Who is (insert your name here)?

How do you define yourself?  When asked to tell someone about yourself, do you start describing your circumstances?  If you are like most people, your response probably sounds something like "I'm a nurse, a wife, mother of 3, who really enjoys getting lost in a good book."  Some of our circumstances are truly defining for us.  We are born into a family and assigned a role in that family: son/daughter, grandchild, sibling, etc.  What we do for work plays a big part of who we are, because most people spend a majority of their day working.  So yes, those seem like logical answers when asked to answer the question, who are you?

But we have a choice when it comes to other circumstances of whether we allow them to define us.  For instance, I'm infertile.  But that isn't how I would answer the question, who is Jeanna?  Although that is my reality and always will be, I don't let it define me.  Yes, it still makes me sad that I will never be able to feel a tiny life growing inside of me, to never have a pre-birth connection with my child(ren) and to not have the pregnancy milestones with the sonogram pictures, finding out the gender, etc.  But what defines me more than all of this was my dream to become a Mom.  Our dreams should define us more than our circumstances.  We may not have sonogram pictures of Mitchell or dates to put in his baby book about when we found out his gender or what his due date was supposed to be, but we have a bunch of other COOL stories about how he came into our lives.  And again, the how isn't important when asked who I am.  If you know me, you know I'm not shy about telling our story, so we don't hide the fact that Mitchell is adopted.  But if I'm meeting someone for the first time, I simply tell them I'm a mom to a little boy.  Unless it is extremely relevant, I leave out the part that he is adopted.  Why?  Because, how I became a Mom doesn't change the fact that I am one.  So I guess my point is that no matter what your circumstances are, you have a choice of whether you let them define you or if you find a way to overcome them and let your dreams define you.  My infertility has shaped me into the person I am today, but I no longer claim the title.  I'm not infertile, I'm maternal.