Sandwich Parents

tmp_6535-20160806_165559-315481581I’m an at home mom in transition. I have two kids in middle school and one in college.

I put my career on hold years ago and now I feel unmarketable. I have many skills, gifts and talents coupled with amazing ideas and half started and unfinished businesses of my own. This stage is something else.. I don’t know what to call it. Wait!!! Is this mid life???

I am not quite 40, but I come from the middle child sandwich generation that was unfairly dubbed Generation X. So here I am, in a middle generation, approaching the middle of my life with two kids in middle school. Oh boy.

I sit and wonder what to do with myself. My 10 year old daughter asked …”mom, what do you want to be?” All I could say is… “I don’t know”. I put all my time, energy, heart and soul in to raising kids who didn’t have to grow up “latchkey”, like many in my generation did, including myself. Not sure why they overlook us.

My oldest son is a millennial and I am excited to see what he becomes but as a sandwich parent… I am still waiting to see what I’ll become within this process as well.

I remember record players and I had a Walkman! Way before iPods and iPhones but I also graced the internet at the end of my high school years.

We carried pagers before cell phones and now the cell phone is a smart phone. We sandwich parents are the bridge between two generations. The boomers, who we came from and the millennials who many of us bore. Umm hello there… we are the parents of the millennials and we don’t hate them, we love them because many of them are our children. We hate being compared to them and overlooked.

Society will always need a good ‘sammich’. When the world gets hungry enough it will turn to The sandwich parent for the guidance, ingenuity and self sufficient meat that we were trained to produce.

We all know what makes a good sandwich! Some good meat or chipped ham, cheese and soft but fresh bread. Don’t overlook the sandwich parent, we’ll get you over that hump in your day, we’ll fill you up but you’ll come back for more the next day because everyone loves and needs a good sandwich.