Article October 17, 1977 Issue

A Mother Asks, "Who am I?"

JUDITH ANN HARDY

People may at some time or other ask themselves, Who am I really? And they deserve an answer.

For me this question came when I was a young mother and it seemed that my meaningfulness—and even my identity—depended on my family's needs and the clock. Like most mothers and homemakers, at the cry of the baby I became a nurse; at the sound of the alarm clock, a short-order cook; then laundress, shopper, chauffeur, cleaning woman, comforter, peacemaker, seamstress, decorator, hostess, and so on throughout the day. A restlessness grew within me until one day, somewhere between doing dishes and diapers, I realized I needed to know who I was. And I needed to know the basic worthwhileness of what I was doing.

As a student of Christian Science I was learning to look to God for answers. So I began spending the children's nap times poring over the Bible, and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, just to know God better. There in Science and Health, as if in bold type, these words stood out to me: "There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence; man and woman unchanged forever in their individual characters, even as numbers which never blend with each other, though they are governed by one Principle."^{Science and Health, p. 588;}

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