Do you ever feel categorized, like the path you’ve chosen in life led you in such a successful, self-defining direction that you’ve never dared to deviate from it? Do you feel ‘pigeonholed’ by your family and friends? Perhaps you don’t know what this means, so let’s examine the phrase. The verb ‘pigeonhole’ means: 1. To place or file in a small compartment or recess.2. To classify mentally; categorize.3. To put aside and ignore; shelve. Let’s take an example: Supermom–you pride yourself that your kids are not only credible athletes year-round, they’re raising steers for the county fair, taking ballroom dancing lessons, and learning the guitar. Yes, you have amazing kids who will achieve even more amazing things. But your husband still wants you to iron his shirts, after all, you stay at home most of the time. (Yeah right, your minivan has more miles on it than a UPS truck!) Your kids want you to sew their costumes for their recital. Your mother wrote the local paper to have you nominated for mother-of-the-year and they want to interview you to find out what makes you tick (besides the adrenaline that drives you to speed through yellow lights en route from soccer practice to the feed store before it closes.) The school wants you to become the parent-teacher liason (because what other mom encounters so many other parents in her daily life?) Being a mom, being truly brilliant at it, defines you. Your greatest satisfaction is the admiration you and your family glean from being so accomplished. Well done.
But wait, isn’t there more to you than motherhood? Weren’t you an exchange student to Peru fifteen years ago, when your plan was to train in medicine and then become a missionary to South America? No? Didn’t you win a blue ribbon in photography at the fair just five years ago, and have several of the judges urge you to go into professional portrait photography? No? Aren’t you the math whiz that makes Sudoku look like child’s play? No? You see what I’m asking here, right? If motherhood is all that makes you ‘you’, then you’ve been officially ‘pigeonholed’.
It’s easy to take satisfaction in something we do well, and to repeat as often as necessary. It’s just that human beings are so much more multi-faceted than that. Just because you do something well does not mean that you are passionate about that thing. You could be good at pole-dancing, but that may not translate into anything in your life but a way to work in some cardio. I’m a great sonographer–you give me a patient and an ultrasound transducer and I can make snapping clear pictures look as easy as frosting a cake. I spent years being great at my job, only to find that my true passion was as different from science as religion. While I was nurturing my third child, well on my way to being pigeonholed as super-baby-mom, I took that mold and dropped it on a marble floor, shattering it. I refused the label, defied the convention of new mommy-hood, and took to a new hobby–writing. My husband, a gainfully-employed computer-tech, propped his shovel against the house one day after planting hops, and announced that he’d always wanted to be a farmer. Inside of two months, we moved from town to a working alfalfa ranch where he’s further diversified into alternative energy and carpentry (and fatherhood). The fact is that it would take one helluva tricky labeler to say just who and what we are.
So go ahead, please, and discover who you are, not who everybody thinks you are. Your best creative self is dying to come out. Your passion yearns to be spent. Work hard to redefine yourself, to break molds and form new ones. By refusing to be ‘pigeonholed’, your possibilities are limitless.
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