Thursday, April 05, 2007

Ok. Here It Is.


Last night (or very early this morning) I was lying in bed thinking about the Real Moms thing. I kept thinking about all of the things that I could say make a Real Mom. I thought about how I would type out my thoughts and then realized that some of the things that I say might offend some other people and then it came to me.

REAL MOMS ARE CHANGED PEOPLE.

Once upon a time, long, long ago I am fairly certain that I would not have worried about offending people. I had an "I don't give a shit" attitude. That attitude served me well and got me in trouble all at the same time but at that point in my life it was what made me who I was, good and/or bad. I have come to realize that no matter how much I try to convince myself that I am or will be the same person after having had children, I am not and cannot be the same person I once was.

I can no longer have an "I don't give a shit" attitude (well, I guess I could but then I could not fault my children if they were the same way). I can no longer always make myself #1. Granted, it is very important for Moms to do that and I (we) should do it more consistently but the days of "takin' care of #1" are long gone. To me, #1 now means Darian, followed by #2 Camryn and #3 Ryleigh (of course this does not mean that I take care of any one of my children more than the other....except Ryleigh but that just goes without saying right now).

I look back at my attitude and actions and think about how they contributed to the person that I am today. While my past is a significant portion of who I am it is when I became a Mother that made me Me. My life and who I am is like a puzzle. My past is the completed border but my children are the pieces that fill the inside.

1 comments:

Cammy said...

Love it. Have you ever seen that movie with Drew Barrymore where she is this mother who is an aspiring writer and her kid feels like everything bad in her life that happened is his fault (she got pregnant in highschool)? She seems to constantly fuck up but her kid is amazing and she tells him that he is what saved her. It's so sweet and so true (I think). Nothing is quite the same after the babes arrive - we are definitely better people.