Living with intention can be hard some days… am I right???
The other day I was having a conversation with someone who very sweetly said that I was 1) like the perfect cool mom. 2) had it all together. 3) they don’t know how I do it. 4) they pictured my days all planned out on a schedule with times and people and places to be… because we have so many moving parts to our family.
Let’s break this down line by line. 🤣
- Not even close. I am sooooo far from perfect. I have made enough mistakes that I am holding money aside for therapy for them when they are adults 🤦♀️🤣 kidding… kind of. I do believe all people can benefit from talk therapy AND should go! I can admit to my faults with them though, and that is important. I do apologize when I am wrong. AND of course in hindsight I would have done a million different things over the years… I have grown. I have changed in my thinking…. with age, with experience, with time, with realizing that every child is different and it is okay to parent them differently. AND in working on healing from my own experiences. Healed parents, parent differently.
- Nope. Organized chaos at its best. I mean there are a million days I don’t sleep enough (pretty much every day of my life), I am so tired, everyone needs me, there are a million medical appointments, kids are in a mood, I am in a mood, I have work I want to do but do not have the space or time to do it, school at home with so many different classes going on and kids that need extra… shall we say encouragement and/or reminders… I do not have it all together. I have some of it together. But, it depends on all the mitigating factors around me… and wether it’s fair or not, I have been told the house reflects MY mood. 🧐. That is a lot of power. But I do realize - an example- that if I come at one of my say, teens first thing with all the things they need to do, did not do, have done wrong ect. it is immediately going to set off a chain reaction of them being defensive and not responsive to me, then me getting more upset because I should not even have to remind him. SO no, I do not have it all together and sometimes even when I know something will not be a good outcome I STILL do it.
- Well I am not sure how to take that hahaha. I mean I chose to have my kids. I chose to have my animals… I can’t really not do it. I did not choose medical needs or the fact that multiple kids have multiple therapeutic needs ect… I do not get to choose how things affect them, or what happens to them out of my control. BUT, I love my family. I love my life. Would it be nice to have a quiet moment??? YES. Do I always get that even when I need it??? NO. Intention and mindfulness does play a lot into this though. I have the privilege of having kids all the way from tiny to adult. I know how fast it goes. It is not an actual cliche. It is true. The days can be SO long. The years are not. I swear. BUT please know that we all have different experiences. There are people who long for a child, fight tooth and nail for one and get upset with people who say they don’t love the process, want something to hurry up, can’t wait for their kids to be older and more independent ect. There are people who have 6 kids and are upset that they cannot express how they feel because they do not want to be judged for choosing to have 6 kids and feel they have to hide hard days… There are people in the middle…. Me?? I try to remember EVERYONE is coming at everything different. We are all human. No one can truly know what someone else’s shoes feel like. Or the dark places they go alone. Or what it looks like behind closed doors. I mean most of us do not put allll the negative experiences on blast.. A fight, a death, an infidelity, lying ect.. A lot of people with medically normal kids, neuro-typical kids, kids who always follow the rules ect are not going to be able to really understand a mother or father with the opposite and what that is like on the daily. OR that you can not always blame the parents. SO what AM I getting at???? Well I do not have it all together. I am ALWYAS growing, changing, adapting… I love my life. I can not imagine it differently, I did not imagine it this way either…. so I feel like, and tell me if I am wrong. If you have one child you do what you need to do. If you have 2 you adapt and do what you need to. If you have 3 ect and so on. We just go about our days and adjust as needed. I try to be flexible and go with the flow. BECAUSE life is not black and white. The path is not straight… and you are not given GPS!
- WHICH flows right into this one hahaha… Okay. We have a family schedule on Cozi. Lee and I can see what is on for the day. Who has appointments, where and when. AND I do have a white board with each kids schedule for the day on it. (and ours so they can see what we have scheduled). Plus it reminds them who has cat box duty… although I do not think one day has actually gone bye that I still do not have to remind them…. I said the other day to one of them… or 2 or 3 of them separately, “How much time do you think I spend a day reminding you guys, or asking you to do things you need to do, or making sure you are where you need to be, or trying to get a text back to a question???” That is true. BUT I have ADHD. So having something physically written down for me to SEE, helps with my own anxiety and organization. I will have to write a blog about what it is like to live with anxiety and ADHD. Especially as a woman, a mother ect. SO that should tell you I never have it all together. AND my time management is horrible. There is never enough time. ALWAYS something to do AND I am at the mercy of allllll the other being cooperating with me on that …. sometimes they don’t want to move fast and it makes us late. We have all different personalities, and with time and experience I have really had to let it go and just say we will get there late either way… either we will ALL be stressed or we will just get there and laugh…. but others do not feel that way… SO this sometimes crazy life of mine has taught me to be less judgemental about time and space… and allowing it to not be personal when someone is late, or forgets an appointment or something planned… we are just humans… and this has been a strange time of trying to balance so many things. LET IT GO….. relax… go with the flow…. chill. Namaste. AND yes I have to audibly tell myself that too.
SO in conclusion, NO, not perfect. AND add in having a husband with a very public job… so people feel they know him/us… which gives them preconceived feelings about how we maybe… or how HE is. Add in people feeling they might know someone so that makes them not like something ect…. IT is a strange dynamic… once I was so annoyed at the grocery store… I was tired, hungry someone was throwing a fit… lol… I was short in my tone… SOMEONE said online LEE GOLDBERG’s WIFE IS SUCH A BITCH!!!! wellll maybe I am 🤦♀️.
Or as we were walking into a store some guy yelled at our family how much he does not like Lee’s personality haha… but he does not even know him 🤣. AND I am pretty outspoken. AND we do live a pretty public life. Maine is not huge. It can feel really small and like a big extended family. SOMEONE always knows someone you know, people are always connected in some way SO I do not mind sharing my family publicly (MOST OF THE TIME)… sometimes I keep things private of course…as the kids get older, they deserve more privacy, and every time something happens I do not always share on social media… I would say I share far less currently… not even sure why…
Maybe because the climate has been so negative, so off … that I stay off more often except to share work or a photo or something… and sometimes (as I have gotten older) sometimes experiences are fun to have in our own little circle.
For instance, I changed a lot in 2020…. and I did not share it as it happened… so I got a lot of OMG were you keeping secrets!!! WHY were you hiding!!! lol… I was not.. I was being mindful, introspective, working myself out, growing, learning, changing, ect.
BUT this blog gives me a place to be real. REAL TALK.
SO there we have it. Life is not perfect.. I will never be perfect. BUT I do strive to grow, I am NEVER so egotistical that I cannot learn when I am wrong… or learn from other's experiences because there are things I will never know or experience..
Know better, do better.
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