To Tell the Truth

The only way to pass the "parenting test" is with heaps of humility, honesty,and humor.  

That's what I said when I first started this blog. This past month though, I haven't followed that rule very well. In all kinds of big and small ways, good news and sad, I've screened my true thoughts. For example, I had some really great news this month but felt a little weird every time I would share it, especially if I was talking to another parent.. The news was that my son made it to the next round of an intense scholarship interviewing process - yay! He went through a  gamut of interactive games, leadership tests, improv exercises and impromptu essay writing with about 100 other high school seniors. After the group interview was all done, they cut half of the applicants. Instead of being cut, my son got the email that told him he was invited for a one-on-one interview. The hoped for prize when all is said and done, is a four year scholarship for college. It's nerve wracking and exciting and I'm so incredibly proud and shocked at the ways he's putting himself out there in the world and it's all just swirling in my own little head. How do we celebrate and brag without making someone else feel like crap?

And there's plenty enough of those feeling like crap moments.  Worrying about why our kids are anxious, prone to wild temper tantrums, chronically constipated, or emotionally distant, fills the secret places of our thoughts. One layer below our concerns for our kids is the darker place where we assume that we've messed them up somehow. We look at the latest Facebook updates, where only good news seems to be shared, and wonder if we would have any friends at all if they knew our true thoughts and colossal mistakes. There are layers of parenting silence. We start by talking about our perfect, precious babies instead of the crazy anatomical reorienting that our body is going through after childbirth. The silence continues and hovers over the changes in our relationships.  We stay silent when things are bad, keeping the self-doubt, shame, and feelings of failure under wraps. Telling the hard truth though, is the key to releasing all that crap. If you want to test this and have a real catharsis or just a good-pee-in-your-pants laugh, you can unload your truth at Scary Mommy, a blog that also serves as a confessional for the real deal stuff of our lives.

Bragging is just fine. So is crying and screaming and fretting and laughing. Humility, humor, honesty. We can't possibly know it all. We can't take ourselves too seriously. We only get support for the things that people know about. Go to the "scary mommy confessional" and let it out.

It' A New Day

ReBoot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's the last day of August.  At the close of this weekend, the school year will start and we will be in our more structured routine.  The fall almost feels like the new year. It's my time to make a list of intentions, the things that I know will help me live a happier and more productive life.  September is my reboot month.

New school supplies and clothes means we need to go through the closets and donate all those things that my monster men have grown out of.  We'll sit down and organize our schedules, making sure that homework, dinner and chores all have a slot.  We'll become more mindful about planning for fun stuff to happen.  We'll get the doctor's appointments taken care of and of course the haircuts.  September is our fresh start. 

For me, my fresh start is going to include a renewed focus on some self-care.  With a little more exercise in my life, I'm sure the endorphins will kick in and my writing will come more easily.  If I'm having more structure and intention maybe I'll even pack a lunch and water bottle for work. With all of the focused choices I might even start sending birthday cards and thank you notes again. It's a new day, everything is possible.

Mid-Life Crisis Handles

"I can't seem to get a handle on my mid-life crisis."

These were the words of my longest and dearest friend, trying to sum up a string of difficult days and challenges.  In truth, the two of us have been sharing our various travails for a year or more.  Work struggles, relationships, body changes, health issues, parenting teenagers, and aging family members are the frequent topics of our conversations.  At some point my friend wisely reminded me that we were women of a certain age. She intimated that our malaise had a little bit to do with our denial that we were in our mid forties. We needed to talk with some older women and be reminded how very normal we were. Our struggles stemmed from working so hard to keep our feelings, bodies, and activity resembling our 30 year old selves.

Just Between Friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our brilliant, nursery rhyme singing toddlers are now know-it-all, social media dependent teens. Hugs and snuggles are traded out for new clothes and rides to other people's homes. Enduring the advice and judgement of older family members, we now assist with retirement home decisions and funeral arrangements. Birth control choices and pap smears are old hat. The new ailments du jour seem to never have definitive prognosis but rather involve changing our normal routines and diet to accommodate our aging bodies and then getting used to the new set of limitations.  Every order of fries, drunken party, and dropped yoga class seems to all have converged on us over night.  There is the quiet lingering questions, for me at least, "Will I have enough money when I retire? for the kid's college? What should I be doing with my life? Am I in the midst of doing it already?  Will I ever have a grown up bed with headboard?"

"I can't seem to get a handle on my mid-life crisis."

It sounds depressing when I read it on the screen but in the moment I burst out laughing. I don't have a handle on all of "it".  But my friend has a handle on me and hopefully I have a bit of a handle on her. There are so many things out of my control and so many places in my life where I lose perspective. Be real with enough people and if you're lucky they can keep hold of you. 

Getting and Staying Inspired

Today was one of those full on jumble of LIFE days.  I was at a conference which turned out to be very useful (always a bit of crap shoot). While there I ran into an acquaintance from a very turbulent time in my life, turbulence not from him but from shared connections that we had.  We talked quite a bit and when we parted I was grateful for the visit, even though it picked a little of the protective scab that I'd created for that time, right off.  During the day I was receiving multiple texts and voice mails from my children who were out of school and another set from family far away who were updating me on the shocking and difficult final hours of a very dear and special aunt.  Letting go of past hurts, approving unicycling trips for my son, hearing almost hourly details of the heart wrenching decision to remove artificial life support, and of course taking notes on how to "Develop A Communication Plan", all left me feeling pretty connected to life and what is important to me and also frazzled.

When I finally got home and checked my email, the day was refreshingly and beautifully capped with a note from a friend and fellow blogger which was quite unexpected.  Jennifer's blog, 1voice4peace was truly my first inkling that expressing myself honestly and being vulnerable, might be good for me to pursue.  She pushed me to look beyond the first impression or easy, popular opinion and look instead with a more quieted mind.  She inspired me to live out my personal values and convinced me that caring about peace and the earth and conscious living was what "all the cool kids were doing".  The note from her was a link to her blog where she announced that she was passing the "Inspiring Blog Award" on to me.

She described that as recipient of the award I would need to thank the one (her) who gave it to me, with a link back to her blog; list some things about myself that people wouldn’t know from reading my blog; and   nominate at least one other blog for the Inspiring Blog Award.

So, wow, huh.       

In true Jennifer fashion she managed to slow me down and redirect the course of my day.  Our days frequently get filled up with past hurts, minutiae, obligations, and other people's needs.  We can forget that finding sources of inspiration, cultivating them, and staying engaged with those people and things that inspire us, is our salvation.  I need to do a much better job of cultivating and finding sources of inspiration, especially in this blogging community.  The one person that I do follow religiously and who is a constant source of support is Christine at Random Reflectionz.  The interesting thing about reading her blog is that she rarely writes about anything that I would have thought about that day.  I've read about politics, philosophy, spirituality, and infertility but also about, Korea and chimps.(!?) I never know what her topic will be but she's always smart and thoughtful and connects me to other resources that she's reading.  She also literally inspires me to write more by her kind words of encouragement, sharing my blog with friends, and giving me that blue thumbs up on Facebook on a regular basis.  I've also learned a lot about blogging stuff from her, so thanks Christine!  The Inspiring Blog Award is officially placed upon your laptop with much gratitude.

In terms of things you wouldn't have known about me from reading my blog... I kinda put it all out there.  Favorite color is green.  I wear Birkenstocks almost exclusively since having foot surgery.  I eat Nutella with a spoon.  Feel inspired yet?

Let Them Carry the Milk

English: Royal Mail rubber band, discarded in Alnmouth, Northumberland. (c) Tagishsimon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When our kids were two or three the temper tantrums came because they wanted to do things for themselves.  As parents, we wanted to do it for them because it was quicker, neater, better. How long should we be expected to wait for one little person to put on a pair of socks?!  Of course we needed to help.  There are more things to do in a day than dress one toddler, for Pete's sake!

Of course I wanted to scoop my son up and carry him like a baby when he was collecting ALL of the discarded rubber bands from the mailman's deliveries.  It was his latest collection but I just wanted to get some milk at the store.  Thirty minutes later we arrived at the store, one block away.  On the way home I wised up.  I gave him the gallon of milk to carry home (one block).  His hands were full, his muscles straining, he was too busy to collect rubber bands, or talk to neighborhood dogs.  He was too focused on his heavy load to walk the balance beams/sidewalk ledges along our neighbor's homes.  He didn't complain or feel punished.  He felt big.  Important.  Needed.

The danger with doing things for our wee ones when we want to go faster or be neater, is that we get stuck in that pattern of interaction, way past the time that it makes any sense.  I have seen 13 year olds have their food cut for them, their juice poured in the glass for them, their hair brushed, and clothes picked out.  This was not because of some household butler service.  It was because of a deep fear of spills and mishaps.  It was because of the involved adults' need for control or perhaps their own discomfort of seeing their "baby" growing up and not needing them anymore.

English: Gallon milk jugs – This photo is dedicated to a great wikipedian and an innovator in milk juggery. You know who you are. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have heard of college students who have no idea how to live within a budget because every bill is paid for by mom and/or dad.  A credit card for one set of expenses (bill going to the parents), a mortgage or rent check sent every month on their behalf, family cell phone plan with unlimited use, and of course a vehicle that comes mysteriously without any car or insurance payments. If you are doing these types of things, STOP.   Treating our young adults like children will leave them feeling hollow and unproductive.  If our high school or college or even adult children are gaming into the wee hours of the morning but unable to focus their abilities on keeping a paying job, it's time we hand them the metaphorical gallon of milk. 

Big changes can't happen overnight.  Some sort of change can happen immediately though. Find some thing to hand back over, to let go of, to make the "child" figure out.  Stop giving spending money.  Announce that the car will need to be retired and replaced by a fleet of public transit buses and trains. Give a time frame when bills and responsibilities are going to be handed back over for them to control.  Help develop a budget. There will be frustration and confusion at first.  It may be hard to watch the choices that get made initially.  Messing up or failing is not a crime. Let them try so that they can test their own abilities.  Let them fail so that they can learn how strong they truly are.

Support

The rules, culture, and technology of blogging is still a bit of a mystery to me.  I don't really have a sense of how many people are checking in and reading.  I do love learning from other people and seeing the ideas that emerge when you all share your own reactions.  I try not to get too caught up in the reaction or non-reaction to various posts and focus on my original reasons for writing.  I wanted to do something different.  I wanted to be more thoughtful and intentional and I wanted to start a dialogue about family/parenting issues.  Mostly, I wanted to talk honestly about stuff and maybe help push back against all the lists of  "should and ought to" that end making me feel like crap as a mom, wife, and person.

A friend of mine started a blog around the same time as me and she has been a great source of support and encouragement.  She shared her own thoughts on this very topic today and I'd like to encourage you to check it out, Random Reflectionz .

Thanks for reading and encouraging my effort.  Share, link, follow, I appreciate it (in a detached, self-confident, non-needy way).