August 10th, 2009

Lessons from a Three Year Old

It’s been a while since I sim­ply wrote about my fam­ily or my life in gen­eral. I have been swamped with past-due prod­uct reviews and my other writ­ing duties at the  Exam­iner, Moms of Hue, and Trav­el­ing Mom, have fallen by the way­side. I am a per­fec­tion­ist. I set very high goals for myself and when I am unable to attain them, I go into a depres­sion that makes me even more less productive.

With the con­stant swarm of neg­a­tive events that have plagued my fam­ily in 2009, I am find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to moti­vate myself to get things done. I still have not fully come to terms with my sister’s death, nor my father-in-laws either. I can’t believe that in her short time here, my daugh­ter has expe­ri­enced two dev­as­tat­ing losses already. I have been sad so much and while, as moth­ers will do, I have been try­ing to stay strong. I only cry when she can­not see me and I try to keep us involved in fun activ­i­ties, but the truth is, I am feel­ing a lit­tle overwhelmed.

But the funny thing is that just when I feel like I can­not go on any fur­ther, my daugh­ter does or says some­thing that makes me remem­ber that things will be alright. For exam­ple, I was really miss­ing my sis­ter the other day (well every day, but this one day in par­tic­u­lar it was a lot worse). I felt empty and dis­con­nected from the events around me and I was feel­ing a lit­tle guilty because of things left unsaid and unset­tled. My daugh­ter, who has shown a real under­stand­ing for empa­thy even at 3, came over to me and grabbed my face with her hands. She looked me in the eyes and said, “Momma, you love me, and Daddy, and we love you. It’s OK.” It was a sim­ple state­ment, but it warmed me to the core and made me real­ize a few things.

I real­ized that no mat­ter how much it hurts to lose a loved one, love is all around and that love should not be ignored.

I learned that the dif­fi­cult things in life are never as impor­tant as the sim­ple hugs and kisses that we take for granted.

I remem­bered that some­times no mat­ter how much we think we need to be strong, show­ing that we are not all the time  is the best gift we can give our children.

These lessons from my 3-year-old are exactly what I needed to get through the day. It is con­fir­ma­tion that I am doing some­thing right and that the world is bet­ter than it seems.

And she is right, it IS OK.

June 30th, 2008

What We Tell Our Children

My mother used to intro­duce me as the “ath­letic one”. My eldest sis­ter was “the pretty one”.

My mother tried every­thing to make sure that peo­ple thought I was pret­tier. She forced me to wear tra­di­tion­ally girly clothes and did not like that I was so ath­letic. She wanted me to be a princess, but I just wanted to be me. She would tell me that because I was darker-skinned I needed to “soften my appear­ance”. Within the Black non-Community, there is a seri­ous color com­plex– the lighter you are the bet­ter– and even as a child I knew this. I was the darker skinned of three girls. I never heard that I was beau­ti­ful. What I was told was “You’re pretty for a dark-skinned girl” or “You would be so pretty if you weren’t so dark.” Those com­ments were enough to make me hate myself– and they did. Years later. I engaged in behav­ior that I thought would make me pret­tier– promis­cu­ity and bulimia. Lying and hiding.

I do not like boxes– being put in one. Boxes hide the whole. They force peo­ple to only look at a small por­tion of a per­son, and that is dam­ag­ing to the soul. I look at my daugh­ter and want more for her. I want her to be her­self with out fear. I don’t want her my bir­ra­cial child to have to choose one of two races. I don’t want her to be the short one, or the fat one or even the smart one because those tags are so limiting.

What we tell our chil­dren is so impor­tant. We may not see the results right away, but words have a way of bur­row­ing down deep inside and fes­ter­ing away at one’s self-confidence. There are so many things in this world that can beat our chil­dren down, but par­ents should not be one of them.

What will you tell your children?

August 16th, 2007

Knitting, Work, and Star Jones

I have been teach­ing myself to knit and guess who is also learn­ing– my hus­band. One of the prob­lems that we have been hav­ing in our rela­tion­ship is that we don’t get to do alot of things together. I think many mar­ried cou­ples who work full-time and have chil­dren run into this prob­lem. We get so over­whelmed with life that we for­get to enjoy each other. So, we decided to do one thing that I love together and one thing that he loves together. He is learn­ing to knit and I am learn­ing foot­ball. I am going to have a fan­tasy foot­ball team and every­thing. How cool is that. LOL. I have played fan­tasy base­ball and fan­tasy bas­ket­ball, but never foot­bal, so this will be inter­est­ing. I know it is only a start, but this is a step in the right direc­tion for us.

I start work again on Mon­day, August 20 (also my Mom birth­day). I’m look­ing for­ward to it because I think work­ing makes me a bet­ter Mom. I get bored so fast so I end up being lazy and rat­ing too much. And, when you have a lively strong-willed 15.5 month old, it is hard to not get frus­trated. When I work I find that I enjoy Mom­my­hood more. Am I alone in that?

BTW– have you seen Star Jones’ new promo for her CourtTV show? She look horrible.