Hey Mama: A Tribute to Motherhood

As I sit here contemplating Mother’s Day and what to say about my own mother and her fabulosity, I can’t help but examine what motherhood means to me.  My three boys continue to challenge and inspire me daily, and coming home yesterday to a gigantic homemade Mother’s Day banner from them (as well as a place mat, let’s not forget the hand made fringe!) is all the thanks I need (well, for now…but when they’re older I expect thank yous commensurate with the 50 hours combined labor and med-free births I had, kthxbai.).

The idea of “motherhood” makes me think about the amazing real life mama’s I know who impact my life, my soul and my journey daily.  I also think about the many, many online mama’s I’ve met and been fortunate enough to get to know and I am so proud of the state of motherhood.  For all the strife out there, the pain in this world, I’m still filled with joy when I think about how incredible my mother-hood really is.

We moms are smarter, more savvy and more ambitious than ever before.  I’m able to stay home with my kids while I work and network and connect every day…a juggling act that I think we moms deserve some kind of webby award for maintaining.  We are able to Twitter, blog, email and text from the playroom and the playground, without most people knowing that we’re not sitting at a desk in a big city high rise (unless, of course, we twitter about the toys and the sand and the snot).

We are being sought out for our influence and our opinions, and finally the world is starting to see that moms TALK.  We talk to each other, to women we know and don’t know, and we share our knowledge.  The world is figuring out that we aren’t all June Cleaver, that we do actually have opinions, and that now and then we aren’t exactly mother of the year.  The world is figuring out that sometimes we get depressed, sometimes we get frustrated, sometimes we’ve had enough.  The world is on notice:  moms are online, and we’ve gone viral.

My own mother was never your typical mom.  She told us we could do our own laundry and make our own school lunches, and that we were perfectly fine wearing thrift store designer clothes.  At the time I hated being forced to do things that seemed to be what no one else was doing.  Why did my mom insist on making me stand out?  On making me so different?

Of course by the time I hit college I started realizing that being different was an asset.  It made me stand out and get noticed by the people who mattered.  Being fiercely independent has served me well, and has morphed into a wild hair that never fails to get me to push myself to find my full potential.  My mom taught me that women are smart, busy, and could juggle family and other interests if they want to.  She has always been an entrepreneur, and that same fiery-risk-taking-spirit makes me who I am today.   A lover of information, of people, of finding my own way and owning it.  She taught me to see the positive in any situation and focus on that silver lining and on my faith in God to get me through the hard times.  She taught me that I don’t have to be perfect, and that even flawed, I’m still awesome.  She taught me to believe in ME.

To all the mamas out there, thank you.  To my mama, THANK YOU.  Happy Mother’s Day.

Just Let It Go: Finding a New Love

One of my favorite lines in the movie Jerry Maguire is when Renee Zellweger’s character says “I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is“.  I’m sure we all laughed at that part, especially women viewers, because it’s so true.  Why do women think they can change men?  Can make them “better”?

Recently I was talking with a friend about some exciting new business matters we’re working on together, and I suddenly realized we were doing the same change-y thing with a potential business endeavor.  This business was not quite good enough, but we liked the idea of the business.  We didn’t like the way the business was being run, the way the business looked, or the way the future looked as long as it stayed the same, but we liked our future with the business if we could change it.  We realized we were trying to change the business to be the business it almost was and the business we wanted it to be.  Finally I said, “You know?  We just need to go find another man!”, and we started brainstorming about starting our own business, instead of trying to change someone else’s.

Sometimes we can do this with various people in our lives.  Expect them to be people they just are NOT.  We want our disconnected parent to be better at loving us.  We want the long time friend to stop being negative and bring something optimistic to the conversation.  Maybe we wish our husbands would be better to our friends or play more with our kids.  The thing is, constantly expecting people to be who they aren’t, no matter how “nobel” our intentions, is a recipe for disappointment and bitterness.  We’re better off dumping them from our lives altogether or better yet–simply accepting them they way they are, and seek the things we wanted from them–from someone else.

But what is the common denominator here?  Why do so many of us have this need to prop up wounded people or endeavors?  Could it be that we are too afraid to really go after what will make us happy?  Too afraid of what that happiness would mean, and how devastated we’d be if that happiness ever went away?  How many times have you let fear of failure–be it personally or professionally–get in the way of your happiness?