On Friday after my sister’s graduation we went to a very nice restaurant for lunch on the campus. We all sat down at a table and immediately my parents started seeing people they know and saying “hi” (they are both professors and have been for a long time). A group of people that they knew walked up to our table to say “hello” as well. My parents began the introductions as they went around the table: “This is {my baby sister}, she graduated today with her MBA and MHA. And this is {my middle sister} and she just graduated from medical school, so she is actually Dr. {my middle sister}. And this is our granddaughter, and this is our granddaughter’s mom.”

Ouch.

Part of me feels guilty that what they said hurt me. I should be proud to be my kids’ mom (which, don’t get me wrong, I definitely am). But I’m so much more than that. I graduated with an accounting degree; I’m a CPA; I have a terrific job with a great company.

Part of it, I believe, is that being a mom comes very easily to me. Now of course there are hard times when I want to pull my hair out, and I definitely get angry and scream at my kids from time to time, but for the most part it’s been a fairly easy journey. I was never scared when I was pregnant about what kind of mom I would be, and heck, I was taking care of our neighbor kids like they were my own long before I had my own kids. From the day I brought my kids home from the hospital everything came very naturally to me. But the other stuff (school, job, etc.) those are the things I worked hard for. Those things did not come so easily to me.

I’m sure I’ve got people thinking “what the heck? Why isn’t she proud and happy to have that as her label?” But I’m not just someone’s mom…I’m a wife, a mom, a friend, and an accountant. To just pick the first item as a description of me is to deny who I am in total.

So what about you? What labels have you been given? What labels do you think you deserve? Do you ever get upset when someone gives you a different label?