Wait! I'm not done!

I truly believe that there is a connection between writing and discovery. You'd never know this just by looking at the random dates on my blog posts, and if you could see my journal you'd just laugh! But I really do believe that as we write, our minds make connections between our experience and our thoughts, and we learn something. This connection is why writing is such an important part of education and, I dare say, self-discovery.

Well, I think that my last post stopped short of enlightenment!

I apologize to any of you that read it and came away feeling depressed. I mean, I re-read it, and felt a little depressed myself!

So I'm not done!

As I was thinking about that post this morning, I realized that most of my struggles with motherhood actually come from the exact issue I was talking about, and that is the problem of

COMPARISON.

dun dun dun!

That can be a pretty harsh word sometimes. Especially if it leaves us feeling like we are inadequate in some way just because we are different from another mom.

And I think, too, that we all handle motherhood differently. I have a friend who has twice as many kids as me, and she seems to just breeze through with little effort. She thrives in her environment. She's always put together, her house is clean, and it leaves me feeling inadequate when I compare myself to her.

I feel like I'm doing great if I can find clean shorts and a t-shirt! My floors need mopped, I have a pile of what-do-I-do-with-this on the floor in my bedroom, and I'm not going to get to any of it until I've written my paper on the connections between Freud's essay on The "Uncanny" and post World War I literature.

(I know, you're jealous.)

But where did I even get this notion that all moms have to be the same? Not a single person in this world is just like another, so why should moms be carbon copies?

How we do it is not near as important as actually doing it. So I'm going to stop comparing, right now, and just make sure my kiddos know how much I love them.

Who's with me?!

Missing my own mom...

Yesterday was May 1st.

This may not have much significance to a lot of people, but to me and my siblings, it's a hard day. I couldn't even bring myself to write this post yesterday, because the day is already emotionally charged.

It is the anniversary of my own mother's passing.

Now, it must be understood that I have the best parents in the world. I was especially close to my mom, however, and when she passed I had just entered the waters of motherhood myself.

It has been 14 whole years, but I miss her like it was yesterday.

I think another reason May 1st is so hard for me is that I find myself making comparisons between her mothering and mine. And, of course, I always fall short of the kind of mom she was, and the kind of mom I want to be.

So I add disappointment to grief, because that always helps. (wait, where's the sarcastic font???)

I have to constantly remind myself that I am not her, and my kids aren't exactly like her kids (not even the ME kid).

And I have to remind myself to just keep trying, to just keep moving forward, even if it feels like I'm getting nowhere.

So you fellow mothers, who struggle with feelings of inadequacy like I do, let's just keep on lovin' those babies of ours. Enough said.