offers any real challenges for us to feel nudged to change? Or, like a pond, stay unmoving but have all the  gunk rise to the top and stay stagnate to encourage mosquito's and bugs of all  types. Right? Stagnate water is poisonous to our health and encourages bugs of the bad kind. So it begs to argue that not changing things up is poisonous to our mental health. If your somewhere that on paper it looks "good" but your self talk says it isn't good, change. Reinvent. Make the leap. Or just go and do!