Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s day and my momma’s birthday.   

I love this day.  I love it because my mom always loved it...or if she felt differently she never made it known.  She loved being a mom and she knew she was great at it sometimes and fell short at other times and it was all okay.   

I learned the following from my mom and from the life coach school (Brooke Castillo)  and it rings so  true about Motherhood:  Stop trying to be a good mom.  Just embrace the mom that you are.  You ARE a good mom in many ways but you are not a good mom in other ways, or on certain days or in certain situations.  Now what?  You are not a robot.  You are a hunan.  You have strengths and weaknesses.  You have the entire range of emotions.   It’s ok to not be good at all of it.  It’s ok to be half strong and half weak.  It’s ok to be half giving and half selfish.  It’s ok that we are a work in progress.  It’s all ok.   

My life coach mentor Jody Moore taught this:    From this place I ironically became a much more pleasant mother.  Only it’s not ironic at all.  It’s the natural progression for choosing compassion.  You cannot be compassionate toward others when you’re standing in a fog of judgment and shame towards yourself.  You must step into the sunlight of compassion to be compassionate and then offer compassion.  (This is true for mom-ing and for dad-ing.)  

Mom’s birthday also starts our 7th annual Sharing Sheri event.  13 days of Sharing random acts of kindness in mom’s honor.  We start at her birth date and end at her death date on May 21.  I love doing ROK and thinking of mom as I do it. 

Mother's day was glorious.  I'm really good at being an okay mom and patting my own self on the back.  Plus I got some great gifts... an outdoor rug to cover our old deck, new king-size sheets for my bed, a Sunday dress, sparkly shoes, a rainbow kimono and white pants and some awesome earrings.  My kids gave me earrings, two LGBTQ prints, flowers, yard work, a beach hat and bag that says Meema and homemade cards.  Loved it all.  I made Grandma Butters cinnamon Bundt cake with brown butter frosting in honor of her, and we pulled scones in honor of my momma who was the scone queen!   They all came for BBQ, laughter and games.    AND obligatory pics with me of course.   Everyone was here except- Andrew and Sophia who are always with their mom and Monson who was sick.   I even got to have Laila's boyfriend Markus here to celebrate.  He's on a week leave from Marines before being stationed at Camp Pendelton for the next three years.