Category: Mommydom

Enough For Now

by maryhelenc, posted in Mommydom, My New Life As Me

I try not to complain.

I really do. My good friend Nancy at Whispered Inspirations has a saying “too blessed to be stressed” which I’ve tried to adopt into my daily life.

I’m not stressed, I’m tired.

I think back to when I had two jobs, two kids & I made this look easy. Now sometimes it seems so hard. Then I remember why it was so easy back then; I had help.

I had an amazing assistant editor who went above & beyond the call of duty. I still feel he needs a shout out because I’m remembering now that I’m back into the fray that he was invaluable to my career. My homelife has always been me vs the world but his partnership on the professional side of things made life so much easier. I could likely get a new assistant but honestly they would suck in comparison. Part of being invaluable is being irreplaceable.

Now it’s just me. Me balancing schoolwork, homework, kids, a job, & a life. Apparently there’s a learning curve & part of the learning is remembering that I am human. I need days off. I need sleep.

I try not to complain because this is the life that I chose. It’s the life that will bring me security & success. I have all of the tools to make my happy ending, I just need to make them all fit. I often wonder how other people make it look so damned easy & why can’t I be that awesome too? Then I remember the number one rule of life; never compare yourself to anyone else.

So, while there are days (like today) that I would rip off my own arm for one hour off, I remember when I was unemployed & felt useless & that I wouldn’t want my life any other way, if for no other reason than because I can look back & know there were no wasted opportunities. I just need to remember that I’m not the same woman I was before. There is no assistant. There is no partner. There is more expected of me & finding the balance is a little trickier. That’s not to say it can’t be done, it’s just harder. I need to remind myself to take a day off because I have no one to remind me that I’m working too hard. I need to learn my own limitations.

Until then, I’m going to take a nap.

Family Friendly?

by maryhelenc, posted in Douchers, Mommydom, Political Fluff, Relationships, Seriously WTF?

Family is such a subjective term.

Last week, a homosexual couple were asked to leave a Blenheim Tim Horton’s because it was a “family friendly” environment. My first thought was that this was beyond rude. Then, I thought about how hilarious the idea of “family friendly” was.

It’s no secret that my family puts the fun back in dysfunctional. I was raised in the system & my daughters consider my friends their aunts & uncles. The sheer concept of this white bread, picket fence, 2.5 kids, hetero parents & a dog makes me laugh because so few people have that family.

The definition of family has changed so much, it’s hard to define what is & what isn’t. I’m a single mom raising three girls with little help from their dad. It’s not the Disney ending, but here we are. 50 years ago, a multi racial couple was horrible & a male teacher was a dedicated educator. Now, the former is the norm & the latter under suspicion. Single parents, step parents, multi racial families are part of normal life now, why wouldn’t a same sex just be another form of the normal family?

I have a girlfriend who plans to start a family with her wife. It breaks my heart to think that their family could be called anything but a normal family. It makes me sadder still to know that a common law couple who dresses a dog as their child would be considered more of a family than theirs.

Just because the group doesn’t fit the cookie cutter family, it doesn’t make them any less a family. As long as there is love, you’re a family & I’m sorry Tim Horton’s but love is always family friendly.

Finding the Real

by maryhelenc, posted in Dear Blank, MH vs Dating, Mommydom, My New Life As Me, Relationships

Sometimes life is messy.

Sometimes things get hard & you find yourself sitting in your bed thinking “WTF just happened?” I’ve had that a few times this week. First the test from Hell, then some dealings with the ex, then a confusing patch in a new relationship.

Normally, these sorts of dealings would send me into the tizzy to end all tizzys (& it did for a bit), but then something strange happened…

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