Gratitude - Thank you Friends!

It’s that weekend of the year when we get a chance to sit back, eat too much turkey and consider the things in our lives for which we are thankful. As you can imagine, my list is long!

My cup runneth over with the abundance of love that is given to me by my boys; every hug, every time a little hand curls up in mine, every time one of them sits on my lap and plays with my hair, every time one of them says "I love you mommy" I am thankful and my heart overflows with love.

I'm thankful for my oldest son's crazy sense of humour and the fact that when I entertain he becomes the showman, making sure that everyone is laughing and having fun. I used to tell him that with his personality sometimes less was more, but now I think I realize that for him more is more, and I'm grateful that he has a personality larger than life! He fills a room with his personality and I am reminded of some of the personalities of my childhood who filled a room, and I am grateful for those memories.

I am grateful that in the quieter moments of my life there is a man whose smile fills my heart with happiness, I still smile when I think of the first time I saw his smile. Over the past two years he has filled my world with a kind of happiness that I wasn't always sure would exist for me again. I'm grateful every day that he is in my life.

I'm grateful that the universe gave me a chance to reinvent myself. To start again and to realize that I am a strong woman, capable of standing on my own and managing my life (even when it isn't easy). I lived in the shadow of a relationship for a long time and I never believed that I could manage on my own. I'm grateful that I was given the chance to see my own strength. And I'm grateful that the reinvention isn't over, that every day I continue to learn and grow as new people, opportunities and challenges fill my life!

And lastly, I'm grateful for all of you. For every person who supports me, who reads my blog and sends me emails of encouragement when the road is bumpy; you all give me incredible strength. This is not the first time on this blog that I write about my gratitude, my life is hectic and sometimes I forget (or don't have time) to really see how wonderful my world really is. I will admit that sometimes I forget to be grateful, to truly look around me and see all the beauty. So once again, I thank you all for being on the journey with me. Thank you; today I send gratitude to all of you for being on my path.

New Season Reflections

I can hardly believe that this weekend we welcomed Fall; summer this year was just much too quick.  I love Fall, it has always been my favourite season and my favourite time to reflect and think about how the year has gone so far and where I am in my life. As such I've spent the last few evenings trying to sort through the year and see where I'm at.

What I've come to realize is that over the course of the past two years I've started to fall back into some old habits; habits I promised myself were not part of my new path.  After my marriage ended I committed to myself that I would be a priority in my own life, that I would not forget to be authentic to who I'm really meant to be.  This whole blog was a chance to express that journey and to help to own the opportunity to build the path that was most authentic for me.  I got a tattoo just before my 40th birthday that simply reads "transcend".  The tattoo is my personal reminder to rise above and to be better.

So over the past few evenings I've been disappointed with the realization that I've started again to put everyone in my life above myself.  That the things that I need for my own journey have begun to be pushed aside.  That loving all the people in my life has once again risen so far above loving myself.  I have a friend who I have known for years; a wonderful, strong executive for whom I worked years ago.  She once gave me the best piece of advice that I have ever received; that to love yourself and look after yourself is one of the best gifts you can give to the people who love you.  They in turn get to have the you that is most who you are, and your happiness will reflect in them.

I think that it's time to get back to some basics, there are people in my life who are inherent to my journey, people for whom my love has no bounds,  I have to focus on giving them the me that is most in line with who I need to be and not so much who they all need me to be because I believe that is what is best for all of us.  I wish the journey was clearer, Fall  weather is perfect to enjoy some long walks and start to give real thought to the changes that will need to be made in order to keep moving forward.  Lots of good has happened in the past two years, but there are still changes to be made, and so much still to figure out.  As always though, I'm grateful that you are all on the path with me!

Happy Mothers Day

I love Mothers Day, because it is an opportunity every year for me to sit back and think about what it really means to me to be a mother. My three boys bring a joy into my life that is hard to put into words. But I know that whenever I witness Daniel's passion for music (even though his taste in music makes me crazy), Lucas' extreme love for the people around him or Michael caressing my face and telling me he loves me, the feeling I have is undescribable.

Those little boys are a piece of me and I'm still in awe everytime I say to one of them "I grew you from scratch"! The last three years have been crazy, but those boys have always been my rocks, the reason I got up every morning and the reason I always knew it was going to be okay. I am blessed as a mother; blessed that the universe saw fit to allow me to raise these beautiful creatures...and I always know that...even when it's 9:30pm and the giggling won't stop or the fighting continues...I am blessed!

Being a mother is the single most important thing I will ever do in my life. Isn't it incredible that we all study so hard and work so hard to achieve a career when the most important task in life requires no training other than to learn as you go? Truth be told, I have learned more from the boys than I believe that they have learned from me. I have learned patience. I've learned that to truly listen you must stop what you are doing and look someone in the eye. I've learned that a real strong embrace can fix almost anything. I've learned that I don't always have to agree with someone's opinions to respect them. And truly, truly I have learned love. A kind of love that means my heart is always on my sleeve, love that means every time I hear a siren my heart skips a beat and a love that knows there is nothing I couldn't forgive. I am blessed.

I've said it many times before throughout this blog and in my life...but I am always aware that my greatest blessing has been the blessing of being a mommy to three wonderful and amazing boys. Happy Mothers Day!

It's Time for a Conversation

It’s been quite some time since my last entry and I guess that there are a couple of reasons for this.  One would be that my world is pretty busy; being a full time working single mother of three boys takes up an awful lot of time and although I love to write, at the end of the day I’m so exhausted that I’m not sure my brain is functioning at a level that I need to be able to string together a stream of thoughts.  The second, and perhaps the biggest, reason is that I’m doing okay.  When I started the blog, my life was in such great flux that I didn’t know which way to go and I couldn’t figure out if I was on the right path in my life or not.  Today, thanks in part to the boys starting to get older and my life feeling like it is settling again, I feel confident that I’m heading in the right direction.  I’m happy, still lots of elements of my life that I need to focus on and in time I’m confident that everything will be just as the universe expected for me.  Thanks to everyone who has supported me over the past two and a half years, I am grateful. 

Writing is still core to who I am and in an effort to continue to nurture the side of me that needs to write, I’ll continue with the blog.  My focus though will shift from my own personal story of finding my path to my personal story about raising three boys in the crazy world we live in.  I hope that you will all continue to follow and read.

Today I want to write about something that is really quite personally troubling and something that I feel that as a generation of parents we are failing very badly at.  I’m sure that most of you have read the story in the news this week about a girl from Nova Scotia, Rehtah Parson, who took her own life after being raped and having photos of that rape spread throughout her peer group.   This morning I read in a local paper that a “friend” of hers was quoting as saying that “she didn’t think that things were that bad”.  So, I have to ask myself what could possibly be worse than being raped, perhaps it would be to have the people who you thought were your friends not take a stand for you and to sit in silence while photos of something horrible happening to you are being distributed.  I won’t even get into the issue that the police force in this town felt that there was no “adequate evidence” to pursue a legal case against the boys who raped her or who distributed these photos.  Instead I want to discuss the issue of friendship and raising children who have a voice and who are loyal.

Mothers of daughters, I urge all of you to teach your daughters that the most important role that they will ever play in the lives of others will be to be loyal.  Boys will come and go, the time they spend in their youth worried about what others say and do will pass, but the friends to whom they are loyal will stay with them their entire lives.  

On the day that my marriage broke apart, my circle of girlfriends had all contacted me before 9am.  They held my hand, they cried with me and they supported me.  I am the furthest thing in the world from being a feminist, I am extremely confident in my femininity, however I think that it is time to raise our daughters to be strong, powerful women who will not let what others think intimidate them.  I see it all the time as a mother of boys; girls today are too willing to do anything that they think will win them attention from boys.  It has to stop, as a mother of boys I need to teach them that the girls who are strong and stand up for themselves and their peers are the girls who will grow up to be women of substance.

Our generation has the incredibly tough job of being the first parenting generation who must be gatekeepers of what our children distribute throughout the internet.  We need to teach our daughters and sons that it is not acceptable to distribute, or participate in, any form of inappropriate behaviour that will be uploaded to a social media site where it will remain for the rest of their lives.  It’s time for a conversation everyone.  

Today I plan to sit my oldest son down and to ask him to read the letter that Rehtah Parson’s father wrote to the media.  She was a loving daughter; she was a strong person who could not carry on because the people who should have stood for her when she could no longer stand remained silent.  As parents, it is time for a conversation with our children about loyalty to others, about knowing when to speak up and knowing when to carry a friend that has fallen.  It’s time everyone, I hope that you will all sit down today with your kids and have a frank discussion about loyalty and friendship and doing the right thing, even when it is not the popular thing.

New Thoughts

On  our honeymoon my ex and I were in Costa Rica, spending two weeks in various different locations throughout the country.  We spent a week in the Rain Forest and on the day that we left our guide picked us up in a small, aluminium fishing boat in order to take us back to civilization.  As we started our journey down the river we were told that where the river empties into the ocean that the waves could be quite high.  I don’t think any of us on that boat were prepared for how rough it was going to be to get that boat from the river into the ocean.  I’ve thought a lot about that day in the last few weeks; that experience has been very similar to how 2012 has emptied into 2013.  The waves have been enormous and there are times that if I could, I would just turn this boat around; sit on a quiet shore and try to sort it all out before heading back out.

I receive daily emails from the Universe (compliments of TUT.com) and last week my email said “Believe me, I know all about it.  I know the stress.  I know the frustration…Ana, we worked this out ahead of time.  They’re part of the plan.  We knew this stuff might happen.  Actually, you insisted they be triggered whenever you were ready to begin thinking thoughts you’ve never thought before.”  

This really resonated with me because I know that it is time to start to think some new thoughts as I try to figure out the plan forward, it really is time to rebuild and to start to find some stability again. So I am wondering, what are the thoughts, because my brain feels like a blank canvas these days.  Someone recently told me that everyone has a hidden agenda or a plan; something that they are working towards and how they think it is going to all turn out.  My problem is that there is no plan; not personally nor professionally.  When I look into the future I don’t see a thing, I can’t imagine where I’m heading or what I want.  

I’ve written about this before, when my ex and I split up he pulled the rug right out from under me and I have been left without a plan, even the beginnings of how to put that plan together completely elude me.  I lie awake at night and stare at the sky and try to start to consider what the future might look like and I can’t even fathom it, it looks like a vast space with absolutely nothing in it.  The only things in my life that I can think forward thinking thoughts about are the boys, because the wonderment of what those beautiful little creatures may grow into is just too exciting to not be able to imagine.

I know that it is time to rebuild, but I haven’t got a clue where you start because in order to rebuild means that I have to start to trust and believe again and that is not so easily done.  It would mean that it is time to start to put my faith and belief back in other people, to ask for help when I need it and to not live in my little corner of the world determined to just do it all alone, and to be honest, I’m not sure that I’m ready to start to let people in enough that I depend on them.  I’m expecting great things in 2013, regardless of how this year has started.  I don’t make resolutions for new years, but I do enjoy the anticipation of a fresh start and the chance to start to think new thoughts…the Universe tells me it’s time…  guess I had better get going.  Happy New Year Everyone.