Category Archives: Parenting

You’ll be okay

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I feel like my hands and feet have been tied behind my back, and I’ve been thrown into a deep pit of water. I can’t breathe.

 

 

If the blog of my journey were a record album, I would want to push the needle down hard into the grooves and scrape it across the entire story, destroying the totality of it with a primal screech before breaking the album into pieces on the floor.

broken-record

Fortunately the voices in my head are stilled by the more objective voices of friends – friends who can stomach my extremism without judgment. They can share my strong emotions, but talk me back from the ledge of my fears. They speak hard truths, but with compassion.

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Be Curious, Not Judgmental

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“Sometimes, all you need is someone who will listen. It is fortune enough to have people around who hear you & not judge you.”

― Tara Estacaan, Internet blogger, poet, artist

non judgemental

I had the most wonderful flight recently. Usually I don’t prefer to chat with my fellow passengers when I fly, but this was the last of three flights in one day to get me home from a solo trip to visit my parents, and I was ready for some conversation. Continue reading →

Nine Months

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Today the sky surrounding me is azure and clear, the heat rises to embrace my skin, and a fountain bubbles and splatters happily nearby. It’s mid-May, and here I sit and consider the past nine months. I didn’t realize the play on words and timing until just this moment – nine months.

Nineteen years ago in mid-May, I was contemplating a very different nine months: nearly nine months pregnant with twins while parenting a clever and headstrong, tow-headed two-year-old. My mind’s ramblings were full of both hopes and dreams and tiredness and impatience. My dim sleep-deprived eyes were bright with promise. Continue reading →

Relative Truth

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In talking with our second twin about their choices concerning gender, I asked the question, “What do you believe is true?”

The postmodern view is that, “All truth is relative.” That’s the idea that something is true for one person but not true for another, relative to their frame of reference, language, culture, and so on, and that there is no absolute truth. Something can be true for you, and something different can be true for me. It’s all in how you see it or what you believe. Continue reading →

In Their Defense

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As a mom, I reserve the right to challenge my kids’ choices and not just take everything at face value. That said, nobody better mess with my kids. I will stand up for them; I will fight for them; I will defend them with my whole being. My desire to defend them comes into play in wanting to protect them from their own inexperience, but also to battle for them against people who are thoughtless, unkind, or downright cruel.

I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel. I don’t like to be told what to do. I like to push boundaries and question things. I’m pretty sure I passed that on to my children, both intentionally and subconsciously. So as they push the boundaries even further, part of me is proud of their fortitude. The other part is less pleased. I thought that we’d teach them to be independent thinkers, and because we (my husband and I) were pretty smart, they’d all agree with us! How silly! Now that I’ve figured out that’s not how it works, and that they will choose their own path (and have been doing so since the day they were born), I’m still ready to back them up. mama bear

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