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I have felt so many emotions since becoming a mom 14 years ago this month. Joy, hope, sadness, pain, love, anger, adoration, pride, shock, awe. The list can go on and on. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

My family, especially my kids, are what kept me holding on when I felt alone. There was no way I could ever leave them.

These past few months however, I have felt a new emotion and it’s one I don’t like so much. I’m pretty sure that as my kids get older, I’m going to have to get more used to it though.

Helpless.

When they’re little, it’s pretty easy to fix their problems, or find the right person who can; the right doctor, the right counselor, the right medicine, the right coach, but as they get older it gets increasingly difficult to fix their problems or even guide them to finding the solutions on their own.

I find myself in a health situation with my oldest child that I feel completely helpless in. She suffered a concussion on November 9th. That’s three months ago.

She hasn’t played soccer since then.

Most people who get concussions take a week or two to rest, get over it and get back to their regular lives. Not my kid though.

She’s been put on home instruction for school because she keeps getting headaches, has a hard time focusing and concentrating and basically was in pain while at school.

Most kids would probably prefer to be home and not go to school, not my kid. She likes going to school and learning. She doesn’t want to get behind. She wants to do well.

She also misses soccer. Sometimes I take her to practice so she can be with her friends and do a little conditioning, but she can’t really do much of anything else out there. No real soccer training, no ball touches, no contact.

The hardest part is the neurologist is unhelpful. She has no idea why my daughter is still suffering, she basically accused her of exaggerating the pain to get out of school at the last appointment we had with her (we are getting a new neurologist).

We have no answers. We have no timeline of healing. No expectation of when she can get back to school or soccer. No idea when she can go somewhere without worrying about the place giving her a headache from too much stimulation.

We did, finally, get an MRI done, which showed her brain is normal. Good news, but still leaves me helpless because we have no answers for why she still feels the way she does.

This feeling of helplessness is by far the absolute worst emotion I have experienced in parenthood and I want it to go away!

This morning a girl walked into my class lugging a teddy bear almost as big as her, three balloons with various messages of love, a giant box of chocolates and what looked like two dozen roses. All expressions of love from her boyfriend for Valentine’s day.

Honestly though, if my husband had gotten me all that crap to lug around all day, I’d be livid. Showing love isn’t about going overboard buying stuff once a year, it’s about all the little things every day.

I love this cartoon. It reminds us that love is a choice, not a feeling. I choose to love my husband, everyday. Even when he gets on the only nerve I have left after teaching hormonal teens all day and helping our own kids navigate the wonderful world of Junior high school.

He chooses to love me every day. Even when I lose it on him and unleash all my pent up anxiety in his general direction.

Love isn’t always pretty heart-shaped balloons with catchy phrases or beautifully, fragrant roses.

Sometimes it’s ugly, roll up your sleeves, hard work.

Sometimes it’s holding each other when one of you, in my case usually me, winds up crying until your eyes are puffy and you have snot and tears running down your face and you might not even know why.

Sometimes it’s staying home on a Friday night, making tater tots and watching your favorite show, sport or movie.

Sometimes it’s helping the other through a tough time

Sometimes it’s watching the other person, being their cheerleader as they work towards reaching a goal.

Love isn’t being shot with an arrow by Cupid or falling head over heels.

Love grows with each day and each choice to be there for the other person until all you know is love for them.

My last post was about being nicer to myself, encouraging myself and basically, not being mean to myself. Then, just a few days later, my body decided to turn against me.

It started out simply enough, a couple of sniffles, a tickle in my throat. I told my mother in law, “I’m a teacher, I’ll be fine. I have an incredible immune system, from being attacked all day everyday by sick kids.”

I was trying to stay positive.

I went back to school on that Monday after Christmas break, and by 4th period I knew I wasn’t going to last the whole week. I thought I’d have a sinus infection by Thursday.

By 6th period, I couldn’t get through an entire sentence without coughing, my throat was sore from the coughing, my nose was stuffy, my head hurt and my sinuses above my eyes were excruciating.

As soon as I got home, I called a sun for the next day. I woke up that next morning with a fever of 101.8°. I hurt all over. I made it to the doctor. They told me I had a sinus infection after I told them that I had a sinus infection (it wasn’t my regular doctor and I wasn’t impressed at all.) She prescribed be an antibiotic that wreaked havoc on my intestines.

I ended up missing 4 days of work and still felt pretty bad when I went back. Then two weeks after the fever started, my chest began hurting when I took deep breaths, with stabbing pains when I coughed, which was still a lot. I went back to the doctor and found out that my asthma had been triggered by the sinus infection and most likely the mold in my bedroom from a flood in there we woke up to on Christmas morning.

That doctor gave me a few prescriptions to get my asthma under control and within hours I felt better. The pain in my chest was gone and I could breath comfortably again.

I thought it was ironic that just a few days after I wrote about being nice to myself, and not tearing myself down, but encouraging myself, my body would turn against me.

This illness has sapped my energy for most of the past 3 weeks, I haven’t exercised, graded very many papers at work, eaten very well, spent good time with my family etc. Usually I would berate myself for that. I would tell myself that I was a horrible wife, mom, teacher, person, but I haven’t. I’ve been sick.

I’ve needed to focus on taking care of me and getting better. If I’m not healthy, I can’t really be there for anybody else.

So as I’ve felt better, I’ve cooked dinners for my family, graded and returned assignments to my students, helped my son with homework, and yesterday, for the first time in three weeks, did the stretching part of my exercise routine.

This illness took a lot out of me and it took a lot of time from me. It will take a while to get back to where I was before, but that’s okay.

It doesn’t make me less, it makes me human.

I know I’m about 5 days late on that, but hey, better late than never, right?

So…

Happy New Year!

Did you come up with your New Year’s Resolutions yet? Did you give up on them already? Not judging, but most resolutions don’t last very long. I didn’t even come up with any this year, it’s easier to not come up with any than to deal with the feelings of failure when I don’t follow through with them.

It’s a new year, it’s time to start over. It’s time for a new you. It’s time to make all the changes you’ve ever wanted to make in your life. All at once. All now.

It seems like the beginning of the year puts a lot of stress on people to change everything about themselves and become perfect. Lose the weight, become organized, get the better job, the bigger house, the better car, give up junk food, exercise more. Become better than you currently are.

That’s an awful lot of pressure to put on someone just because we change from one year to the next.

I’m not a mental health professional, but from personal experience, that kind of pressure to change has caused me to suffer from mental health issues in the past. I’m going to share how I’m heading into 2019.

To begin, I need to go back to 2018. I learned a lot about myself and my anxiety last year. I learned some things I can do to lessen my anxiety on a regular basis, like get enough sleep ( which is a struggle itself since I also have insomnia), eat healthy, and exercise. Just doing those things have taken my daily anxiety levels from a 5 on a scale of 1-10 to about a 2. That’s a huge difference. I feel like I can breath, everyday. I feel like I can relax on the shore instead of constantly treading water, just waiting to be pulled beneath the surface to drown in the demands of life.

I will take those new found skills into 2019 with me. An area I will work on this year is being nice to myself and to stop listening to the liar that takes up residence in my brain occasionally.

I’m cruel, belittling and horrible to myself. If I make a mistake, if I forget something, if I let anxiety win a battle, if I eat extra junk food, if I drink caffeine too late in the day, if I misspell a word, if I get a student’s name wrong, if I make a wrong turn, if I…., If I…

I let myself know how stupid I am. How idiotic. Unlovable, undignified, unprofessional, unloving, uncaring, fat, lazy, never good enough, always making bad choices, can’t make good choices, incapable, worthless.

Now, if one of my kids or a student did any one of those things, I’d encourage them to do better next time and remind them that their one mistake doesn’t define who they are. They can make better decisions in the future. I would offer them grace and hope. I need to do that for myself as well.

Sometimes I’m able to do that, but sometimes, that liar, Anxiety, takes up residence, and I start believing it. I start talking like it.

For 2019, I will be nicer to myself, not as a New Year’s resolution, but as a part of my continuing, growing, expanding self-care regimen. So that when a day happens like earlier this week when I went out to breakfast with my kids, went out to lunch with my friends and then went out to dinner with my husband, I will not call myself a fat, loser who can’t stick to eating healthy for anything. I won’t tell myself that I might as well give up now and just eat everything, all the time.

I will tell myself that I had a good time with three different groups of people and that sometimes spending time with people means eating food with them.

I will tell myself that nurturing my relationships with family and friends is just as important to helping ease my anxiety as eating healthy is and remind myself that I made healthy(ish) choices while eating at restaurants.

Here’s to not being better in 2019, but to being the best you that you can be in 2019!

Happy New Year!

I have been aware of Ariana Grande for years now, since she was in shows on Nickelodeon that my kids used to watch. I don’t know much about her career now as a singer, but I feel bad for what happened to her at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.

The Bishop first of all completely dismissed her when he made fun of her name then he made her into nothing more than an object by grabbing the side of her breast when he hugged her.

She is obviously uncomfortable by it and he should have moved his hand, but all society needs to learn that we need to stop forcing affection on people, then “accidental” groping would end.

The bishop didn’t know Ariana Grande and was a bit presumptuous to give her a hug and hold her for almost a minute while he stood there and talked.

Let’s just stick to shaking hands, there is no way to accidentally touch someone inappropriately if all we’re doing is shaking their hand.

It’s time to stop “accidental” groping.

Disclaimer: This post is not about a particular person or event, unless specifically stated. It is about a general observation of society. Please only apply it to yourself as it applies to a general audience. It is about all of us.

When I was in high school, I was part of a youth leadership group at my church. The very first lesson we were taught was learning how to say. “I made a mistake,” along with the importance of being able to say that.

People make mistakes. Often. It’s what we’re good at. The only thing that we can be perfect at is being imperfectly human. With all the thousands of choices we face every single day, its no wonder that sometimes we screw up and make the wrong choice, say the wrong thing, take the wrong turn.

We all make mistakes. There’s just no way around it.

Not one of us is perfect; no, not one!

There are two responses that we can have when we make a mistake:

 1.  We can cover it up, hide it, pretend it never happened, be crippled by it

or

2. We can admit it, learn from it, grow from it, be freed from it.

 

Too many people seem to take the first route. They don’t want to deal with the consequences of their mistake so they hide it. Some may even try to blame others. Maybe try to bully those who call them out on it into silence. Threaten them with lawsuits, or go so far as to actually sue them.

In trying to hide one mistake, these people are making another mistake, while their first mistake continues to compound, becoming larger like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and mass until it explodes upon impact with a sturdy tree at the bottom of the hill.

When these people are confronted with the mistake they made, they deny it. There’s no way they did it. They’re perfect after all. Is there any proof they did it? Pictures? Video? Witnesses? Victims? If there are it’ll all be explained away.

For people who respond this way, the mistake they made becomes a way of life for them.

Then there are the people who when confronted with the fact that they made a mistake, accept it, learn from it and move on. Their lives are better for it. They aren’t trapped in trying to hide it.

The snowball stops growing. They don’t have anything to hide, even though they may have consequences of their mistake. My daughter made a mistake this week. We had six days away from soccer and she chose to spend the majority of those days laying on a couch reading. It was a safe mistake to make so I didn’t step in and try to fix it.

At the end of those six days she had to go back to soccer training in hundred plus degree temperatures. She had a hard time that day. When I picked her up after practice, the first words out of her mouth were. “I screwed up. I shouldn’t have just laid around. That was dumb.” I agreed with her and asked her what she could do different in the future. She came up with a bunch of different ideas for staying in shape away from the soccer field.

I want to be like her. I want to be able to seen when I’ve made a mistake, learn from it and do better in the future.

I don’t want to be trapped in a lie of perfection and denying that I ever mess up.

I am only perfect at one thing.

I am perfect at being an imperfect human, and that’s something I can learn from.

 

 

A few months ago, my husband and I decided the kids were finally old enough for a trip to Washington DC, one of my favorite places to go. As a bonus we would take them to New York to see a Broadway show. (We saw School of Rock and it was incredible!)

My family calls my trips “nerd”vacations because we learn a lot and see historical places. However, when I asked them what places they wanted to see, they listed libraries, bookstores, and museums. I have raised “nerd” children and I couldn’t be happier.

I set to work doing what I do best, planning so that we could all see what we wanted. I reserved flights, hotels, rental apartments. I set up private sightseeing tours, and got tickets to museums and places like Colonial Williamsburg.

We were going to be gone for 11 days and I created an itinerary that would help us get the most out of those eleven days and hopefully not leave us too exhausted.

We spent months in training for all the walking we would do. We were up to 2 miles of walking a day at home, before we left.  We were ready for all the walking.

We watched the weather, it was going to be cold while we were there. We would arrive in NYC at the end of a nor’easter. I told everyone to pack layers and a jacket.  We were prepared for the weather.

We were looking forward to an amazing trip and it was amazing. I loved seeing new places in New York and showing my kids my favorite places in DC.

I also learned a lot on this trip about life in general and traveling with an anxious kid in particular.

1. Somebody will forget something, no matter how meticulously you pack.  When we arrived in New York and we’re waiting for our ride, my daughter commented on how cold it was. I told her to put her jacket on, to which she replied that it was in her bed at home. Lucky for her my jacket was two in one so I gave her one of mine.

2. Expect the unexpected. Two days into our trip, my son got sick. A headache and a cough; he was miserable. Because of this we didn’t get to do everything on the itinerary.

3. Be flexible The best laid plans may not always work out. The place may be closed, the kid might get sick or a myriad of other things might come up that force you to be flexible.

4. Relax Things happen, deal with it. Go with the flow. Choose to relax instead of freak out. (I know that’s easier said than done, but you will have so much more fun if you can do this.)

5. Be in the moment We had a lot planned and we could have always been thinking about what was next, but when we did that we missed some of what we were presently doing. I needed to constantly remind myself to enjoy what we were doing and be in the moment. When I did, I was able to relax and go with the flow much easier.

This is a long post. If you got this far, thank you! I learned a lot in our trip to bring back to my every day life that I wanted to share with you.

 

Before I had kids, I never realized what a difficult job it would be.

I was going to have perfect children who never did anything wrong, who always followed directions the first time. They would always make the best decisions and look out for others. They would never have to deal with low self worth or a negative self image. They would be outgoing, friendly, and successful in anything they tried.

I was wrong!

Kids are born selfish. All they care about is getting fed, getting held, having a clean diaper. And they know how to let you know when they’re unhappy with anything.

I quickly realized that as a parent, I had a tough road ahead. It would be my responsibility to raise them, shape them and guide them into becoming decent human beings.

It would be my job to fix hurts and help them see the consequences of their choices. That’s easy when they’re little and the hurts are physical, but as hey get older the pain they experience becomes more emotional and my job gets harder.

I wish I could wrap their hearts in bubble wrap to keep them from ever experiencing anything bad, but if I did that, it would also keep them from experiencing anything good.

As painful as it is to see my kids hurt and as much as I want to shield them from that, I care how my kids turn out. I know that growing can be painful, remember growing pains during growth spurts?

Growing can be painful and that sucks for both the child experiencing it and the parent watching.

I love my kids more deeply and fiercely than I ever thought possible. Seeing them in pain, pains me.

I wish there was an instruction manual that said when this happens, do and say this to make it better. I’ve looked for this book and I still haven’t found it. (If you find a copy let me know.)

What I’m learning though, is that my kids need me. I my not always say and do the right things, but I’m there for them. They can talk to me and I will listen, hopefully without judgement. I will do my best to guide them through whatever situation they are in.

Parenting is hard, but I care how they turn out.

Parenting is also the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

I love my kids!