Baton Rouge Flood

Recently I've found myself feeling lost within a few minutes of driving. My route these days is not familiar, much like my life. The house where we are currently staying is in a different part of town than our own house. I don't know these streets like the back of my hand, having to take different interstate exits and back roads. My autopilot-driving mindset is completely thrown off, constantly causing me to forget where I am. Our house flooded about a month ago. Thankfully we only had a few inches of water. While the walls have dried, the pile of furniture and debris has been removed from our front curbs and we're beginning to rebuild; the dust still hasn't really settled. The fog caused by what has been coined...

It’s a weird feeling- grieving your home and all that was in it. It’s almost like losing a loved one. At first, you don’t really believe you’ve lost them. It just doesn't quite sink in. But then you go to call them or come across an old picture, and the reality of it all begins to hit you. That's where I’m at now.     When I leave the grocery store and accidentally start driving towards our house - it hits me! When I come across an old photograph taken in our home -- it hits me! When I watch someone use a blanket, frying pan or handbag that looks similar to one I used to have - it hits me! Every...

It's not very often moms get to sneak away for a girls trip to the beach. It turns out we didn't pick the greatest weekend to do so, but we wouldn't realize that until after we arrived. So I gave hugs goodbye and left for a girls weekend away with three main instructions for my husband when it came to our son: Make sure he eats some veggies. Put him to bed at a reasonable time. No peeing outside. The third one sounds a little odd, but we'd been casually teaching our son about using the toilet and he was about to move up to the potty training class at daycare. Early on he would go outside with daddy. It was cute and...

  Losing your home and your things isn’t ideal under any circumstance. Tossing out our children’s toys was about as heartbreaking as tossing out ruined family photos for me. My kids didn’t deserve to lose what they lost. They aren’t able to grasp the reasons why this has happened to us. I kept silent about it for the first week. They knew we weren’t staying with family “just because.” They saw me cry and they heard conversations, but they never knew what was really going on. I took them both aside one morning before we headed back home to start demo. I told them that things would be different and the furniture we had would be replaced. I told them it...

We are all moms here, generally speaking, and we all probably laugh out loud at the thought of self-care. I know my idea of self-care is using my regular sitter at least one Thursday a month so I can enjoy a $4 margarita with college friends at Zippy’s. There are no massages; very rarely is there “me time” and I’m sure I’m not the only one still hoping to lose two-year- old baby weight … but when is a single mom supposed to work out?! Where and when and how does self-care happen? Well, about a month ago I decided to join a gym and shoot for a weight loss challenge. I was making time for ME to get healthy...