It wasn't that long ago I had these ideals, this way I wanted my family to live and for the most part we lived it. We had no TV, we spent time outside, we grew our food and had chickens, we "unschooled" for the most part and we tried to live with less. I found joy in making our life this way. Then out of nowhere I got a bug up my butt. I read too many blogs about "perfect" families leading "perfect" lives and I felt like my life was lacking. Add to that a good dose of postpartum depression, and changes with in my group of close mama friends and I got this urge to flee. I gave my dear husband an ultimatum he either moved across the country with me or I was taking the kids to Maine with out him. And being the most wonderful man that he was (and still is) he left with me. He plastered a smile on his face and we started on that whack ass journey together. We spent 20 long and mostly lonely hard months together with only each other to cling too. I uprooted my family because I couldn't see what greatness I had right in front of me, and when it got really hard and scary we were blessed with a job back here in Arizona. And just like he always does my husband packed up, took the burden on his back to support this family 100%, to support me 100%.
So here we are back in Arizona almost 1 year later. I have, for the most part, stopped reading other blogs day in and day out. I have stopped visiting Mothering.com, I have stopped reading the books that helped me, and stopped living a life that inspired me. I am not sure where I am going to go from this point. I feel a bit like I have tossed the baby out with the bathwater. The blogs probably needed to go, it is hard to see what others are doing in real life when all you get is this glossy "perfect" life picture. You don't see the day in and day out crap that makes everyone nuts. You see the doctored photos and fancy writing and forget that they probably have crappy days and yell and don't always eat organic and watch TV or wish secretly that they had one. Not that that makes them bad, it just makes them human, it makes me human. I saw alot of these people as so much better then me and then I got to self loathing. I would never be that together, my kids fight and make me crazy and I love Trader Joe's trail mix and spinach salad, and we eat fast food and my god even now we have this monster TV that seems to be on all the freakin' time. I am not growing a darn thing, and I can't have chickens.
At times I beat myself up over this and other times I am like, STOP IT! What do I want to keep? What do I want to chuck again? Who the hell am I?
I have so much to be grateful for, my family is so incredibly blessed... what am I searching for? Who is this mystery woman I am meant to be? Maybe she is here, right here right now. There is is this quote by someone (I can't remember) that goes something like this: You have to give up the dream of the life you think you need to enjoy the life you have. So easy to say and to type, sometimes it is so hard to do.
What got me walking down this painful memory lane? Heather Cushman-Dowdee and Peggy O'Mara. Haha. I was looking for a book on how to deal with the craziness that is going on in my house and I found a Hathor the Cowgoddess book by Heather and I found "The Way Back Home" by Peggy. These were books I read when I was feeling down and they always either made me think OR made me laugh. They also made me remember why I was doing what I was doing. They helped me refocus on what was/is truly important. The here and now and my family and my blessings.
One other thing that is so amazing, is just like when you are a kid, you can have a "do over". I don't have to be this overwhelmed frantic mom that I have become. I can chill again, read more to the kids, get out the dreaded art supplies, let them play in the water, go on adventures, hit the museums, quit worrying about messes, turn off the bloody TV and get off the damn computer and start living again.
This went all over the place, but I needed it to.
Here is a link to Heather's new website: Mama is Comics
and here is a link to Peggy's book: "The Way Back Home"
