Who is Me, MomSelf, and I, the Unconventional Traditionalist?

So, why another “mommy blog”? Does the world really need another one of those, you may ask? Of course the world doesn’t need another mom blog.  But I do need to write one.  I’ve put if off for far too long and now, it’s my turn. So read it, don’t read it.  But I’m going to write it regardless.  If you enjoy it, Yay! Share it with your friends.  If you don’t, just stop. Don’t bother commenting to tell me how much it sucks.  Save yourself some clicks. I’m my own worst critic, so I’ve already determined it a failure and me a loser for writing it.

But this is how bad I need to write it.  I just crawled out of bed at 11:52 because I had this idea and since I called off work tomorrow, I don’t mind staying up late to put my ideas in a word document.

See, I had a therapy session last week.  And out of it came the mantra I was supposed to say over and over for several days. The mantra is: I will release the fear that something bad will happen so I can connect with my higher purpose.  Sounds like some mumbo jumbo tom foolery, right? Well, let’s explore.  See I was in therapy with this nervous feeling in my stomach that I’d had for maybe that whole day (maybe 2 days) and I couldn’t figure out why it was there or what it meant.  Things were fine with me and my husband, and other than a little virus, my kids were great, and I didn’t even have a horrible week at work. (Okay, that might be a stretch, because pretty much every week is horrible. But maybe this one wasn’t any more horrible than the others.)  And I thought I should be on cloud nine because I had a 5-day holiday weekend ahead of me.  What I didn’t realize until that therapy session, was that since my second year of marriage, when we had a particularly disastrous holiday weekend, where I thought only 1 of 2 times in 10 years of marriage that we might not make it, I had secretly been dreading long holiday weekends, subconsciously thinking something bad would happen. And somehow that had transferred to my life in general.  I’ve always been a pretty optimistic person.  My husband always jokes that while he’s looking at reality, I’m dreamily staring into La-La Land, thinking about rainbows and lollipops.

But here I found myself with butterflies in my stomach, with a mini vacation looming, sitting in my therapist office saying the mantra: I will release the fear that something bad will happen so I can connect with my higher purpose. My focus on my fear was getting in the way of everything: me taking chances on new things (like blogging), me trying to walk away from things I didn’t want anymore (like my job), me becoming the person I wanted to be.  I left therapy that day just kind of taking it all in.  The next day was the 4^th of July.  The following day, I had to take my son to the doctor for a nasty skin infection called impetigo. And the first thing I thought was, Ah, yes, the bad thing I was waiting on.  Here it is!  My son’s fingers were blistered up and gross, they even started bleeding.  It broke my heart.  The next day I got sick.  And it just kept getting worse and worse.  We had a little trip planned for one of my husband’s events and on the way there, I was so sick we had to pull over at a rest stop so I could change clothes.  (It got pretty bad.)  I couldn’t eat anything, and I couldn’t do anything but sleep. When we got back home, I went to the doctor immediately.  He diagnosed me with severe tonsilitis, a severe sinus infection and possibly strep throat-at the same time.  I felt horrible and I said, now this, this is my bad thing!  It ended up being so bad that I had to call off work for the entire week. But the whole time I was sick, I kept saying my mantra: I will release the fear that something bad will happen so that I can connect with my higher purpose.

Here’s what happened. I took the kids to school and came every day. But when I came home, I did nothing.  Normally, I’m never home by myself, and when I plan to take a day off, it’s so I can clean, de-clutter and organize the closets (which NEVER HAPPENS. But that’s always the plan.)  This time, I was home, but I couldn’t clean if I wanted to, I had nothing in me.  The most I could do was make a cup of tea and that required breaks in between the pouring of the water, the mixing of the honey and lemon-to the point that by the time I was done making it, I had to reheat it in the microwave.  But, I had time to think.  And not about work, which is what normally consumes me.  I thought about me and what I want.  And I wanted this blog.  See all week I was releasing the fear that something bad would happen, because it did. But I chose not to dwell on it.  I chose to rest my body, use my mantra and connect with my higher purpose. And that’s why I crawled out of bed and am writing this, my first real blog post past midnight, because right now, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.