My mind is lost in time. There isn’t enough, there is too much, we take it for granted, we want more, we want less. It is all a matter of time.

Nearly nineteen years ago just days after I gave birth to my first child, my mother came to visit.  Upon her arrival she oohed and ahhed over her first grand child and then she said this to me, “Before you know it, he will be grown and having babies of his own”.  At my young age, having just waited the longest nine months of my life to meet this little person I now called son, I thought she was “off her rocker crazy”.  But today I know she was right.  Over the following ten years I would have five of those beautiful babies. And something fun happened, time kept moving and I now have three children all of teen age. One who recently graduated high school and who has decided he is an adult who no longer actually needs me (tear).  A very intelligent yet very moody fifteen year old boy and a recent to teen hood (today actually) thirteen year old girl who is becoming strikingly more beautiful each day and slightly worries me with her interest in boys.  And there it is my mother’s foresight for life, proving her right as it passes at warp speed. Now thankfully my babies aren’t having babies just yet (and I hope they wait many years to do so) but time has moved at a rapid pace still.

So my question is how does it happen, how do those first few weeks that drag on and on turn into months and then years that passed by quicker than one was able to comprehend?  I mean we are wrapping up another year. In sixteen ,very short, days we will ring in the year two thousand and fifteen!?!?!  I just don’t know how or when it happened. Sometime while I wasn’t looking life ran on fast forward and time got a way from me.  I am nearly fo, fooo, for, fort, four-tee AGH and most days I still feel like I could easily be that nineteen year old girl laying next to the worlds most precious first-born son listening to her crazy mamma tell her it is all going to go by so fast and thinking she knows nothing. However now that I am old enough to be that crazy mamma I realize that life does race by at lightening speed. That we must take each day and treat it with love and respect. That our tomorrows are not promised and that you can’t make up for lost time.  So love deeply, speak your mind, have compassion, be a friend, and think if you woke up tomorrow and you were one hundred years old what would you have hoped you would have done with your life?

Live, Laugh, Love, appreciate and enjoy, enjoy the moments because they move at a rate faster than you will ever comprehend.

Inhale….. one, two, three, four and exhale through your nose….four, three, two, one……ahhhh

Do you feel better?  I always feel a little more calm and relaxed when I breathe like that.  I wish I could remember this rhythmic breathing when my mind is spinning out of control.  When I am facing the mountain I must climb today.  Sometimes I remember but usually not until  after my heart is beating a hundred times faster than it probably should.

How many times have we been told “just breathe”. In those moments those words seem anything but helpful but amazingly if you take the few seconds to stop take long, deep breaths you will feel better.  Nothing will have drastically changed and the mountain standing before you will be just as tall and intimidating but you will have gained a little bit of power.

So the next time the mountains in your life seem insurmountable take a few seconds and breathe, I promise you will feel a little better!

An open letter to my husband,

When I cam to the decision to walk away from this life we created together it was with the intention to make both of our lives better. To end while we could still remain friends. To leave before we broke each other down and the mere thought of one another brought feelings of frustration and disdain. I knew our time of together had come to and end, I had just hoped we could remain amicable and be the example of divorce having a positive outcome. We were both so unhappy in our marriage, we had just blinded ourselves from “seeing” it.  Although I was very wrong in this thinking and you have chosen to take the hard and difficult road. I want to share with you my side and view of things and even though you have done everything in your power to ruin me and cause great pain not only in me, but in our children. I want you to know that I don’t hate you.  I have tried, but it just doesn’t suit because at the end of each day, these two realities are still true;  we were friends and I loved you.  

We spent the last eleven years loving, learning, laughing, fighting, crying, wearing each other down and lifting each other up.  We have been to hell and back and our marriage endured more trials than those who’ve been married forty plus years. It has been a roller coaster ride and honestly, I wouldn’t change anything.  It wasn’t all bad and it wasn’t all good but it was life, lived; experienced.  I wish that I had been the wife you needed me to be. That I had been “in” love with you, that I could still find a reason to stay, but people change.  You changed, I changed, the world around us changed and I can’t continue to hope and believe that we can find our way back from where we came.

I am sorry, truly sorry for the pain you feel and the hurt in your heart.  I know how much you loved me and how broken you feel knowing that we will not raise our children under one roof. I know you ache from my not being there. I know there is an emptiness not only in the bed next to you, but inside of your heart for the loss of me.  I am sorry that I don’t love you as you deserve to be loved. But see that is why I made this choice because you do deserve to be loved. You deserve to have a woman who not only loves you but who is in love with you. You deserve a woman who will compliment you, who will light up when you walk into a room, who looks forward to seeing you and accepts you as you are.  You deserve to be loved for who you are and what you give to this world.  I hope you know I appreciate you as the father of my children and the man I spent these past eleven years with.  

Marriage is difficult, kids are challenging, health issues are discouraging, and life is hard. It isn’t that I did anything wrong or that you did anything wrong it is just that among the chaos that life threw at us we stopped fighting for one another and started fighting against each other. Our visions changed and we no longer saw eye to eye. We were always the opposites attract, but somewhere in our years the tie that bonded us was broken.  We did our best to mend and repair but no matter what we did there was always the obnoxious knot keeping us from smoothing it back together. 

I want to thank you for so many things, we created two amazing boys. You opened your heart and your arms to my three children by way of choosing to be their father and loving them as your own. You taught me to not fear the unknown and to not be fearful of those things I can not control.  You taught me how to be self-sufficient and resourceful.  You created the need to learn how to mange a family of seven on a tight budget and then worked hard and duteous to allow the kids and myself the ability to participate in extra curricular sports and activities.  You listened when I pushed you to think more of yourself and to reach for those jobs and positions you thought were unobtainable. You did your best to give us what we needed and then pushed harder to give us what we wanted. For all of these things I thank you.

I do hope that you will find healing and happiness.  That someday you will come to see that I did not come to this decision easily. That I fought hard and tediously to keep our family together but in the end I knew what was best for all of us was to call “the game on account of rain”.  I hope one day you will be able see that we are better apart than together.  Thank you for everything, the good, the bad, and the experiences. They have helped me to write this letter, to not have hate in my heart, and to pray that one day you will find peace and great happiness because of our life together and because of its end.

With love, forever and always,

Your wife

     Inevitably if you breath air and live life, you have at one point  been told “you are so much stronger than me” or my favorite “I don’t know how you do it”.  There is nothing wrong with praising someone for what you see as their strengths, but have you ever considered that to them their strength may be weakness? Maybe they don’t want to be strong or told how well they are handling a situation.  Maybe they just need to feel “normal”. To feel like anyone placed in their same position would bear the same strength and would be able to handle what life has thrown at them.

     I have had my fair share of life throwing “strength builders” my way and most of the time I can handle the presumed encouraging “you’re stronger than me” statements.  Then there are days like today where I just want to scream and shout and swear to the next person who wants to tell me how “strong” I am.  I don’t want to be strong, I want to curl up and cry until I am dehydrated. I want to wail from the depths of my soul how unjust life can be.  

     How do we (the supposed strong) do it? How do we get up each day, put a smile on our faces and walk with our heads held high?  How do you keep people from seeing that you lost your mother, that your husband is cheating, that your child you’re carrying won’t live for more than five minutes after his birth,  that you have no trust of men because you were abused as a child?  These are real life scenarios, they are burdens that people carry and encounter daily.  I don’t think any of the people in my scenarios feel encouraged by your word of ” I couldn’t do it” or “you’re so much stronger than I am”  I bet they don’t feel strong, I bet the feel like they are fighting to get through each day. That the smile on their faces aren’t masks they are hiding behind, but instead a way of learning to live for today.

      You can only spend so much time screaming, weeping, and wailing.  Feeling sorry for yourself is not going to change the realities of your situation.  You’ve got two choices you can become the ugly, sub human, hurt, dark individual who only sees the negative or you can find your “strength” and become the individual who has hope, love, belief, and faith that today will be a good day and bring you one day further from the hurts of yesterday.  So now I want you to ask yourself, am I still stronger than you are? 

When I was nineteen I had the amazing and most beautiful experience, I became a mother.  I had no way of knowing how this fact would forever change me.  I did not know the capacity my heart held to love, give, fear, worry, or feel.  I did not know that I would spend every moment of my years learning, failing, forgiving, hoping, believing and loving. I also choose to expand my hearts capacity to love four more times. Making me the mother of four of the worlds most amazing young men and one beautiful young lady.

There is nothing in this world that can prepare you for motherhood.  No one can explain to you what it will be like. Mothering is an experience and one that you will only know once you have had first hand encounters with a sleep deprived, gassy newborn, teething infant, a six month old with chicken pox, two spaghetti-o throwing up children. Smiles, laughter, howls, tears and tantrums.  A toddler who removes a diaper and smears you a mess to clean or a four year old who paints you a spaceship.  A sons first soccer game, a daughters first goodbye to a best friend.  These are so many of the encounters motherhood will give you to experience.  They are the experiences that mold us, grow us, change us, and define us.  Without her children a mother loses her identity.  They easily become the topic of any conversation. They are on her mind during the day and while she sleeps.  Her children are her everything they are why she does what she does and is who she is.

If we met in school then I am probably not the same person you knew then, nor am I the same person you may have known if you knew me with only one or two children in my early twenties.  And even if we just met this year I am probably not quite the same person you first met. The reason for this is that with each new day comes new experiences.  I am learning and growing, failing and winning.  I am ever changing to meet the needs of those around me and I am being educated daily on how to be the best mother I can possibly be.  To all you moms out there, keep striving, growing, changing, and failing you are doing an amazing job of the one most important job there is in this world and that is to be the best mother you can possibly be.  Cheers to the mamma’s, young, old, and in between. I commend you all and appreciate the sacrifices you make every day to raise your babies. Motherhood, aint it grand!

Have you ever come to a point where everything you thought you knew was really nothing you knew at all?  For so many years I thought I knew why I believed what I believed or did what I did. I thought I had the right to be indignant, to speak for my beliefs and ways as if they were the only ways that could be.  I was rooted which was is good, but I also thought that if you didn’t agree with me or thought a different way that you were the one who was wrong.  The old adage that “with age comes wisdom” is so very true.  I wish someone could tell our younger indignant, “know it all” selves this. Especially in our teen years and early twenties.  Oh the troubles and tribulations I could have been spared if only I hadn’t been so certain  that I was right about everything.   The truth is I was right about nothing and wrong about most everything.   

Life has a funny way of teaching us along the way.  I have yet to meet a person who has been spared trials and tribulations.  My luggage that I carry containing my life lessons may have more weight than yours it may have a few more sad stories and it may make you stop mid thought, drop your jaw, and leave you in deep awe.  However, my luggage is not any more important or meaningful or life changing than your very own luggage that you are carrying right now. The luggage that may have defined all that you know and are certain of.  But, here is the kicker, you too know nothing, you are not grounded in what you know or think you know.  You could wake up tomorrow and everything you thought you knew and were certain of could be swept out from under you, like the right piece of the Jenga tower pulled and all the blocks come tumbling down.  

I write this to remind you to be true. True to yourself and to others, be kind, be open minded, do not live under the knowledge that religion, politics, schooling, racism, gossip, fear, love, or hate sets in your mind.  There is not one person alive who knows it all, it is impossible. For what you know today may be gone tomorrow. Stop knowing and just live, live for today, for those you love, for peace, for love, for laughter, for fun, live for yourself just do it in a way that will enrich this world. 

No one gets a free pass at life. It gives everyone a beating at some point. Each story may be different but the end result is still what we like to call baggage.  If I’ve learned one thing in my years it is just that, and that no matter what there will always be someone with a story that is better than yours and someone who had it worse.  Neither which devalued your story just helps to keep perspective!

Imagine you find yourself with the great responsibility of designing the school calendar for the year.  It is your responsibility to factor in half days, off days, winter and spring break, end of year activities, prom, and graduation.  Somewhere in all of your “grand” planning you think to yourself “this year spring break will be the week before the week before Easter and Prom should be on the eve of.” Totally makes sense right? Yeah not for this family or probably any family that celebrates Easter.  In the chaos of prom planning (and I have a son) I forgot about Easter (truth), this means no Easter dinner, special outings, etc.  The sad part is I only “kind of” feel bad about this.  There is so much preparation involved in creating the “perfect” holiday experience.  Instead, here I sit sharing , while Prom boy takes a nap, the kids squabble whilst re-heating leftovers for lunch, and the man watches another cheesy 90’s movie.  I dream of being that “awesome” family that does “awesome” things but today we just “don’t quite make the cut”.  And so,  I dedicate this not so awesome Easter holiday to the person whom had the job of creating this years school calendar: Thank you for your disregard when you chose to schedule Prom the night before Easter!

It’s spring in the stunning PNW, the tulips are blooming and the rain is falling.  I try to remember the school adage “April showers bring May flowers” but honestly I am OVER it. Rain, rain go away come again six months away.  Has this been the longest, wildest winter ever?  I am ready for sunshine, sunshine and more sunshine.  Besides all this gloom is not helping my doom.  My baby (Yeah so he is eighteen what is that 218 months bahahahaha) is about to graduate which means independence and leaving the nest.  I am sooooo not ready for this. I want to hurt the person who decided that a child can make life changing decisions at the young age of eighteen.  Seriously, what were they thinking.  Have we not learned from history the dumb, selfish, ridiculous choices  the young make.  Ya ya ya, I hear you “Responsible, I did everything right and wouldn’t change a thing” people out there but you are the exception. As a rule an 18 year old kid is just that a KID truly incapable of making life altering decisions for him/her self and yet we allow them to anyway.   So hear I sit, six weeks from graduation, holding onto everything with all my might hoping I can magically make the time pass slower or perhaps not come at all.  Anyone out there ever come across a rewind button?  I just need more time, life happened and at a pace that was quicker than both my heart and brain could process. Sniffle.  Okay, so I will suck it up for today, alright for the next hour….. if I am lucky.  Where was this information in all those “How to parent books”???  I want a refund!