Lauren on Living

A Lifestyle Blog about Simplifying Healthy Living

Happy Mother’s Day // 2015

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Dear Asher and Bennett,

Thank you! Thank you for making me a mother.

Thank you for teaching me true selflessness, for testing me every day, for bringing me infinite joy, for helping me learn patience and for showing me that detachment is a hard won virtue.

Thank you for your sweet cuddles and for your chubby cheeks, which are just so kissable.

Thank you for filling my heart with so much love that at times I feel that it may burst, because no heart should be able to hold this much love, and yet, it does. And the more I get to know you, with every passing day, I only love you more.

I’m sorry for my short comings. I’m sorry for yelling sometimes, I’m sorry for not giving you 100% of my attention every second of every day, because you deserve all my attention. You deserve all my time.

I promise I’ll keep striving to be better. I know I’ve made mistakes and I know I’ll make more but thank you for forgiving me and for loving me anyway.

You are unequivocally the best things I have ever done. I just feel so deeply blessed and humbled that I get to be the person you call “mom”.

I love you!

xx

Mommy

A Shout Out to My Mom on Mother’s Day

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Becoming a mom has made me so deeply thankful for my own parents.  They are rock stars in my book.  I wrote them a letter a few weeks ago, letting them know how I feel and I share part of it with you all now, to honor the amazing woman that is my mother and in the hopes of inspiring you to do the same for your own mothers.  

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Dear Mom,

As I am now a mother myself, I realize profoundly all the sacrifices you made for us.  Being a mother is the single hardest thing I have ever done.  It is a thankless job and greatly under valued by society at large, which is something I am struggling with and I’m sure you struggled with.  Perhaps there were times when you even felt that Dad took what you did for granted, I know I feel that way about Raf sometimes. Being a mother is wonderful but also challenging, deeply rewarding, but also lonely, and the most wonderful experience but also incredibly testing.  As mothers we are faced with two very difficult decisions: to work on our careers or to work at raising our children and to do both means to sacrifice something from each.  I know now what you gave up for us.  You gave up finding and pursuing your passion.  Not only did you do that, but then you went on to do something that you disliked immensely, which was to home school us and we both know that I didn’t make it easy.  You spent 8 years homeschooling me and giving me the educational building blocks for all my future scholastic achievements.  I have my MPH today, because of the sacrifices you made.  Beyond, the sacrifices you made for me to ensure that I was educated you were also an excellent example for me.  You did (and still do) so much for us and never made us feel bad about it, you never reminded us of all you gave up for us and you were incredibly patient.  You allowed us to be free to explore, to fall down, and to make our own mistakes, while probably worrying about us the whole time.  I know, I don’t tell you as often as I should, but I’m so deeply blessed and grateful that I have you as a mother.  I need you more than I say or show.  I couldn’t have asked for a better mom. I know we’re very different in many ways, but I like to think that I got many of my strengths as a mom from you.  I’m so sorry it has taken me 28 years to tell you how much I appreciate you, because I do, now more than ever.  You are the kindest, gentlest, sweetest, most loving woman I know and I feel so proud that I get to call you mom.  You are a hero. You are my hero.

I miss you every. single. day.  I love you!

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Most Rewarding

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Almost every time I tell anyone that being a stay at home mom is the hardest thing I have ever done, they immediately reply with “but also the most rewarding, right?”.  To which I generally say “yes, of course!”  However, I am always left feeling guilty because deep down I’m not sure I see it that way.  Maybe I need to redefine my definition of rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE being a mom.  It is my biggest dream come true, but when I think of something being rewarding, I don’t generally envision changing diapers, being covered in spit-up, sleep deprivation and going days without any meaningful adult interaction, instead I think of having a career I’m passionate about.  Curing cancer would be rewarding.  Establishing public health practices in under served communities would be rewarding.

I love the fact that I get to be present for all of Asher’s firsts.  His first smile, his first laugh, first roll, etc.  Is being a stay at home mom really the ‘most rewarding’ though?  Not really.  At least not yet, not for me.  It is hard work.  It is lonely.  It is testing.  Sure it can be deeply rewarding in the sense that I have brought this amazing soul into this world, but I wouldn’t classify it as the most rewarding.  The most important? Yes.  The most rewarding? Not yet.  Maybe this will change, after all my son is only four months old. I just think it’s important to be honest about these things, because if I’m feeling them, then someone else is too. There is too much of a culture of shame in the parenting community.  It’s almost as though parents aren’t allowed to complain about how hard it can get, without also reaffirming how amazing it is and sometimes all this ‘putting our best feet forward’ is exhausting and leaves everyone feeling like they aren’t doing as good of a job as someone else.

I wish more parents would talk about the challenges they face or the tests they endure rather than always presenting their lives as perfect packages filled with rainbows, ribbons and professional looking photographs of gourmet meals that they post on pinterest.  Let’s have a balanced perspective please.  Yes, being a mom is wonderful and fulfilling in ways I never imagined and I am so thankful every single day for being able to take on this role, but if you drop by unannounced, you will find my house in various stages of disorder and chaos.  The bed won’t be made, there will be a laundry basket of clean clothes that has been sitting in the living room for days waiting to be folded, baby clothes, pacifiers and tissues will be strewn about the house and don’t even ask when the last time the house was vacuumed.  My son will generally be smiling after having just completed his most recent abstract expressionism masterpiece consisting of curdled sour milk spit-up in my hair, seriously, I don’t even bother to change into clean clothes most of the time because there is just no point.  Being a parent is the best thing I have ever done but it has yet to be the most rewarding and that’s okay, it doesn’t make me any less of a great mom.

A Lesson in Detachment

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Holding Asher skin to skin when he was running a fever after having his 4 month vaccinations

Almost immediately after Asher was born I began to see the world in a very different light.  All of a sudden I saw the danger in everything and I was confronted with just how fragile this physical existence is.

Do any of you ever picture escape scenarios if something were to occur to endanger your life?  Say for example, I’m driving over a bridge, I have always thought about what I would do to escape the car if the bridge were to collapse.  You know, break the glass or roll down the window and swim to safety.  In all these envisioned scenarios I can see myself having a chance of surviving and making it to safety, however now that I have a baby I realize that we probably won’t survive because the darn car seat is like a venus fly trap.

Seriously, being a mom has filled my head with morbid thoughts.  Every time my child is out of my sight, I imagine everything that could go wrong.  I can really understand why some parents become over protective and compulsive about checking on their kids.  The reality is, the world can be a big and dangerous place and for the first time I truly understand what people are talking about when they say that ‘to have a child is to live the rest of your life with your heart outside of your body’.  I try to balance thinking rationally with listening to my gut while having these DANGER signs flashing  before my eyes at every turn.  Let me tell you, it’s not always easy to navigate.

In general I try to be a pretty calm mother.  I don’t want to be smothering.  I want my children to be free to learn about the world they live in, even if that means stumbling and falling sometimes.  I want to guide them to be active participants of their surrounds, rather than just mindlessly absorbing everything around them.  All of this is really easy to say, but it can be incredibly hard to put into practice.  To be a mother means to practice detachment every. single. day.