It's kind of funny. I always swore up one side and down the other that I would continue to curse full stream ahead. Ha. I don't want to teach her angry language. I don't want her to feel like she should be angry all the time. It's been really good for me. It was when I realized that my daughter learn by mirroring me that I started consciously working on my facial expressions. I have a lot of harsh grief lines. My face is not given to smiling. It feels really weird and hard and false but I do it anyway. I learn every muscle in my face and I relax them. I consciously check my posture. I do it over and over all day long. It's really hard and basically impossible when we are out. Then I can't relax at all.
I am going to delete the next bit of random overly personal stuff. Ha.
My kids give me a reason to get up every bed and act like I am happy to see them even though I physically feel both like I can't move my legs and my heart is about to explode with fear and panic. My body hates me a really lot.
But I have to teach my kids how to get up and get ready and have a day. I have to show them what it means to be constantly learning and growing. It's on my head. If they are going to have those skills... I'm going to have to teach them. Which means I have to get out of bed no matter how much it hurts. It really doesn't matter. I have a job to do.
I think of my kids very positively. But I'm very pragmatic and long-term about my goals with my kids. I don't want to be their friend when they are young. I want to be "mom" and man that has been a lot of research. I knew all my instincts were wrong.
I want to say that I feel like a lot of that feeling of "crazy" that comes with children is insufficient personal down time to pursue your own interests. That resentment builds in me like a firecracker. So I have to figure out ways of learning I can do with my kids. I feel like I must be doing something. I can't go do what I used to do--fine. What else is there to do? And it has to be very cheap or free. And it has to fill a lot of time. I hate knitting and sewing. Baggage there.
There are so many things to go learn in the community.
All of this to say: my positive experience of parenthood comes in the form of enormous self pressure to be changing at pretty much exactly the rate my children are changing and yet provide stability. It's quite a journey. I appreciate having the constant reminder that time is passing and life change. When I met my husband he basically wooed my by saying, "My philosophy of life is: if you can't look back on yourself eighteen months ago and say 'I sucked' then you aren't trying hard enough."
But I have a lot of reason to worry about personal development. And my kids inspire me. And that's awesome. Breakfast time.
. You seem like such a good person, and (if it's not creepy to say) I wish I knew you IRL. (If it's too creepy, pretend it never happened...)
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