For the past few days I've gone back and forth with myself as to whether or not I was ready to put this out into the universe. Then, tonight, I read something that my amazing friend, Joel, wrote. (Yes, Joel..you are amazing, all survivors are.) I read his post and then we were texting back and forth. Joel always encourages me to write, to share, and to be me...and this...this post is a part of me.

See that graphic on the left? I found that when I was looking for something that said what a mother is. Here's a secret that I haven't shared with anyone who isn't exceptionally close to me. My mother was none of those things.

Amazing - My mother was determined to be a part of my life, when she felt like it, when it made her look good.
Loving - The first lie I ever remember my mother telling me happened when I was in no more than the first or second grade. I'm still waiting for that dollhouse with the electric lights.
Strong -  My mother couldn't be without a man that she put in front of her children.
Happy - I guess I can't speak to this, but my mother never seemed happy, certainly not when she was screaming at me that she hated me, wished I'd never been born, and that I'd ruined her life.
Selfless - My mother dropped me off at my grandparents' house when I was still a toddler because she couldn't be bothered to be a mother.
Graceful - My mother has never accepted anything or acted with grace. She'll lie to your face if she thinks it will get you out of the way and then do whatever she'd planned to begin with. I've heard her talk behind my back when she thought she couldn't hear me and she tore me apart in front of my children.

I no longer have a relationship with my mother, but she has affected every inch of my life for the past 39 years. I used to say that I learned how not to be a parent by being the daughter of my mother. People will point out that I was raised by my grandparents. That's true and they weren't bad people, but they'd already raised their children, my grandfather had health problems and my younger sister who was his princess. For the most part, I was left to raise myself while they dealt with my mother's drama or my sister. It left me clueless about so many things and left gaps that I had to try to fill in myself.

When my own children came along, I was terrified. What if I were like my mother? What if I was a terrible parent? What if my children turned out like me, broken at the core and left to try to rebuild themselves? My boys are teenagers now and I still live in fear that I'm doing something wrong. Am I too tough on them? Not tough enough? Do they know how much I love them? Have I been able to instill the confidence in them that I never had without it crossing over to them being egotistical idiots? Am I raising them to be independent, giving, loving members of society who only want to improve upon what's here?

I know that all mothers worry that they're not doing a good job. I also know that my fears of being like my mother had me deciding as a teenager to never have children of my own just in case. Clearly that decision didn't stick, but I think about this all the time. When I'm having a bad bipolar day and I feel my control slipping when one of them has pushed me and I say something to them and watch their faces, my heart breaks because I know where that voice came from. I worry that my apologies and my love and how rare it is that it happens isn't enough. I worry that I didn't break the cycle...

Mother's Day is a love, hate, panic kind of day for me every year. I have no mother to celebrate or appreciate. I declared myself an orphan and I meant it. As hard as it was, removing the toxicity of my birth family was one of the best decisions that I made. Still I mourn not having the kind of relationships that I see on tv, in the movies, or even with a few friends and their parents.

As a mother myself, I long for the breakfasts in bed, the days off, the hey let's do whatever mom wants today kind of mother's days. Part of me judges how good of a mother I am by that one day a year. As a mother to teenage boys, I know how ridiculous that is and sometimes I cling to the little things like Roger wanting to go grocery shopping with me because he was bored and I'm pretty fun to talk to..or Ben saying he'll help me with the house by doing dishes if I want. Still, my heart worries and it takes my head right along with it and in the end, mother's day...a day to celebrate me just leaves me in tears, completely rung out.



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Find Your Own Mothering Style
Trying to follow someone else's rules for mothering can take the joy out of being a parent. But "Mothering From Scratch" shows you how to develop your own style that helps you be the best mom for "your" kids.
Find Your Own Mothering Style
Trying to follow someone else's rules for mothering can take the joy out of being a parent. But "Mothering From Scratch" shows you how to develop your own style that helps you be the best mom for "your" kids.
Full of solid biblical truth, this book will help you
- explore your personality and examine your strengths and weaknesses in order to find what works for you
- tap into the resources surrounding you and get mentoring and support from other moms
- push past the fear of change or doing it wrong and allow room for grace in your mothering
Melinda Means and Kathy Helgemo provide a flexible, customizable approach to help you discover your optimal parenting style.
""Mothering From Scratch" speaks to the hearts of women from coast to coast who are desperate for practical tools that work! Kudos for a job well done!"
--Jennifer Maggio, CEO of The Life of a Single Mom Ministries and award-winning author

====================
When I was a much younger mom with much younger children, I was insecure in my parenting, like most new moms are. You worry that you're not doing something a certain way and that it will negatively affect your children. Luckily for me, I was thrown into the deep end and it was sink or swim time and I'm happy to report that my children are none the worse for it. However, back then, I would have welcomed a book such as this one. Filled with a transparency that made me smile, these two ladies don't claim to know it all or to be perfect parents. They share their practical insights and encourage all of us to be the best moms that we can be. I will mention that this is a Christian book and has quite a few religious insights, so if that's not your thing, you're going to want to give this one a pass. If it is your thing or you know a new mom that might enjoy this, add it to your wish list.



I received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review.  All thoughts, comments, and opinions are my own.

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On this day, I am thankful beyond belief for some of the fantastic people that I have in my life. After posting my last post, I felt hesitant to share it with people. I was scared of how people would respond to my call for help. I was afraid that they would judge me. I was silly.

I had the most incredible outpouring of support from friends; some that I've known forever and some that I've known only a couple of weeks. In fact, I am super excited to let you all know that we have had a laptop donated! I cannot begin to thank the generous soul who is donating it enough.

On top of that, two of my Mamavation sistas are running a giveaway to help raise money for any other items that he will need. Any money raised about and beyond what we need will be donated to March of Dimes. As you may remember, Ben was a preemie (and heck, we induced Roger 2 weeks early!) so this is a charity that is close to my heart.

So, if you would like to get involved in helping our family out, please go through the giveaway. The girls are giving away a prize pack that includes:

• Blog transfer to a self-hosted WordPress site or WordPress installation if you don’t already have a blog
• Custom domain name registration for 1 yr if you don’t already have one
• Blog hosting for 1 yr if you don’t already have hosting
• Custom blog design or re-design including header and button (Greta is a kick-butt designer)
• Standard plugin set-up: Comment spam protection, tweet this, facebook like etc. – we’ll work with you to determine which plugins you need.

Entries are $5 each. All you have to do is make a donation through the paypal button here or on their blog and then leave a comment with your paypal confirmation number.

Thank you again to all of the generous souls who are helping out my family and my son. You cannot begin to understand what it does to a mother's heart to know that her son won't have to struggle on without these tools. I don't care what anyone says, generosity and big hearts are more than alive and out there.



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This is Ben. Isn't he a handsome fellow? This was a quick picture that I snapped on Christmas morning as he opened the package of books that Santa had left him. If only I could convince him to read them now!

Ben is my miracle baby. In all reality, he shouldn't be here today. Let me give you a little bit of history.  On January 17, 1999, I went into preterm labor with his brother, Austin. Sadly, we lost him but in May of that same year, I got pregnant with Ben. I like to think that his brother was watching out for him because that was the pregnancy from hell.

I found out that I was pregnant, literally one week before we moved from Virginia back to Michigan. Since I had miscarried my first pregnancy and we knew all future pregnancies were going to be high risk, I was told not to touch anything. I wasn't to do any lifting of any nature. We managed to do the move but the day after, I started having sharp pains in my lower abdominal region and was sure that I was miscarrying. After a frightening run around Grand Rapids, trying to find a hospital (and being turned away at an emergency clinic because I had out of state insurance), it was discovered that he was just fine. The doctor figured that I must have pulled a groin muscle somehow.

The one huge blessing in all of that was that when I called for a follow up appointment, the nurse in the clinic told me not to go there but to call a specialist. It turns out that it was the best decision we ever made and I am thankful, to this day, to that nurse for being honest with me and not just trying to get another patient for their office. Dr. Balaskas was an amazing doctor. I should know! I saw him every week for that entire pregnancy. I was also on full bedrest that entire pregnancy.

He's the one who caught it when I started preterm labor at 26 weeks. He's the one who treated me time and time again for bacterial vaginosis (think yeast infection symptoms for weeks, ladies!). He's also the one who realized, at 35 weeks, Ben was not as active as he should have been. The thing is, I never realize just how serious it was because he was so calm through out the whole thing. He tried everything to get Ben going and when it didn't happen, he just told me that the hospital had better equipment and that I needed to go be listened to there.

He's the same doctor who I joked around with about never losing your sense of humor during the scary stuff. I believe it had to do with me counting dots on the ceiling while a resident removed my cerclage. He's also the one that saved my baby's life when he determined that we needed to do an emergency c-section. You see, it turns out that my placenta had very few blood vessels actually in it and many of those that were there had clotted off. My baby wasn't getting the oxygen and nutrients that he needed to survive. We were told later that if we had waited just another week, Ben wouldn't have made it. He's my miracle baby.

Well, my miracle baby is now 11 years old. He has cerebral palsy due to the pregnancy (not due to medical malpractice!). He's smart and funny and loves music more than any kid I know. He can also tell you just about any football game he's ever seen, along with any WWE wrestling match he's ever seen. He's a great kid who never gives up. Sadly, he does have some physical problems. In fact, we're considering doing hamstring surgery this summer to help with his gait. His writing is nearly illegible and he uses a word processor at school to type up a lot of his assignments.

Here's where I break down, folks. The word processor won't work for him next year. He's going on to middle school and what he uses now just isn't big enough to handle middle school work. He needs a laptop. He really needs it now so that he can be working with it and getting used to it before it's something he does every day. My miracle baby who has brought so much joy and love to my life needs something and I can't provide it for him. Yes, the district would provide it but he wouldn't be allowed to use it over the summer or even bring it home unless it was 100% necessary for an assignment. We really need to provide one for him and we just can't.

So, I'm going to reach out to you, my readers. If you know of anyone who is getting rid of a laptop, please have them contact me. If you know of a company who might be willing to donate one, again, put our names down. Lastly, and this one is the hardest for me, if you might be willing to donate money towards us purchasing one for him, please get in contact with me. I swear to you that all monies collected will go towards helping my miracle baby. He needs this to be successful as a student.

Any help that anyone can give will be greatly appreciated. I don't have much that I can give back, but I will give back where I can. If you can't help, please don't be sad. I understand and know right where you are. The fact that you stopped by and read his story (or the part I wrote here) means more to me than you can ever imagine.



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Sometimes it is so hard to be a mom. I don't often write these kinds of posts here but today, I just have to let some of this out of my head and out of my heart before I explode.

I'm going to say this here because it's a safe place to say it. Yes, some people might get upset that I put it out there, but it needs to be said. Sometimes it is hard to be a mom. It is even harder to be a single mom whose children live primarily with their father. There. I said it.

My ex-husband is divorcing his wife of 9 months. I'm not going to get into the reasons behind the divorce other than to say that the reasoning alone stresses me out and takes me back to some of the reasons behind our divorce, nearly 5 years ago. However, that is between them and doesn't really concern me. What does concern me is our children and how all of this is going to affect them.

You see, their stepmom is moving out of the house and going back to New York. No surprise there, right? The boys don't know yet. Surprise. She's leaving in less than 10 days. They haven't told the boys. I don't know when they intend on telling the boys. This has me just sick. Literally, sick. Those two boys adore that woman. She has been a big part of their lives for nearly 2 years and now she's leaving and they haven't told them. They haven't given them a single hint that something is wrong or that she's leaving.

The worst part? I can't protect them from this. I can't protect them from the pain that is going to come when she leaves. Will they understand that it wasn't their fault? That it had nothing to do with them? I don't know. Will they understand that she loves them and doesn't want to go? I don't know. What I do know is that I can't stop their hurting. I can't fix this. It isn't a scraped knee or a bumped elbow. I can't put a bandaid and a kiss on it and make it better.

I want to hold them close and tell that it will all be ok. I want to, as my grandmother would say, wrap their little hearts in bubble wrap so that things like this didn't have to hurt them. I know that parts of growing up hurt but this feels so unnecessary. They shouldn't have to experience this. I don't want them growing up thinking that this sort of thing is normal or right or how it always happens. How do I counteract this? How do I teach them that relationships can last? How do I be the best parent I can be when I only see them for 2 days out of every 14?

How do I explain to Ben's doctors why I don't know what's going on with him? Or why exercises aren't being done or braces aren't being worn? They always look at me first. I'm the mom. The mom should know the answers to these questions. The mom should be able to protect her babies and to take care of them. Sometimes, it's hard being a mom.



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