Finding my way

And here I am again! Yes, I know.. it's been more than a month.. but hey, I moved!  (It's not like you didn't know that was coming, sheesh!  haha.)  And man, it's been a doozy.  There's nothing quite as crazy and stressful as deciding to move, and doing it two weeks later.  It takes a special kind of nuttiness to come up with that plan, and a complete lack of any real grasp of reality to go through with it.  That's me and the hubster.. nutty people who refuse to acknowledge reality. :)

So, yeah.. I moved.  I left a 2500 sqft, 5 bedroom house in suburbia for a 1175 sqft, 2 bedroom house in hipster/hippie land. And I'm completely psyched about it. :)  I think the hardest part of the move, besides managing it in such a short time time, was the whittling down of all that we had accumulated in our big ol' suburban house so that we could fit in our new space.  We didn't want to rent a storage unit, and so my move included not only packing, but sorting through it all to decide what to keep.  I've always been a bit of a pack rat.  I like to blame it on growing up poor.. like I lived through the depression, and just can't throw away something that might possibly be useful.. someday.. to someone.  It was a scary task to take on, but in the end, digging through it all to decide what was most important was strangely liberating.  Time consuming, stressful, mentally exhausting.. but fruitful.  When you don't have space for extra baggage, you finally have to face your real priorities in life.

Turns out my priorities are being the right mom for my children, finding a fulfilling path for myself, and being a true partner to my husband for the crazy trip this life is taking is on.  I hope you notice that I did not say that I am hoping to be a perfect mom, or the best mom... I said 'right' mom, because who my children need is me.  A me who is happy, sane and fulfilled. They don't need the super-mom that haunts my nightmares, with her craft projects, clean house, and even tempered ways.., and I remind myself of that daily.  My current hero is a woman named Brené Brown with a PhD in Social Work.  A lot of my parenting philosophies come from her work.. and I just have to share this quote, because I can't explain it better than she does.  (If you want to know more.. watch her Ted Talk)

"You can't give children what you don't have yourself," says Brené Brown. "No matter how much importance you place on it." For instance, you can't raise children to be more resilient to shame than you are yourself. "I can encourage my daughter to love her body," she says, "but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body. Damn it. So the question isn't so much, 'Are you parenting the right way?' as it is, 'Are you the adult you want your child to grow up to be?'"

And, it is from that point of view that I can finally decide that finding a fulfilling path for myself is not selfish, it's the best thing I can do for my children.  And for me, my chosen next step on this path is graduate school.  I've applied at the University of Utah to a Masters of Social Work program.  Right now, I'm playing the waiting game.  I had hoped to know by now.. but I don't.  I have my life arranged in such a way that if I am accepted, I am ready.  If I'm not.. well, back to the drawing board.  Plan B is often a better plan in the end.. so who knows.  I'm not ready to give up on Plan A yet, but if it doesn't pan out, I'm not turning around and going back.. I'll just have to find another way through.