The Power of Validation

I hated, and I'm going to use that word deliberately, and this is just me, I hated being a stay at home wife. I didn't like putting clothes out for my husband. I didn't like cooking and cleaning for him. But I was getting so many pats on the back for it by my parents, by Tom. Everyone was giving me a great validation of what a great job I was doing. And so I started to hold to the validation. I call them the velvet handcuffs, where I absolutely was handcuffed to being a stay at home wife because of the validation I was getting. I had the identity of being this great traditional stay at home wife because everyone was telling me what a great job I was doing. And so the validation piece, even though I hated it, is exactly what becomes the velvet handcuffs in our lives, where it's we don't know who we are without it.