Jake

Our golden retriever passed away this month. It was much harder than I imagined to say Good-bye and go through the grief. Although I have had pet's before my parents always gave them away early in their lives so I never lived with a pet as long as I did Jake.

I remember when we were contemplating getting a dog. It took about a year of talking to Matthew and trying to convince him that a dog was a good idea. His arguments were they shed, they eat toys and the kids will never be able to have their toys on the floor. They bite, they bark. I really wanted a dog for our family and for my little boy Braiden who also really wanted a dog.

When we got Jake he was the perfect dog. He only barked when someone was at the door. He did nothing that Matthew feared. He was a calm pleasant friendly dog. He was a wonderful family dog. With his passing though I was reminded of how short life is. How I want to treasure every moment. How even the mundane and normal moments I have I shouldn't take for granted.

I was out with my kids and they were chatting about school projects and tests and just their lives. I thought how lucky I was to have these moments with them. I felt this way after Matthew's stroke to. I remember how precious every moment felt after that experience. I want to let go of the hurt and pain and just feel blessed to be present in this moment. Letting go of the past and moving forward treasuring the life that I have. That I am able to be with my family.

I am grateful for Jake and the wonderful dog that he was for our family. I miss him. I am sad that he died and had to leave our family. I am grateful for the reminder of life being precious.

I Need To

I have had to cause and reflect on some negative behaviours from my past.
Things I did that I regret..
At first I felt very defensive.
After I realized  I am not perfect.
I need to love myself.
I need to love those people who I have hurt.
I need to try not to hurt while recognizing I am human.
I will stop worrying or living in the past.

Freeing myself from my past

Recently I have cause to reflect on myself at my worst.
It has caused me to wonder how much of my negative history (abuse I endured from those I love)
has effected me.
As a foster parent I raised children who like me had negative history's and I empathized with their pain.
I also got to experience their character's some which were deeply effected by their negative experience.
I saw negative behaviours from them that I believe were a direct result of their experience.  Things like anxiety, anger, depression, low self confidence etc.
So as I looked at myself on my worst days where I too was angry said things that shouldn't have been said and hurt those that are closest to me. I of course was sad and depressed. I had behaved this way wondered to myself  how much truth their was to me also carrying on some ugly traits from my past.

Being aware of my past and the potential to become someone who is impatient and loses their temper and cuts to the quick with their words. I have been working on this my whole life. I can remember being very little and feeling the pain my mother behaving at her worst and promising myself I would never become my worst self. So it has been a little frightening to come to terms with the fact that I can't be perfect in this way. I can have less of these instances in my life. I needed to be okay that we all have our worst self days and accept that I can't expect perfection in this area. The fact that I have had worst self days where I did behave impatient and used my words in a fashion that I am not proud of and hurt those I love. In no way means that I have become my mother. It simply means I had a worst self day.

I have seen a few counsellors of late regarding issue's that I have from my past that are affecting me today. I have got to say I find it so useless, like I feel like put myself out there my real self and I don't really feel heard and I walk away feeling more hurt than healed. It is weird because as many of you know Matt is a counsellor so you would think I would be a great supporter but I just feel like it got me no where. I don't feel like anything was resolved. I shared  this hurt and pain and they just listen without even really listening or understanding what I am saying. Plus now I need to go home and have all of these awful memories right at the surface.

I have been reading a borderline personality book that Matthew wanted to read. So I read to him on our drives to work it has been interesting to see how much there is some of Matthew in borderline as well as myself. Interesting to see we are all kind of similar all of us the insane and the sane. We all hve pieces of mental illness in our behaviour. 

So Happy to be at Home

    Things have changed recently for me. I am working less and home more. I feel so happy about that. I am able to be home and really be a mom. Which has always been my real goal in life.I  I am grateful for my job. I love it and I am grateful that life forced me to get a job and help my family. I like working, I like feeling like I am helping those I work with and making a bit of a difference while helping my family too. I am a true stay at home mom though and I love being able to be at home. I am able to make more healthy meals for my family. . I like being around to form strong relationships with my kids. There was a noticed change in my relationship with Sierra since I stopped working all of the time.I must be a little crazy because I am even grateful to be cleaning up after my kids and husband. Times before when I would have complained that they could/should do it themselves I just feel gratitude.

 I recently watched Charlie st.cloud with Sierra. It is a Zac Efrom movie so for my budding teeny bopper a must see. She was so excited asking me if it was in at the library yet. We watched the movie and I enjoyed it but it left us to have big discussions about life and death. Sierra asked "why do we have to die mom" I didn't really have an answer for her. She asked "why I and her Dad would likely die first" She was crying and she wouldn't let me hold her and that was hard. Not being able to hold her. It was hard not having any really answers for her too. In my Mormon days I would have had all the answers it was hard and felt a little lame to say I just don't know. I did tell her what I believed, I shared with her how I believed I had felt my mom at periods of time in my life. Not just my Mormon days. Still sometimes you can't give all the answers and I am learning to be okay with that. I got her a bunch of books from the library on near death experiences.She said something I found quite cute and hilarious "Why can't big foot just take us all to the jungle already"

Last night I was watching the TV Show "Friends". I adore that TV show and I have passed on my love for it to Mackenzie and it was an episode that we just laughed our hearts out too. Mackenzie said  "I love this show"and I said "I love it too and I loved it first" and she disagreed with me and said that she loved it first.
So I countered with "I loved it before you were even born" She said "I was there when you were watching waiting to be born and watching with you. We both laughed so loud and hard. It was wonderful.

So happy with my Matthew

Things I want to say

To my husband Matthew...
I love that you work so hard on being a good father and provider to our family.
I love that you take the time to be with the our kids and really know them and what is going on in their lives.
I love that you have developed yourself as a counsellor and that you are fulfilling that dream.
I love that you went back to school and worked hard at developing your talents.
I love your ambition.
I love that for the you believe in my best self.
I love that you love me. 
I am blessed that you have a sense of humour. It has helped me not take life to seriously. 
I love that you have made your health a priority in our lives that you eat healthy foods and exercise. I value the times that we exercise together.
I love that you are present and active in our families life.
I love that you write about your love for me in your blog & facebook and tell your co-workers about me.
I love that you are such a great supporter of me.
I want to say Thank You for that for supporting me and loving me
I love that you are such a smart attractive dresser You have an eye for style and colour.
I love that you are a great writer.
I love your optimism in life and I am grateful for it so grateful.
I want to shout from the roof tops (but my blog will have to do) that I deeply love you.
I am so grateful to have you as a partner and husband and friend.

Guess what I am back!!

Hello...

Wow it has been forever since I wrote in my lovely blog.
I actually truthfully don't feel my blog is lovely.
I have a love hate relationship with it.
I struggle to write.
 It is a area in my life that I feel is this huge mountain to climb.
So I am taking away the negative thoughts of the mountain.
Not enough time, I am not a good writer, I always feel criticized, who will want to read it anyway?
I am just going to write a little whenever I can and ignore these negative thoughts.
Just a little at a time so I don't get overwhelmed.
It is all about Balance and Practice.
I can't get better if I don't try,
It is likely you will at times see grammar errors and maybe things don't flow perfectly.
Since I am trying to let go of the ideal and just be real.
Thanks for your patience with me.

WHY YES, I DO GIVE INTERVIEWS...

A lovely neighbor down the street who's children play with ours is taking a College course and she asked me to give an 'interview' about my experiences of being a parent. This was the result.

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WHAT STAGE OF LIFE WERE YOU AT WHEN YOU BECAME A PARENT?

When I was 18 years old my then fiancee ‘rescued me’ from an abusive home life and we had moved from Mississauga to Ottawa. We were very much in love, quite young and quite alone. We were also quite religious so we felt we had to get married to make our living situation right in the eyes of God so as to avoid Hell and brimstone (seriously). So we eloped. No one knew. No friends, no family. We did eventually tell them (long story), and then 15 months later our first child was born, when I was 19. I had not completed high school (just 1 more course remained, which I finished about a year and a half later).

WHAT FACTORS WERE INVOLVED IN DECIDING TO HAVE CHILDREN?

We were raised LDS / Mormon. The teachings back then 20 years ago were that birth control was evil and equal to murder. I had always wanted to be a mother since I was a little girl so having children just came naturally to me. I am so happy to be mother and a parent, I love my children and I love being a mom.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS TO BEING A PARENT?

I was able to stop the cycle of abuse that my mother received from her mother and violently passed onto me. I get to love and be loved in return. I loved the baby stage, connecting to my beautiful, wonderful little babies. Today I get to see my children as they go through the various stages of growing up (schooling, friends, jobs, boyfriends or girlfriends). My baby boy turned 18 last month and I shuddered to think that I was engaged at that young age. I am happy that he isn’t in such a rush like I was to escape. It’s a good feeling to think that at least some of the time I’ve been a helpful and positive influence in his, and all of my children’s lives.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE CHALLENGES TO BEING A PARENT?

Finances have been hard for us since we were married so young, and also with the Mormon teaching of the woman staying home to raise their children. This has left me with little education and meant we didn’t ever really have a lot of money.  Also having a lot of young children and a husband at work was a sometimes thankless and lonely position for me to be in. Also watching your children make decisions and choices that you know may hurt them is hard to experience; thankfully for the most part they are much wiser than I was at their age. Yay!

BEFORE BECOMING A PARENT, WHAT IMPACT DID YOU THINK HAVING CHILDREN WOULD HAVE ON YOUR LIFE?

My mindset before having children was that being a mother would ‘complete me’, that it would make me happy and that it would be the attainment of my life’s dream. For the most part, that’s exactly what happened. Being a parent has not been a negative thing for me; it’s all been positive. I love being a mother and I love all of my amazing children.

WHAT WERE THE UNEXPECTED IMPACTS (POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE) OF HAVING CHILDREN ON YOUR LIFE?

Unexpected. Hmmm. I would have to say that the level of worry was unexpected. I didn’t think that I’d spend so much time and feel so deeply the ‘parental worry’ about my children’s wellbeing, health, safety or happiness. Sometimes it’s all consuming. It’s love. It’s caring. It’s wanting their happiness. It’s wanting their safety. It’s wanting them to make good and safe and healthy choices. It’s born out of love, just as they were.

WHAT ASPECT OF PARENTING IS IMPACTING YOU AT THIS TIME?

At this time my children are 18, 16, 13, and 10. So the ‘teen years’ are in full force. Relationship challenges among my teens with their peers or boyfriends or girlfriends. Schooling considerations for College or University. Helping them to think clearly about life choices that will impact them for years to come. Wanting them to be more successful than I was. Thankfully my children have not fired me from being their parent and we are fairly close and they share and connect to me so I do have influence, or at least they pretend I do. It’s also a bit sad for me when I think that my eldest children could be leaving the home in the next few years, but I know they’re not leaving me: I’ll always be their mother.