It's not only children who grow...

"It's not only children who grow.  Parents do too.  As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours.  I can't tell my children to reach for the sun.  All I can do is reach for it, myself." ~Joyce Maynard

It came to me the other day, as I was frustrated from work and life in general: any grown adult will tell you there comes a time when the pressure of work, bills, and life in general just becomes overwhelming and impossible to cope with. For the thousandth time, Kaiden threw a ball across the room into the wall. I snapped. I yelled. It was in that moment, when he covered his ears and looked up at me I realized one thing -- I needed to change.

We all lose ourselves in the every day, it is easy to do. But in that moment, I saw myself through my son's eyes, unhappy, grumbling, yelling because of the game he was playing. What was I doing? Who and what was I so damn unhappy about? I cried. It wasn't in that moment, I hugged him, asked him to go play outside then went in my room for an adult time out. I sat, I held my head in my hands and cried.

I have always known I was meant to be a mother. It is the one thing in the world I know I was meant to do, why? Because I have a heart which is endless with love. I am forgiving, kind, and understanding -- I am logical and process oriented. All of these things are both good and bad things about myself, but my heart is big enough for a whole army.

I don't want it to seem that I hate my children, because I don't. In fact, they're the reason I work to the bone, I press myself so hard to succeed. I want to give them all the things in life which I didn't have. But with that, you add such a huge amount of pressure on your shoulders. How can you possibly find enough hours in the day to do all of it?

I've decided it is my outlook on the situation, not really the situation. I've made myself a promise, I'm done yelling, I'm done being angry with nothing, I'm done letting my work follow me home, I'm done not enjoying the smiles, laughter and love of my children. I came home yesterday, started cleaning the house, handed the two oldest boys a trash bag -- gave them a chore. I allowed them to do it themselves, no hovering, just to be themselves as they picked up odds and ends, put away clothes, helped me clean the house. Jordin was so flipping proud of himself for vacuuming the house. We packed backpacks, lunches, and got clothes out for camp the next day. We went to bed at a decent time.

Don't misunderstand, I was still so ready for bedtime when it came, but it wasn't this overwhelming feeling of the impossible ticking clock, the rat race to the end of the day. I deal with the rat race enough during the day, I need to slow it down and focus differently on everything that happens at home. Maybe if I listened more, so would my kids; maybe if my mind was in the right place, it wouldn't feel like I was being beat up all the time. 

I'm also going to start taking some time out for me. I'm going to start heading back to the gym, start doing things by myself for a bit -- even if it is taking a walk. In the same consideration, I'm going to start doing more things with the boys. I'm going to take them on walks, to the library, to the park, and out to ice cream. I'm going to joke, laugh, and live life. If I am really so about change, it's time to change this too.

Waking Dreamer

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”~ Mark Twain

 Since I was in the fourth grade, there was a dream I had. It came out of no where, a writing assignment from Mrs. Porter's class. I found myself lost and immersed in words I had not realized I could even write. It wasn't any figment of my imagination I couldn't spell worth a dang. But, I started to see scenes unfold in my mind and put them to writing. 

At some point, I gave up on the dream. A couple years out of high school, working two jobs, going to college, keeping up with my story didn't seem like a priority anymore. I set the notebooks aside, eventually they started collecting dust, eventually so did my dream.

Recently I have started to look back and wonder, why did I really stop? Why not write again? It was an outlet for all my frustrations and emotions. It was a way to get out of myself and put a piece of me on paper in a way other people could also see the way my mind worked things out, how it melted all into one. So, I've decided to write again. 

I'm not in this delusional world where I think everything will suddenly fall into place. But I honestly think it will help me regain a piece of myself I lost somewhere along the way. I have been all about positivity and moving forward, yet maybe this is a piece I need to look back on. I think it is time to look at old dreams and see if I can make new ones out of them. 

So now... I'll get writing. I hope I have the courage to stay with it this time.