The Problem With Poor Me Syndrome (For Mommies)

When I first started blogging, I thought I would be one of those sarcastic, funny bloggers that everyone loves.  Hubby works ALL THE TIME so it would be easy to come up with about oodles of posts with the same central themes: Poor me, my husband works all the time.  Poor me, I always have to be the one who takes out the trash because Hubby is working.  Poor me, my kids are sick all the time and I have to be the one who gets up in the middle of the night. 

Then something happened.  My best friend wanted desperately to have a second child.  She tried and tried but then she found out that her endometriosis and fibroid tumors had become life-threatening.  Finally, her doctors told her she needed a hysterectomy immediately.  She was 30 years old. 

I watched all this happen and did my best to support her and the way my friend reacted took my breath away.  She didn't feel sorry for herself.  Sure, she cried.  Sure, she was incredibly sad.  But she picked herself by her bootstraps, hugged her little girl tight and thanked God for her one healthy child. At that point, I realized I had no business feeling sorry for myself.  I was allowing myself to turn into one of those angry Moms.  You know what I'm talking about.  Yet here was my friend, robbed of her uterus at age 30, and she wasn't mad at the world.  So what if I had to take out the trash?  So what if I always had to be the one to put the kids to bed?  I am lucky to have two healthy children to put to bed each night. 

At that point, I really looked around me and was amazed at what I could learn about being a Mom, not just from my friend, from other Moms too.  Take my own Mom.  When I was growing up, no one was more fun than my Mom.  She was the one giggling with us in church while my Dad gave us the evil eye.  Sure, she wasn't always appropriate, but she ALWAYS had fun with us.  To this day, I laugh more when I'm with my Mom than I do with anyone else and I want my daughter to feel that way about me too.  I realized I needed to do a better job of having fun and not always worrying about how many fruits and vegetables they ate that day or how much TV they watched.

Take my friend Lisa.  She is the one who inspired me to start blogging about crafts.  She truly enjoys spending time with her kids and can come up with a craft idea of of anything.  She doesn't live for nap time.  She lives for playtime. 

Take my own Grandmother.  She used to wake up at 4:30 am to iron her husband's shirt and make him breakfast before he left for work.  Now that's dedication.  Hubby is lucky if I pour him cereal on the weekends.  My grandmother always says that being a Mom is the most wonderful thing that can happen to a woman.

I learn every single day from the Moms around me and I can always find things I admire.  This inspires me to be a better Mom.  So I'm still sarcastic occasionally, but I'm not angry anymore.  Thanks to my friend, I'm a truly happy Mommy.

Don't get me wrong, if you happen to be going through what my friend went through, you have every right to be angry and sad.  Yet, my friend showed me the power of looking for the good in life and I hope she can show you too.

Happy Mother's Day!!



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Inspiration for Moms

I love people who don't complain.  When I start thinking how tough my life is, I think about the stories I have heard about my great-grandma.  She didn't have baby swings, pacifiers, baby-wipes, or even indoor plumbing.  When she wanted to make dinner, she didn't pull something from the fridge and put it in a microwave.  She went out in the backyard and cut the head off a chicken, skinned it, and proceeded to cook it.  I'm not making this up.  It's a very vivid memory of my Dad's chilldhood.  She also cut several of her fingers off in a combine so when she chased around a chicken with her giant hatchet or knife or whatever it was apparently quite a sight.  My Dad said she never complained and always just moved forward.

The thought of her inspires me.  I like to think about how lucky I am to have all these things like microwaves and breastpumps.  I also love being inspired and I was recently inspired by a great book, "Half Broke Horses" by Jeannette Walls.  The book takes place back in the days of my great-grandma.  The main character in the book never complains and I love her attitude.  Life back then was rough for kids.  At age four, instead of watching Dora and going to pre-school, they were collecting chicken eggs and watching after younger siblings and this book follows the life of a girl from childhood.  The main character lives through the depression and all kinds of things it is hard for us to even imagine.  Yet, she never looks for the negative in her situation.  She just always figures it out and goes on with life.  One of the situations that stuck out the most in my mind is one scene where they must go around and fortify their land when a flood is coming.  She takes her toddlers with her in the car and puts one of them in a carboard box to keep him from sliding around the truck.  I have a hard time even letting my kids stay up past 8pm so this kind of "go with the flow" attitude was revolutionary for me.  I found my own attitude really changing for the better as I read about this magnificent lady.
Jeannette Walls also wrote "The Glass Castle", which is also a great book and was on the bestseller list for a long time.  However, I liked this book better and the bottom line is, if you're looking for some inspiration at the end of a long day, read "Half Broke Horses".