Superwoman does not exist
Friday, September 26, 2008 at 11:40am | Edit Note | Delete
There is no such thing as superwoman, or superman, for that matter. Why do i say this ...well as i sat in the clinic yesterday i kept thinking to myself "oh please let things go ok today' not just for the obvious reasons as many of our routine visits have resulted in fevers and automatic 2 week stays at the hospital but because it was meet the teacher night at brittannys school. Throughout the years of countless meet the teacher nights it never once occured to me that there would ever be a reason i would ever miss a meet the teacher night becauase this and all the other "good mom" mandatory occassions were just an assumed part of my carreer as a mother . I know that roles have changed over the years and dads are far more present in their childrens life, however, i think that if a dad has to work overtime or can't get away from the office it doesn'rt crush them or reflect terribly on their parenting image( iam not trying to be sexist , jsut an observation) if they have to bail on a "meet the teacher night" they just suffer the consequences with "the look" when they get home as if they were not quite believed.
I think that this whole good "mother phenomenon" is born the second your child makes their presence known within, and then the belief system, ideolgies, judgements and value system suddenly take on a whole new meaning and equate themselves to what popularity meant in the teen years
, Just when you thought high school cliques were done for , a whole new very powerful "in crowd" rears itself questioning every decison you make every standard you hold dear. I remember when my first was born how i had all these ideas of what a good mother looked like, for me it meant being a stay at home mom, breastfeeding, preparing home made baby food attempting cloth diapers and having educational enriching classes and play groups to attend ...the flip side of that " where the hell did Lori go" so as time went on and ideas changel so does your parenting, but with each change you make you still hold on to the rituals and ideas of good mothering and how it compares to other "good mothers" and the doubts you carry with you. While in new mom syndrome...you look aroung and see " wow that mom sure dresses her kids nice " as you look at your own little one sporting a mismatched outfit (beacause you were hoping to pull off the free spirit look) and ketchup stain that you swear wasn't there in the morning.or they dressed themsleves from the wrong laundry basket. There are those moms that have one of those houses ...you know the ones ...nothing is out of place , clean as the dickens, shiny , spotless all the friggin time(patty)so you say to yourslef "well im going for the lived in look...however it appears more like a "who died in here look". ok so you take pride in the fact that youre going to stay at home and raise your kids and well if not careful that can be a slippery slope " ah what do i need to wear make up for , my kids loveme the way i am" " ah sweats are alot more comfy than real clothes" then one day you catch yourslef in the mirror going "what the hell" so then the added notion of the media telling you "hey you can do both" Of cousre you can you are superwoman!!!!! Off to school the kids go and off to work you go....this oughta be easy"i'll just skip lunch breaks so i can pick up my kids from school and still apeear the good doting mom" Then one of those obnoxcious PAC fulltimers(the alter ego Lori) asks you to be the one to deliver a speech to the school board because "the rest of us are busy doing the everyday hardowrk(martyr) stuff ...that is, she says "if your e not too busy working outside th home" Fine , i can do it , after all im superwoman" The countless events, productions , projects you manipualte your time in order to accomplish the full time soccer mom look and modern notion of " working towards my goals...my time" huh! i used to think i was lucky if i finished work at 12"45 and could run home change and be at apumpkin patch feild trip by `1:00" then back to work by 2:00 remember who needs lunch i think i have a banana in the car. Time to myself would incorporate having a midweek day off so i could catch up on all the laundry, do the banking, grocery shopping, housework , errands etc before lunch so i could be the lunch mom at the school for the day, oh and to be greeted by your children after school with " i thought i told you i hate mustard on my sandwich"
" Ah i love you too, now shut up and get in the car " ( hard to believe i work in the family education bsuiness, my kids tell me i should p practice wht i preach ..ah whatever)lets not forget that superwoman looks "hot" too and probably "puts out" alot so keep that image up . Becuause "did you see that mom at school, i wonder if shes had work done...i'll have to work that into a conversation" The media is inaccurate ..wrong... dillusional...and slanted , i can attest to that as can my co workers who have seen the irresponsabilty and one- sidedness of the of the media lately , if it can manipualte the illusion of what a capable parent looks like then it can have you believe superwoman exists.
Speaking of work, i miss it, i do , the work sometimes difficult to watch ,sometimes dealing with children who haven't had much food that day, are dirty , sad , neglected abused and could only wish for a kiss goodnight , or clean clothes or a lunch to take to school or had just been removed form their home....so walking in the door somedays after work would prove a little difficult as one of my angels would greet me with a" can you take me to the mall "i have no Hollister tshirts, this sucks" or " what is THAT FOR DINNER" i need help with my science project and well if you know anything about good parenting (ha ha)then you know that the science project is a parent project (ha ha acs)and you have reached the parent pinnacle if you (i mean your child) make it to the finals. There arises so many facades of what a good parent looks like trap. and it is very contradictory
1> belief:your child must look very busy in espensive sports and outtings..contradiction: allowing your child to jsut be a kid and play ..feeling relaxed..a free spirit.
2>belief: your child must be dressed as all the others with the top brand name clothes so they fit in contradiction> my child is aleader has their own style is not lead by others.
3>belief: a good mom is self sacrfiing and spends this season of her life on her children relishing this short time.... contradiction: a good mom takes care of # 1 so she can take care of her kids "my time" is jsut as important.
belief: a good mom should stay at home with her kids.... contradiction: a good mom should work to maintain sense of self and share the income burden and afford more for her children
5belief:a good mom is comfortable i n her own skin and doesn't need to impress anyone contradiciton: look good and and always present yourself as best you can.
>contradiciton: agood mom is a full time career pac mom ...contradiciton; a good mom says no when over burdeend
6 belief: a good mom packs her childrens lunch everyday contradiction:.... a good mom teahes children to pack their own lunch
7belief: good moms have well behaved pleasant looking smart kids contradiction> good moms have strong willed independant thinking/ speaking children who epress themselves unorthodoxly.
8belief: a good mom alllows only healthy food contradiction;...good mom allows fun food
9belief: good mom hides her feeling/disappointment. contradiciton:.... good mom shares/expresses her feelings
10belief: agood mom disciplines her children contradiction:.... good mom ignores/ picks only big battles
The list goes on and on and i didnt even get started on diet and exercise thing(yuk)Point is now that im out of the new mom syndrome i can look back and think i did some thiings great and some things not so great (guilt trip ). ive felt up ive felt down about my parenting and the reason i bring this up is because i remember the way i felt when i was so busy one day cleaning my kids rooms that i stuck a "i am a princess" crown on my head and forgot to take it off when i went grocery shopping , this is to illustrate that sometimes in the midst of doing all the stuff we sometimes feel stupid , inadequate, downtrodden but we all do it in the name of our image of being a good parent. I think of my sisters right now with their young children and all the trials and tribulations(okay part of me is giglging on the inside) their children ,all beautiful , challenging their parenting in their own way , Katie and her stong willedness wild bouts of ???? and carlie who went diigging throguh my sisters"old stag novelty items " and wore a bracelt that said "bitch" to school the other day...do you even try explaining that one to the teacher????
Anyways to everyone i know "you are all good mother"s , you all have the "thing or things" that make you a good mom, that may be different than other s but very admired amongst your peers. The thing is they(kids ) will always have something to say about our parenting but we are living in such a time and place that children(most) are so highly valued that most of our decisons are rooted in how it effects our children. so , we do what we can, which will be different than the person next to you neither right or wrong just a different take on it. I think if youre giving your children a sense of something bigger than themselves than good for you( oh a few hot meals thrown in there once in a while is agood thing too) Some of us will wipe the snot form our kids runny noses every two seconds others will let them wipe it with their sleeve and yes you will be judged by the mom who always has a kleenex on hand in her well stocked minivan of possible scenarios , you may be the one throwing your child insistent glances "to be more polite when adults are speaking to them while the mom next to you prides herself smugly on her well spoken young lady...whatever...sometimes youre ahead ...sometimes youre behind, the road is long, try not berate yourself too much or pat yourslef on the back too much either . were all doing the best we can....by the way i made it to the parent teacher night and was able to pat myself on the back and darcy didn't have to work overtime so no evil looks his way. thankful for the small stuff
Thanks for reading
Peace
lori
The Journey of a butterfly...Ashleys life has become symbolic of a butterfly, peaceful beautiful and free to fly where the wind takes her. We have a white butterfly that flies around us in the garden in the springtime where the other girls play. Irish folklore tells us that a white butterfly is the rebirth of a deceased child's soul reborn into something even more beautiful than before...our butterfly
June 29 1992 - February 16 2009
Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly
We invite you to follow along one family's journey through grief and loss, one brave young girl's journey through faith and inspiration, this is not a blog to convert anyone , nor is it a blog about fundraising , it is what i hope will reach another family on a similar journey, we are not experts , i could not give you a magic remedy for how one gets through disease and devestation but it is our story , sometimes gut wrenching other time heartwarming and all of the time, i guarantee, very real. We are not perfect, we struggle daily and i think that the more we connect to one another the more we understand what this journey through life is all about . Sometimes that path is bumpy and we fall down, sometimes we sit and stop a while,or take a step back and other times we pound our fists on the pavement like a lunatic , still other times we find ourselves picking eachother up dusting eachother off and walking alongside them even if only for short time. This blog is dedicated to Ashley , her sisters and every single angel that picked us up along this road.
This is an introduction to the beginning and middle part of our journey the specific blogs are more indepth , the end...well there will never be an end to this journey i've come to realize that , not on this earth, for now we just assimilate it into our life like a hole , a missing limb, a continous ache that you just learn to live with.
When Ashley was about 12 years old she asked if she could go to youth group at a local church , i didn't have any church upbringing but know i craved it throughout my life , this was a rare opportunity and i recognized that if i didn't embrace it now she may lose her interst in it very quickly and beocme a jaded, cynical, stubborn person like her mom. My husband grew up in a very religious (shove it down your throat) kinda religion( i wont mention any names)or maybe it was the way he was raised ? Anyways i encouraged her to go because the community we had moved to embraced this kinda thing so i thought why not? Naturally and shortly after she started attending she was soon encouraging us to go , she had made quite a leadership name for herself there , pionner leader , sunday school helper etc, i was comfortable for the first time in my life going to a church, maybe it was the first word that greeted you as you walked in..."belong" maybe it was because they embraced community and outreach service in our city , dont know, but soon found it very therapeutic, cheaper than a shrink, and our other 3 girls jumped on board pretty quickly, my husband well... a work in progress , he communes with God in a fishing boat he says , although makes many efforts to go even if just for good way to start the week, i was still cynical , felt i wasnt holy enough but went anyways.
Ashley was scheduled to sing a solo in the church choir Dec 16 2007 , i was scared for her, i was sure she got her singing skills from me which was nil at best. She sang beautifully and you couldnt tell she had been complaining of cramps , something i chalked up to girls stuff/growing pains for a couple weeks off and on, she was an active healthy girl. When the performnce was done we got our christmas tree and i took her to the clinic to have it checked out before Christmas , they sent us to our local hosptial for tests , i was worried it was appendix. Darcy, my husband left the hosptial to go pick up our other 3 girls from friends houses , i caught the doctor in the ahallways and asked if the ulstrasound pictures were back, i remember having eye contact with Ashley only feet away from me but far enough away for her not to hear the doctor to so impassionaltely say "its not appendix, it looks like cancer", i have to stop as i write this because it is still one of the 2 biggest shocks in my entire life, i think i ran down the hallways screaming with no sound coming from my throat and not knowing where i was running . I phoned Darcy and words didnt come out of my mouth. Before I knew it we were at out local Childrens Hospital(100km away) meeting oncologiosts , being give an "oncology team" which consisted of a primary nurse, a social worker, a main oncologist and a shrink....wait a minute ...what is an oncologist? yep, a cancer doctor, this was the real thing . we waited 4 days to find out what type we were dealing with ... it was curable 90 % even though she was stage 4 , how the hell can my kid have stage 4 cancer and only a few cramps , it was mind bending. We were thrown stright into a world so foriegn to us , everything stopped ..jobs ..PAC meetings ,carppoling and yes even some friends who"couldn't handle it" it was no longer our own beds , our own home, our own anything. Treatments and life became unbearable , the 90% cure rate was not looking good at any stage throughout our journey , it seemd to be always full of negative news to the point where i couldnt stand the face of her oncologist , it nearly made me want to vomit everytime i saw him...The words they briefed us on as we began this mind altering path was " one of you will grieve through this process and no matter the out come the other will grieve after " they couldn't have been more right.......Ashley insisted on going to church on Christmas eve, two nights before she was to start chemo at the end of the service our pastor came to pray with us , i didn't know many people in the church , but wow did they know Ashley, when we rose our heads from bowing in prayer the whole congregation was surrounding us , i knew at that moment who i was going to need to get me through this ...would he be willing to listen to me...
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