Finding motivation

Do you ever just feel like sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine (yes, I said bottle) and a straw and a comfy blanket and just saying eff it?

Yeah, me either 🤷‍♀️

Adulting is hard. Mom-ing is hard. Parenting is hard. Living is hard some days.

Some days I yearn for the innocence of my youth. Those days were so much simpler. My parents worked and supported our family. My sisters made me sit on the floor while they got to sit on the couch. I chased the dogs around our 40-acre property, over and under tree branches, through mud. I made families out of everything – and I mean EVERYTHING. Rocks, corn cobs, tendons off of deer legs when we processed the harvest at deer hunting time… you name it and I probably made a family with it.

In my adult life I’ve made families and they didn’t stick quite as well as my rock families did. I had enough practice, you’d think I could have gotten that right.

In my adult life I’ve struggled to pay bills, cried over lost friends, patients, family members, relationships. I’ve had highs and lows: insomnia, health issues, stress, success, happiness, high energy, low energy.

I’ve noticed that my own children don’t seem to have that same carefree youth that I had. We are always rushing about, they don’t get as much time to play and be kids, they don’t spend nearly enough time outside.

All my best laid plans to exercise regularly and be motivational to others get derailed by injuries, autoimmune flares, depression/anxiety, mom guilt, and the occasional night where I just want to eat a pint of ice cream, do nothing, and probably drink some wine. It doesn’t mean I get to do those things, but I WANT to.

I want to be motivated to wake up early and exercise like I used to. Exercise helps my mood and prevents a lot of my pain. But sometimes I’m in too much pain to exercise, and I’m just not in the mood. I got up and pushed play this morning. The first time in 2.5 weeks. I could stress about how long it’s been. But I won’t. I have enough stress already. I’ll just pray that I can get up and do it again in the morning. Because motivation doesn’t come BEFORE you start something, it comes after and because of doing things.

Riding the struggle bus

Oh man, oh man. To say I’ve been on the struggle bus lately is an understatement. My coping skills for life are being seriously tested, and the parent-teacher conference here would not go well.

As we neared the start of the school year, I watched meme after meme going up about moms ready for school to start so the kids would “get out of their hair” again. I wanted my kids “in my hair” more often. I watch my youngest child, especially, struggle with life and I just wish I could hold him longer and love him more. Maybe then he wouldn’t have so many troubles.

Maybe I was wrong for going to school so long and building up so much debt. Maybe I was wrong for wanting to be a mom who works outside the home so much. Maybe I should have done this or that, or not done this or that. Maybe it’s my fault he has behavioral problems. Maybe there’s nothing to do with me at all. I have no f&$@ing clue.

All I know is I wish i could help my child, but I haven’t a clue how. I love him. I cuddle him. I try to teach him boundaries and coping skills. I discipline him when he’s naughty. Then I love on him some more, because maybe that’s what he needs. We had him in behavior therapy, play therapy, and now with a regular therapist. He says all the right things when he’s with them, and he graduates out of programs because he gives a line of BS. In therapy right now, he can talk about all of these helpful techniques for dealing with frustration. But will he use these techniques at school? Of course not. But it sounded good in the therapist’s office.

So I sit here dumbfounded, unable to fall asleep, trying to mull over in my head what I can possibly do to help him. But tomorrow he goes to his dad’s for a couple days, and I won’t be able to help him at all. And it breaks my heart. My heart breaks daily for this guy. And so the stress continues. This stressed out mama just can’t catch a break.

I wish I had more insightful words to share today, but I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes. If nothing else, of you read these words and they sound familiar, maybe you’ll find some solace that you are not alone. Keep loving those Littles and trying to help them the best you can. Being a kid is hard. So is being a parent.

I need to stay on vacation

Ever feel like you need a vacation, when you JUST got back from vacation?? Asking for a friend…

I spent a glorious 9 days in the woods of northern Minnesota with my little boys last week. We visited a bunch of MN state parks and had so much fun. We went to bed shortly after the sun did, and woke up shortly after the sun. We ate food either made on a camp stove or on the campfire, and we enjoyed every minute – well, except the mosquitos!!

There was no work email to check, no pager to respond to, no alarms. No stress. As we got closer to home on Sunday, I could literally feel the tension coming back into my neck. I started thinking about all the things I needed to do for the week to get ready for work, thought about how many emails would be waiting for me (150+), and came back to real life.

Happy mama went away. I’m back to rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off, having a hard time getting the boys to sleep and thus having a hard time getting them to wake up, and just overall feeling stressed. I need a vacation again. I need to be back out with nature. I need less stress. I need to find a job that I can work from a tent…who’s with me?

Keeping up with the Joneses

Remember that phrase from childhood? Or did I just age myself? Remember when there would be those families on town that always seemed so perfect and had everything together, and they always had the best of everything? Remember that envious feeling you’d get when you’d see them? Thank goodness it wasn’t every day!

But now we see them every day. Everywhere. On Instagram. On Facebook. On Twitter. They have it all. They’re practically perfect in every way. And you just want to puke.

YOUR kids lose their homework. They don’t get ready when you tell them to. They wear clothes that have stains on them, because “it’s my favorite shirt”. They may or may not have worn that same stained shirt the day before… The kids don’t listen at the grocery store and you have to count to 3. Heaven forbid you have malted milk balls as a treat in with the meat & cheese roll ups and blueberries in their lunch. Is this just me here? Or do you have the same experiences?

But as we scroll on facetagram or instabook, or whatever social media platform it is we’re mindlessly scrolling when we have a million other things to do, and we see all the perfection, we start to feel imperfect. We start to feel “less than”. And we start to wonder who’s judging us.

I used to live the ‘Facebook perfect’ life. Everything looked amazing on my Facebook page. Even my marriage that was less-than-perfect. And people were a bit surprised when we got divorced. Well, I wasn’t. I was in the trenches. I knew the truth. And I wasn’t surprised. And you know what? I’m not alone. People are living their truths every day, thinking they’re less than other people because of what gets blasted in our faces daily.

So why do we still feel the need to keep up with the Joneses? We SHOULDN’T! We should be free to live our own imperfect lives. Because it’s our lives, after all. Whether you’re a bento box mom or Uncrustable with a GoGo squeeze applesauce (real lunch that was packed this week), you’re still a great mom. Just ask your kids.

Is it Thanksgiving or Christmas?

Christmas has been so commercialized that we try to teach our children to be thankful and remember the reason for the season – do you buy that?

As a mom, I struggle with this. I want to teach my children to be grateful for what they have and to not throw a fit when they don’t have the same number of presents as each other, or others are getting presents and they aren’t…but at the same time I don’t want them to feel like they aren’t appreciated or loved or that they weren’t good enough to deserve gifts.

At my core, Christmas is by far my favorite holiday. And while, yes, I do enjoy getting presents, that’s not why I love this holiday. I love it for all the lights, the beautiful music, the time with family, all the yummy treats we make, and the beautiful snow. Yes, I live in Minnesota, where we dream of white Christmases, and we usually aren’t disappointed. I’m disappointed this year – ugh – but that could be a whole post by itself. I love singing the music and listening to the music and just having it play in my home while I’m wrapping or cleaning up. I used to sing in the church choir, and I LOVED the Christmas services best of all the music we did in the year.

So it shouldn’t be hard for me to teach them the real reason for the season, right? Even though it’s pretty much been proven that December 24 wasn’t really Jesus’ birthday based on the alignment of the stars and the weather in Bethlehem at that time of year, and really the holiday has been taken over by commercialism. It’s all about the gifts – who’s getting what…how much money can you spend…you better take out a loan to cover Christmas. Yowzers. Bank accounts are feeling some serious strain this time of year.

But my children have expectations based on social norms. And just like it’s taking me a bit of therapy to undo the emotional injuries I’ve sustained in my life, it’s going to take time to unlearn societal norms for my children. Baby steps. In the meantime, we’ll put on our matching family jammies and go through the hoops of Santa this year, because my children still believe. But, Santa doesn’t get to claim the more expensive presents – I’m taking credit for those! I’m thankful I had the ability to at least get a few of the things on their lists!