Reflections on faith, family, purpose & passions.
Recognize when a moment is fleeting.
Take a mental picture.
Hug it tight.
Keep it close so on a hard day or in a quiet moment you can draw it out of your memories.
And, just like that, you’re overcome with delight. It’s as if you’re experiencing that moment for the first time.
Imagine if we treated more moments this way.
Several weeks ago, I read about a Mother’s Day essay contest hosted by Skirt!, a Charleston area women’s magazine. The basic assignment was to answer the following: “I am the woman I am today because my mother …” I clipped the page from the magazine and put it on my desk. Of course, it was inevitably buried under a pile of papers, where I unearthed it about two days before the deadline.
Finally, the day before the deadline, a Facebook post promoting the essay contest reminded me again – I either needed to write something today or forget it. So, while waiting for Kate at her gymnastics class, I started writing about how motherhood is hard. Hard for me. Hard for own mom. Probably hard at times for you too. And, yet, we can learn from the hard times, the good times, the everyday moments. I sent off the essay and figured, if nothing else, I’d put it in a Mother’s Day card for my mom. So, imagine my surprise to learn that my essay was one of the finalists.
As a finalist, I was able to participate in a Lisette L Fashion Show at the Volvo Car Open in April, and in May, all the finalists will be recognized at a luncheon. I’m honored my own mom will be able to join me at that event on May 11. You can pick up the May issue of Skirt! to read a little of each finalist’s essay. And I’m publishing mine below:
If you ask my mom, she’ll probably give you a list of all the ways she thinks she failed at motherhood. That’s the way it is when you’re a mom, isn’t it? You second guess every decision. You struggle with guilt and feelings of inadequacy. You get tunnel vision on the times you lost your temper or forgot a school function. Like my own mom, I worry daily that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not being enough for my own daughter.
I’m 40 years old and my mom probably still wonders the same thing: was I enough for my daughter?
Yes, Mom, you were enough. It’s because of you I grew into the woman I am today. It’s because of you I have a beautiful life filled with accomplishments, possibilities and love.
Mom, you may focus on the faults, but I choose to focus on the many ways you shaped me. You were an example of a single mom with two kids who went to college to become a social worker. You’ve spent years helping people through incredibly difficult situations as they overcome addictions and personal crisis.
Because of you, I recognize and appreciate strong, dedicated and caring women.
You took me to Sunday school and church. You taught me bedtime prayers and the importance of reading the Bible and listening to that still small voice that guides us in our decisions.
Because of you, I can fulfill the calling laid out for me.
Mom, you encouraged me in everything. I believed I could do anything I set my mind to and, that with hard work and determination, I could conquer the world.
Because of you, I have done just that.
You instilled in me a sense of personal confidence and a value that any man worth having was one who pursued, respected and valued me.
Because of you, I have the most incredible husband. He’s loved me unconditionally and supported me for almost 17 years.
As a grandmother, you’ve demonstrated a mother’s love and what it means to cherish and adore a precious child.
Because of you, I can pause and appreciate my role not as a caretaker who schedules swim lessons and packs lunches, but as the caretaker entrusted with raising another young woman poised to take on the world.
So, thank you, Mom, for all the big and little ways you molded me, my character and my passion. For without those promptings, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today.
In my early 20s, I loved this clip from the classic film “When Harry Met Sally.” It was exactly how I felt about turning 40. Sure, it would happen … someday. A very far, far away “someday.”
Well, my friends, “someday” did indeed arrive. I am actually 40. I’ll admit, starting in January, I was thinking, “This is the year I turn 40″ and maybe I was starting to freak out a little bit. Big birthdays have a tendency to make us reflective, don’t they? We ponder what we’ve done and where we’re headed. We feel a sense of urgency, asking ourselves, “How much more can I squeeze out of my life?”
I’ve done a lot with my first 40 years. I have two college degrees (never mind I’m still paying for those darn things). I have pursued my dream of working as a journalist and have had the privilege to work with incredibly talented reporters and editors. Now, I run my own business combining my love of writing and working with nonprofits and business on their PR and marketing.
For more than 15 years, I’ve been married to the most amazing husband and we have a fabulous daughter and three sweet dogs. My life is filled with incredible friends and a supportive family. I live out my days following Jesus and doing the best job I can as a wife, mother and business owner. Thanks finding CrossFit almost six years ago, I’m in the best physical shape of my life. I have all the comforts of a nice home in a beautiful city.
I’m one lucky 40 year old! And those are just a handful of the highlights.
And yet I know there’s more on my bucket list – places to visit and experiences awaiting me. I have more to contribute to this world and, I hope, several more decades to make it all happen.
So, here’s to “someday” and turning 40 – a time to take stock of my amazing life and to know that the best is yet to come!
At least once a week, Kate and I walk to the school bus stop. It’s about 5 minutes from our house and now that the weather is starting to cool, we like making the walk. Plus, I love the early morning chats with my precious girl.
This morning, I was telling her about an arts-related event in downtown Charleston on Sunday I thought she might like to attend. She asks, “Can we go with someone?”
I teasingly reply, “What, you don’t want to go with your ol’ mom and dad?”
She does, but … it’s fun to take a friend.
I tell her someday she’ll be driving off with her friends and won’t want to go anywhere with us.
“Well,” she says, “I will be moving to New York.”
I ask, “Can we come visit?”
Kate says, “Sure.”
I ask, “Will you call me every day?”
“No,” she says. “I’ll be busy with all my jobs.”
At least she’s honest.
At age 6, she has mapped out plans to move to New York where she’ll be running both her own art gallery and a zoo/farm of exotic animals. Granted, she hasn’t been to New York, but many famous artists live there, so seems like a good idea. And why not?
She’s shared her plans with some friends at school and already has two friends willing to move to New York with her and work at her zoo. She’ll be the leader, she says, and give them jobs to do.
Of course she shares all of this in a very matter-of-fact tone with complete confidence in her plans.
I love it.
I love her spirit, independence and self-confidence.
Sweet girl, don’t ever lose that.
I don’t want her to reach middle school only to see her confidence wane as is the case with so many young girls. It is my life’s mission to keep her believing in herself, her abilities and the fact that she can do absolutely anything she wants in life.
And in the meantime, I’ll take advantage of the fact she still holds my hand as we walk to bus, sharing her life’s plans. I tuck these conversations away so in 20 years I can remember a darling little girl who is in the process of fulfilling all her dreams …. and, I hope, has time to call me at least once a week.
When did she get so grown up?
For the last decade, Clint and I have been going to the Charleston Christmas Special. It’s become a tradition to attend with some friends, and I look forward to it all year. We took Kate a couple times when she was little but decided this year she was old enough to really enjoy the show with its music, dancing and comedy sketches.
The morning of the show, we selected a sparkly red dress for her to wear and I realized she had no matching shoes. Time to pop around the corner to Kohl’s. Before we left, Kate said she needed “high heels” to go with this dress.
We found a pair of shiny black shoes with a small heel. Kate tried them on, declared them “wobbly,” but she wanted them. Already she was taking after me and sacrificing comfort for cute shoes. How sweet.
She looked so grown up in her red dress and heels. But I didn’t feel a twinge of sadness, worrying she was growing up too quickly. Instead I felt excited for the moments to come – shoe shopping together or picking out an outfit for a special occasion. I look forward to sharing those mother-daughter moments with her and capturing even more “firsts.”
Our daughter has been after to us for a year to get another pet. First she wanted a kitten. Clint’s not big on cats and neither are the two Labrador Retrievers already living in our house.
So, Kate moved on to asking for a puppy – something small she could carry around and hold in her lap. Enter: Freckles, a parti Yorkie (means she has an unusual coloring) courtesy of my mother-in-law, who raises Yorkies out in Arkansas.
Clint and Kate went for a visit in October, and Clint was scouting out the puppy situation. They loaded up 5-month-old Freckles and she flew back to South Carolina.
Kate, of course, is delighted. And Freckles is pretty darn cute.
And just like that she was off into the world.
Kate climbed on the school bus this week like she’d been doing it for years. “Bye, Mama!” floated down to me as she headed to a seat at the front of the bus. I don’t typically get emotional about things like this but my eyes watered a bit as I walked from the bus stop back to our house.
I wasn’t sad that my one and only child is off to kindergarten. I don’t long for the baby days of diapers and bottles or even the toddler days of potty training and “Dora the Explorer.” I’m eager to see what this little person becomes. Will she be an artist? A scientist? A veterinarian? Or all some combination of the three as she professes in that way children do when they dream of the future.
I didn’t feel tears of sadness for days gone by but tears of hope for all that’s yet to come. In the same moment, though, my heart weighed heavy in my chest, knowing we have a big responsibility ahead of us to train up our child and keep her on the right path. We can’t protect her from “the world” with its mean girls and teasing boys and eventual adolescent peer pressure and big decisions. That world awaits all of us and, for all the struggles it brings, it’s also how we learn and grow.
So, I took a deep breath, dried the corners of my eyes and said a prayer for the precious little girl and the incredible woman she’s destined to become.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been repeating this phrase: “It’s just a house.” I mean four walls, a roof, a backyard … these things are just, well, “things” and don’t comprise the essence of my life. And, yet, they are a part of my life and have been for the last seven years. It’s hard to give them up.
This spring, Clint and I started talking about making some lifestyle changes. He wanted to change careers and jump on an opportunity to be a full-time CrossFit coach (his real passion) while doing some IT consulting on the side. To more easily implement all these changes we decided to put our house up for sale and look for something that ate up less of our income.
We bought this house seven years ago and redid almost the entire inside. The house was in hideous condition – awful paint, terrible carpet, cheap fixtures. It was a DIY project like none other. We did the work ourselves and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this place. It’s not easy to let it go.
It’s the only house our daughter has known. The walls have witnessed first words, first steps and a first Christmas. And yet like all homes, the memories are mixed. These same walls also shielded us during my job layoff, months of postpartum depression and the difficult year Clint was gone working in Africa.
When the house went under contract in just two days, I wept. “It’s just a house,” I told myself. And over the last couple weeks, I turned my focus to packing and how we’ll set up the new house. I was doing quite well until this week when I sold my dining room set. It wasn’t an antique or a family heirloom. It was a table and china cabinet we purchased about 12 years ago for our first house. I’d filled the cabinet with dishes and china sets passed down from family members.
I loved that table and cabinet – not the pieces themselves, necessarily, but what they represented. I didn’t grow up with a lot of fancy and fluff so, for me, that dining room set marked an arrival that I had worked my tail off to achieve.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not regretting these decisions. I’m delighted to move into our new house and excited for Clint to start his new job. But I do need to let myself reflect on – and even mourn – this passage from one phase into another. We don’t always give ourselves time to do that when we make a life change. So if you see me carrying boxes with tears in my eyes, know they are blend of happy and sad and I’m probably reminding myself, “It’s just a house.”
As an only child and an only grandchild (on both sides!), our daughter gets a lot of stuff. She receives more than enough gifts for Christmas, birthdays and, well, just about any holiday.
Last year she received plenty of great Christmas gifts, including a new bike, tons of art supplies and clothing. Her birthday comes less than six weeks after Christmas and we always end up with more “stuff.” I was up to my ears in “stuff.”
So for her fifth birthday, I decided we’d ask the friends coming to her birthday party to bring a donation for The Art Bus Project, a mobile art studio. I read an article about the Art Bus and thought it sounded neat. Plus, it falls right in line with Kate’s love of art. The friends who came to her birthday (at the studio where she takes art classes) brought art supplies instead of donations.
A couple friends brought gifts anyway but that was fine. We ended up with a nice bag of supplies that Kate and I delivered to Margaret Crane – the art teacher behind the bus idea. She gave Kate her own Art Bus smock and they posed for this photo.
It was a small step toward trying to teach Kate life isn’t about “stuff” and that birthdays aren’t just about presents but about celebrating another year of life and the people who are in it.
Last night at church, the pastor begins his Father’s Day-themed message asking “What did your father give you?” My initial thought was, “Absolutely nothing.”
My parents divorced when I was about 7 years old and my father didn’t have an active role in our lives. If I heard from him on Christmas and my birthday, it was a good year. So while many people can credit their dads for giving them a Christian foundation, a sense of humor, self-esteem or support, I can’t claim those same values from my dad.
But as I thought more about the pastor’s question, I realized maybe the answer wasn’t a big, fat nothing. I had actually learned a thing or two from my dad and he probably never even realized it.
From my dad, I learned:
So it may not be the traditional way to glean lessons from a father, but I think they’re important lessons nonetheless and I’m grateful for them.
A friend and fellow writer, Angie Mizzell, contacted me a few weeks ago about a column she was writing for Lowcountry Parent magazine on parenting taboos – those topics that parents just aren’t allowed to discuss.
Angie sent me a link to a TED talk by Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, the founders of parenting website Babble.com, in which they discussed parenting taboos, including the loneliness of parenting. (Check out the video.)
Angie asked me to offer up some comments and I’m thrilled she included me in her column.
“I think those taboos apply to all moms (and dads) but are so applicable to women suffering from postpartum depression. Postpartum depression may be the greatest parenting taboo of all,” says Holly Fisher, a Charleston mom who’s writing a book about postpartum depression and serves on the board for the Ruth Rhoden Craven Foundation for Postpartum Depression Awareness. “As the Babble.com couple points out, you’re expected to be overwhelmed with love and your life with baby should be beautiful enough for the cover of a magazine,” Fisher says. “If things aren’t perfect, well then, surely you have failed as a mother. What a terrible burden for a new mom to carry.”
Read the full column, “Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About – Shattering parenting taboos,” in the April issue of Lowcountry Parent.
I learned something on our family vacation last month: Family vacations really aren’t all that relaxing.
The week after Thanksgiving, we boarded the Carnival Fantasy for a five-day cruise to the Bahamas. We spent a day at the Atlantis resort in Nassau where Kate enjoyed the pools and beach areas, Clint rode the lazy river and we photographed a giant stingray in the aquarium.
We petted dolphins at Freeport and rode a boat through water so blue it didn’t even look real. Kate had a ball at Camp Carnival, a drop-off program for the kids. Clint and I enjoyed an evening alone in the dining room, and I squeezed in a little time to read and take a nap.
Did we have a nice time? Yes. Would I classify it as a relaxing, stress-free, recharge-your-batteries kind of vacation? No.
This was our first real family vacation – not counting trips to visit family or an overnight in North Carolina – and traveling with a 3 year old comes with some stresses. Now, before you call the Parent Police, I’m not saying family vacations are bad, but they are different. It’s why you should take two vacations a year – one as a family and one with just you and your spouse. They are two completely different experiences.
Just a couple weeks before our vacation, I’d spent a few days home alone while Clint and Kate visited his family in Arkansas. This was the opposite of a family vacation. It was a vacation from the family and allowed me more time to relax. There’s just something about not having to be responsible for anyone but yourself that is quite freeing.
I have no doubt there will be another family vacation soon. Kate’s at the age where a visit to Disney is on the short list. Will it be fun? Yes. Will it be stress-free? No. But that’s OK. I’ve learned what these various types of vacations mean and I need them all in my life. Plus, I have my eye on that trip to Hawaii – just the two of us.
Just had to share! 🙂