Adventurous Mom

Yes, I dropped the ball this week. At least that’s what it felt like. I have to admit that as hard as I try to bal­ance and spin all of my plates, or to jug­gle all of my balls, I, like all, am human. Like a lot of full time work­ing moms, I have a lot of things going on at once. I have my first shift which is my work shift which is career work, my sec­ond shift or wife and mom shift, and then some­where in between I make room for self-renewal, self– care, and per­sonal devel­op­ment. All three are a pri­or­ity to me, but by-far the most del­i­cate of all my respon­si­bil­i­ties is that of being a mother. At this point I am not only respon­si­ble for myself but I have two very spe­cial lit­tle men for which I take respon­si­bil­ity. Luck­ily my lit­tle men are very resilient and for­giv­ing. This week I received word from my son’s teacher that unless his writ­ing skills improved there may be a pos­si­bil­ity he wouldn’t move onto sec­ond grade. “Ouch!” That news stung worse than a dozen wasp stings.

How could I be such a bad mother? How could I drop this frag­ile ball? How did I not see this com­ing? What other balls might I be drop­ping next? I was com­ing off of my “I’m so lucky to be alive” High.…how can this hap­pen now?

I was dis­traught to say the least. It took me sev­eral days, meet­ings with the prin­ci­pal and sched­uled meet­ings with the teacher, phone calls to my mom, dis­cus­sions with my sis­ters and hus­band, my coach, and prob­a­bly half a dozen oth­ers to real­ize that yes Virginia.…I am human. Per­haps my reac­tion was an over-reaction because of the emo­tional nature of this sit­u­a­tion. But another hard les­son learned.…I must real­ize and be okay with the pain that may come by my human fail­ures. Fail­ing is merely a judg­ment, so did I really fail? Who is my biggest judge of this, ME?

Tak­ing a step back, my hus­band and I real­ize that our First Grader WILL be mov­ing onto Sec­ond Grade next year. He is read­ing at Third Grade level and zooms through math like a lit­tle savant. He is a Cy Young award win­ning pitcher that stinks at bat­ting. He needs some bat­ting prac­tice, and he’ll even­tu­ally be mak­ing base hits and RBIs.

So, solu­tion num­ber one is get­ting my son the help he needs with writing.…EASY! Solu­tion num­ber two is learn­ing how to curb my emo­tional response when I have these big upsets. Not so easy, but do-able. In pre­vi­ous blogs, I describe the pain/pleasure con­tin­uum and how life’s dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions are used to teach us lessons. This was a big les­son for me, for two rea­sons: 1. I feel I should com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively with my children’s teach­ers so I don’t get blind-sighted with this kind of news. 2. Antic­i­pate (but don’t expect) emo­tional upsets and learn a con­struc­tive emo­tional response to these set-backs. I don’t think that I refuse to get “mad, sad, angry, or frus­trated”, but allow myself to feel these emo­tions with­out being per­son­ally destruc­tive with these emo­tions. They’re healthy emo­tions to set us back on the right course, help us regain our bal­ance and then to become bet­ter bal­anced so we don’t get thrown off-kilter so eas­ily again.

So, yes, I am human. I do have “bad days”, I am learn­ing to keep my bad days fewer and far between. I strive to live each day enjoy­ably, with pas­sion and doing what I love. My chil­dren deserve a mom that is passionate.…teaching them this life les­son is invaluable!