Encouragement

 HELP WANTED No formal experience required. Hours are flexible, but “on call.” Work at home in your PJs. Pay is not great and the benefits will change your life   Eight years ago, my husband and I decided that I would pull back from my interior design business to answer this “stay at home mom” ad. I envisioned the perfect 9 to 5, where my work involved kissing babies, mommy and me Pilates, girlfriend lunch dates with our quiet well-mannered mini-me’s, Netflix watching, nap taking, profession that was too good to refuse. Four and a half kids later (I’m currently pregnant with # 5 as I'm writing this), “too good to refuse” might just be “too good to be true” as I keep thinking “wait, that wasn’t...

You win some and you lose some when it comes to parenting. What your child wears, if they nap, what they eat for lunch, etc. These are all battles, per se. Battles with that feisty toddler or in my case, the forever challenging 12 or 6 year old. It changes by the day, but there are plenty of things I choose to let go of and not “win.” A few battles that are not worth fighting: I am okay with losing to what my child wants to wear. Any given day, you will see my daughter in her favorite pair of leggings with a mismatched dress. I am okay with this, I want my kids to be creative and be comfortable in...

Before we had children, I would spend hours on special projects, both for work and around the house. I would work on something as hard as I could with perfection in the back of my mind. Although I wouldn't really admit it, I was operating like a perfectionist in a lot of areas of my life. Once we had children, it took about 2 hours of parenting for me to throw this approach to living completely out the window.  It even started in the delivery room with our oldest son. My doctor came in the room and said that after 15 hours of labor, my water had been broken for too long, I wasn't progressing quickly enough, and unless he...

When I’m not momming or doing volunteer work, my “real” job is working with the geriatric population at a nursing home. Trust me, I’ve heard “How do you do that everyday??” more times than I can count. But really, I consider myself lucky to work with such “well seasoned” individuals who share their lives with me and allow me to be part of their latter years ... and oh, the stories I have heard. For the vast majority of my career, I’ve been raising young children and for a while waddled around the nursing home as a pregnant momma-to-be. Many of the patients I see are parents too and share with me their adventures of the early years of parenthood....

42 days. That’s how long we had with my dad after his diagnosis. 42 days to cram in every word we wanted him to hear and everything we wanted him to know. My dad was a smoker. Actually, he was more than a smoker. He LIVED for his pack of cigarettes. A cup of coffee, cigarettes and a pocket t-shirt (for that pack of cigarettes) are the tangible things of my dad that I will always remember. Lung cancer was obviously always a possibility, but he was our dad and bad things “never happen to your parents.” I am not sure exactly how long he was having issues. He was a pretty stubborn guy and dismissed most things. He worked in Alaska...