I am working on changing my overall mindset. It’s a bit like renovating a house, except it’s my brain. I’m adding a second story, refinishing the basement, changing wall paper… It’s a big project, but in the end, I hope to be a happier, healthier person.

For one of the renovations, I’m adopting a mantra: my challenges are my blessings. This mantra has really brightened up my brain, acting like a wonderful coat of white paint on walls that were formerly black and brown.

Here’s how it works:

Step One: I catch myself responding to a situation in a negative way.

Step Two: I realize I’m categorizing the situation as a “challenge.”

Step Three: I reframe the “challenge” as a “blessing.”

Step Four: I take a deep breath and let good feelings wash away the bad.

And here are a few examples of my mantra in action:

And so on and on and on, and I could keep adding to the list because it’s a fun exercise, but hey, my next book is not just going to write itself. As my eleventh grade English teacher liked to say, Onward, Christian soldiers! (Because apparently that’s what English teachers say to motivate their students at Catholic school.)

Twelve days ago, I decided I should try blogging every day and see what happened. And so, for the past twelve days, that is what I have done. I have written a few posts here, and a few more posts on my PPD blog. (Methinks two websites if enough for this brain of my mine!)

Twelve days ago, I did not know why I had this sudden urge to try blogging every day. I just knew, in my gut, it was something I had to try.

Today I finally realized: daily blogging is helping me sort through my priorities. More: it is helping me develop a stronger sense of self.

I have a running list of Blog Ideas in the Notes app on my iPhone. When it comes time to write, I check the list and pick the idea that jumps out at me. This process helps me see what is on my mind.

The first few days of blogging felt unnatural and awkward, but now, it feels very right to blog every day. The daily practice energizes me.

I’m curious to see how many more days I blog in a row before I want or need a break. I’m curious to see where this leads. It seems that the writing life will always have new surprises for me to discover.

A few weeks ago, I read Tuck Everlasting during our annual family sojourn to Nebraska. I found a copy in a free lending library the day before our trip, so it seemed like the thing to read.

Towards the ends of the book, the protagonist, a young girl, reflects upon her adventures:

Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them [her family]. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once. 

Today was Pippa’s last day of summer camp. She has been to camp before, but only at her co-op preschool, where I did volunteer days and knew the teachers and routines. But this was big kid camp. The parents were not even allowed on to camp grounds. We just walked the kids to the entrance and waved as they marched down a hill to pack away their lunches and swim bags and have all sorts of adventures.

It was strange. Pippa had quite the experience this summer – friends and counselors and games with names like Epic and Camouflage. I heard snatches of camp songs hummed from the back seat of the car or from a heap of bubbles during bath time. I often reminisced about my own experiences at summer camp.

But I wasn’t at camp with Pippa this summer.

Sometimes, I feel as if I’m supposed to feel devastated by this separation. Except I don’t. I am proud that Pippa went off on her own and made friends and came home grubby and filthy. I am glad to see that I am not just raising a daughter, but a human, an individual who can go off and conquer the world in whatever way she sees fit.

It happened to her and was hers alone and had nothing to do with me.  It was the first time.

But it won’t be the last.

As the mother of a five year old and two and a half year old, I have attended my fair share of children’s birthday parties. I used to go to these parties optimistic, certain I was going to have a great time talking to the other grownups while my child was occupied by birthday party activities. More often than that, I left the party feeling drained and defeated.

What was I doing wrong?

For the longest time, I focused on my kids. What could I do to make them behave and, ahem, leave me alone at parties so I could socialize?

But then I remembered: I can’t change my kids; I can only change myself.

So finally, as I was taking Julian to a birthday party yesterday, I tried something new. I lowered my expectations.

I’m not saying I turned into a pessimist and assumed the party was going to be a shit show. Instead, I was a realist. We were going to a party at a park. There would be donuts and coffee at some picnic tables and a big playground nearby. Julian, in typical two year old form, would want to run around and play games with mama and be difficult when I needed to use the bathroom. I warned myself that conversation with the other parents would be difficult, but at least there would be coffee.

And I was right: conversation with the other parents was difficult. But I did get to have a few conversations! Ten minutes with Mom A, five minutes and then another five minutes with Mom B, two minutes with the Hostess Mom, and then ten minutes with Sweet Stranger Mom. All in all, I got to enjoy thirty-two minutes of conversation while chasing after my busy boy. AND THERE WAS COFFEE!

In the past, I went to parties thinking I would get to socialize the entire time, minus any minutes needed for diaper changes. So when I only got a few interrupted moments of conversation, I felt cheated.

But yesterday, I went to the party with the assumption I would not get to enjoy any conversation. Thirty-two minutes felt wonderful compared to zero seconds. By changing my expectations, I changed the way I experienced the birthday party.

This is something I want to work on in other areas of motherhood. I don’t want to turn into Gloom and Doom Mom, but I’d like to see how I can improve my motherhood experiences by adjusting my expectations to fit my current stage of life.

Bonus Points: Kids do become more independent with age. When I took Pippa to a six year old’s birthday last month, I spent about 90% of the time chatting with other parents. The fragmented nature of a toddler/preschooler party is just a phase.

In the meantime, there’s always coffee.

Over the past year, I have found myself losing my patience with my kids more and more frequently. I can’t control them. They won’t listen. And then I lose my shit and scream.

I know a lot of moms who also scream at their children. At first, this was reassuring – Oh hey, I’m not a total monster, because half the moms I know are also losing their shit with their kids. But as the months went on, and I kept screaming, my intuition told me something had to change.

It’s one thing to yell if my kids do something dangerous like run away from me in a parking lot. But that’s not the yelling I was doing. I was just yelling if my kids refused to eat their breakfast or left out too many toys. And I would not shout. I would scream until my body shook and Pippa started to cry.

That never felt good.

In fact, it felt effing awful.

Screaming changes my physiology. As soon as I start, I feel all sorts of chemicals flooding my body. Because when I scream, my body assumes, Holy hell, here comes a lion!

And once I’m done screaming, the chemicals linger for hours and hours. I can’t just take a few deep breaths and flush the bad feelings out of my body. I’m stuck with them until I go to bed and hit the reboot button. So if I scream at my kids during the morning routine, I spend the rest of the day feeling miserable.

I’ve been working on the Yelling Problem since the beginning of 2018. First, I had to recognize that I had a problem. Then, I got curious and started journaling about it. Just those two things — getting curious and journaling — helped me reduce the screaming bouts drastically. I went from screaming every two or three days to only every couple of weeks. Progress!

But after a few months of progress, I felt myself sliding back into old habits and patterns. I was once again screaming more frequently, and it seemed like the smallest infraction would trigger me.

So I did what I do whenever I need a little help: I hopped on Amazon and started searching for a book.

I combed through reviews and chose Setting Limits With Your Strong-Willed Child: Eliminating Conflict by Establishing CLEAR, Firm and Respectful Boundaries by Robert Mackenzie. I figured I had to start somewhere, and I would probably have to read several parenting books in order to kick my screaming problem.

I started reading Setting Limits about three weeks ago, and it has changed my life. I have not screamed at my kids ONCE since diving into the first chapter. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to write some posts about the things I have learned from Setting Limits to help me internalize and really absorb the things I have learned. But if the title of the book sounds at all like something you might need, let me assure: you do. This book has transformed me into the parent I want to be!