A Short Reflection on a Short Year

I'm sitting up (hooray for at least sitting up) in bed, propped up by pillows, laptop glowing in my face, sleeping baby cradling my hip and breathing rhythmically in and out. I can't remember the last time in my life I was so sick. I am on day five of fever, chills, aches, coughs, and surely death's door - the whole nine yards. What a wonderfully ruined Christmas vacation. This is the kind of sick that isolates you to bed upstairs while you get to listen to the family open their stockings and eat their Christmas dinner downstairs. Yes, next year I will be getting that flu shot.

I am alone on New Year's Eve with just my girl, while the guys have gone to a germ-free friend's celebration. What a wonderfully ruined New Year's Eve. But in the stillness of this house, and having read my book, caught up on my People, and watched the entire season one of Downton Abbey, I'm suddenly struck with the realization that I have no other obligation than to reflect on this year.

We are a blessed family of FIVE.

We survived the Great House Remodel. And I even managed not to maul any of the contractors who spent my entire maternity leave in the house with me.

We are fighting the vicious beast that is ADHD and though it's an exhausting daily battle for all of us, I believe we mark a W on more days than not.

We have cultivated new meaningful friendships in the arms of a community.

We got to introduce our sacred beach and annual family tradition to the newest member.

We celebrated 10 years of marriage. We are high school sweethearts who have grown into teammates.

We have contributed time, talent and treasure to local causes that can benefit from what we have to offer.

We are given a daily gift of watching our boys love our girl, and vice versa.

They say the days are long but the years are short and it feels no more true than at this time of year. How do I have an 8-month-old baby? How am I possibly going to remember all the little moments of this precious, fleeting time that I find myself begging my brain constantly to imprint? It's the catch-22 of a full life: it will not last. So here's to hoping 2014 brings more big and little moments that make me catch my breath and hit the pillow hard at night with the knowledge that I did my best to earn it every day. That I worked hard and played hard and prioritized appropriately. And that one year from right now, I will be cursing time, begging it to slow down while also recognizing that my begging means it was again a year full of so much to be thankful for.

Cheers to you and yours and happy new year!

Ah, to Have It All! (blech)

I was in a client meeting last week when the topic of moms “having it all” came up.

Gah. I want to stop typing right there. “Having it all” makes me want to throw up a bit in my mouth. It’s SO OVERDONE. Overused. Abused.

I’m going to forge on now as I did in that meeting; bear with me.

The topic actually came up authentically in the course of this client’s business discussion. It wasn’t a side conversation during a break in the meeting among the working moms in the room who were lamenting over which one couldn’t get her 5-mile run in this morning because she had an early board meeting to zip off to after dropping her three perfectly coifed and ironed children off at Montessori to continue on their path towards presidency.

Nope, the topic came up in the course of ideating a new strategic platform for the client, whose primary focus is on the mom consumer. (You do know what I do for a living, right?)

I personally have been accused of “having it all” in the past and while outwardly rolling my eyes, internally secretly loved the accusation because, well, that competition thing. It’s real, it exists, and don’t think I have gotten to this stage in my career because I’m not competitive. Why do you think the “mommy wars” exist? (Oops, throwing up in my mouth again.) Because moms are competitive. News flash!

For Pete’s sake, at my son’s soccer game last weekend, I showed up (un-showered, mind you) wearing a t-shirt, skinny jeans and a long necklace and another mom in workout gear pointedly asked me why I was so dressed up. She wasn’t joking. “Have you been to church or something this morning? Seriously, why so dressed up?” Uhhh…

Do I really have it all? Psshh, child please.

I yell at my kids. I have no patience for helping with homework. I’m late. They’re late. Sometimes I’d rather escape to Starbucks with my laptop than be at home. I’m stressed and anxious and have decided I’m probably thin only because my heart is constantly racing. I’m sure I project my stress onto my wee ones (one of whom has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety, okay?) and my workaholic tendencies are probably giving them self-esteem issues. Does that make you feel better?

Sounds like a dream, right? Just another day in Having It All! Whee!

Do you think we can just decide we should not be so competitive? That we can just decide to stop the drive towards trying to have it all? I’m telling you, it was mentioned in the meeting that day. People who are very smart and strategic, at the top of their games, and who work with moms every day allow this idea to spill out of their mouths too easily, in my opinion. I’ve heard it. Like, “let’s just help American moms off this path of destruction called perfectionism! Easy peasy, done and done!”

God, if only that whole sentiment came in a pill.

Instead of talking the tired talk about how “we don’t have to have it all! (wink!),” because God knows we love to beat a dead horse, let’s have a REAL, blunt, head-on conversation about the fact that yep, we do all want it all and we do want it all to be just like we imagined and we do want it to be better than the mom next door to boot.

If we (and the brands we love) really want to help moms, how about feeding into this innate drive, this wired-in competition, and flip it so that the drive is towards who is the BEST about shutting off (or attempting to?) the laptop at 5:00 most often? Who does the BEST job of encouraging her child to learn through play the instead of doing anxiety-ridden worksheets? Who is the BEST about asking for and leaning on help from her personal village? Who is the BEST about talking most openly and honestly about her fears and insecurities when it comes to motherhood? Who is the BEST at making others around her feel like their no. 1 goal should be to achieve perfectly imperfect? Who is the BEST at not gossiping about other moms and the way they manage, acknowledging the fact that none of us knows what’s really going on at home, in families and personal lives, and God bless us every one. Whew.

Own up to it and then figure out what works for you. What is your “all.” And then work it, mama. Not just for you but also for your need to show Suzy next door that yes, you indeed are going to rock those hot pink skinny jeans and let them mask your anxiety about the fact that your demanding job and the needs of your offspring are in a constant state of war that you will never admit to Suzy.

Because God help you, you will persevere with ALL the drive you have. All.You.Have.

Australia Has a Message for Us

Those Aussies have done it again. An Australian TV spot has used graphic violence to get a point across. They crossed a line you would never see even approached by U.S. broadcasters. They created something that of course went viral. You don't see something like this every day, so you have an urge to show someone else. Why is this kind of shock value okay?

Because it's not about selling something. It's about life and death.



Please don't drink and drive this holiday season. Or ever.

No matter what country you live in.

What Made Their Buildings Fall Down?

The dining room table at Mimi’s house was covered with plastic bags, towels, soap, toothbrushes.

“Tell Mommy what we’re doing, Graham,” Mimi prompted.

“Mommy, there are people in Haiti and their houses and buildings fell down. They lost their toothbrushes and their towels,” he explained, the thought clearly processing in his head while the words fell out of his mouth.

“What made their buildings fall down?” he tried to remember out loud, interrupting himself.

“An earthquake,” Mimi reminded.

He asked if there were little boys in Haiti and my heart skipped a beat. Mimi answered simply, yes. His little mind continued to ponder. What exactly? We can only guess. But the pondering - a glimpse for me that my little man has altruism inside there, empathy.

Then, while putting his shoes on: “But mommy, who’s going to help them build their buildings and their houses?”

Who, indeed. I imagined my boy as a man, hand outstretched, hammer ready. He is young, but he is able. He speaks in ‘wants’ but inherently knows ‘needs.’ We all do – survival instincts.

For now, and with Mimi’s gentle guidance, he’s filling plastic bags with basics.

But he’s filling me with pride.

The ‘Back-Burner’ National Crisis?

For the past couple weeks I’ve been doing my best to not blog about Nadya Suleman. Don’t act like you don’t know who she is. You’ve been just as ...disgusted? sympathetic? ...okay, intrigued by her story as I have. But I just didn’t want to go there. Whatever I have to say, you’ve already heard it from the countless others who have taken one side or the other in their judgment.

Then today I decided to see what would appear if I searched simply for the word “moms” in Google News. Guess what – there was Nadya Suleman, of course, being kept company by a college reporter's take on Bristol Palin’s TV interview, a story about a 13-year old boy who has fathered an infant in the U.K., and a report on Travis Henry, the NFL player who has nine children by nine women. (I say ‘the’ realizing that it’s quite possible he’s not the only NFL player in this predicament.)

“Moms.”

I wasn’t necessarily expecting to be hit with controversy from that otherwise safe search term. I would have settled for a tips piece about working moms. I would have welcomed a feel-good feature about moms helping each other through hard times. Even a marketing trends story about moms and social networks. But instead I was reminded that there are a lot of national crises going on today, and some of them happen to center around parenthood and happen to involve little ones. This is not an exclusive club to which we moms belong, even though our members are responsible for raising our future leaders.

For her part Bristol Palin provided this sage point of view: “I hope that people learn from my story and just like, I don't know, prevent teen pregnancy, I guess.”

Things that make you go ‘hmmm’…

And while we're on the subject of little watching eyes and listening ears...

I recently viewed this powerful public service announcement from Australia on another blog and it struck me. This is a reminder about the impact that parents, and adults in general, can have on the little sponges that are our kids. I would love to see a similar campaign here in the U.S., especially as statistics reveal that moms are actively looking to TV spots to educate them about social responsibility.