Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be at home with my kids when they were little. Many of my friends were more career oriented but this has always been my dream. I love the first few years of a child’s life. Children learn so much in this time and it is important to me to be a part of it. Toddlers and young children find so much joy in the little things they experience, it is truly refreshing. I also really like baking, crafts, the park and all the assorted baby and toddler activities.  I am a bit of a nerd that way.

After my divorce, I had to go return to work to support myself and my kids. My youngest Kaede, was 4 so I was comfortable that we had had 4 whole years together and I had 7 years with my son Jack. I was very fortunate to find the best job I ever had, other then being a mom. I really enjoyed my 7 years at his job but time flew by. Soon, I had remarried and had another baby. This time, we already had a large blended family to support so staying at home was not as easy financially. However, right from Ravyn’s birth, I felt this strong need to be home with her. She really is a joy. Luckily, I was already working with a great company which allows me to continue to be a stay at home mom and make money. 

I work with a great team of people that really help each other. One of my mentors is a real help and inspiration to me. Alison has worked hard to make her family a priority while being extremely successful and is always around to help others do the same. Lots of people ask me if I can really make enough money to support a family working from home!  Alison clearly demonstrates this PLUS more!

Stay at Home Mom And Making Money: Meet Alison

Alison spent the first 15 years of her career busting her ass. At her practice as an OBGyn, she put in 80-100 hours a week and spent many long nights at the hospital. This meant she had to have 2 nannies working more then full time with her 18 month old. Alison told me she felt lots of stress wanting to be home with her son and also with her mom who was ill. The opportunity came along!

Fast forward 5 years to today and Alison is living a life she chooses. She loves being an OBGyn so she chooses to work 2 shifts a month. Her days are spent working from home and spending time with her two kids aged 2 and 6, family and friends. This is true time freedom. Alison has remodeled her beautiful home, paid for private school for her son, is driving a luxury car that is paid by the company AND is getting ready for her second all expense paid vacation. Most importantly, she is having fun.

Congratulations Alison and family. You are a true success story.

Click here to learn more about making money from home

When I was younger, I always looked forward to a perfect Christmas or a perfect New Years. The Christmas’ when I was a child, were often perfect to me. I hit my 20’s and my new inlaws had more dramatic family events that I was used to. Then I had some plain terrible holidays. Now that I am older, I have learned that you can’t make a perfect holiday and you can not control people’s reactions. I have simple expectations now for the holidays, I want my family together, a nice meal and the spirit of giving. I have learned that sometimes drama or uncontrollable factors happen, but that is ok. I had 3 absolutely awful holidays, and after that, all my Christmas celebrations seem wonderful.

Its all relative. I learned to focus on the little individual good parts of experiences instead of judging the whole as good or bad.

The year 2017 was the worst year ever in our family. The expression “It all happens at once” has never been more correct. Unfortunately, I had 4 major problems which caused a lot of stress and unhappiness. In 2018, we were blessed with a new baby girl and our problems started to be worked out.  Regardless what happened in 2018, I could completely appreciate the good little things that happened. After an absolutely terrible year, even a slightly crappy year seemed like a miracle. Every day that was not as terrible as the year before was a joy.  I found myself stopping to appreciate the little good things that happened every day and I found myself using the word blessed all the time. I found myself happy. For some reason, I need to experience some really troubling things to appreciate all the good in my life. I have heard people say “Live in the moment” but I do not think I appreciated the meaning until this New Years Eve. There was some good in 2017 and I am grateful for this experience. My life is more vibrant and full as it is not as black and white.

The year 2017 and 2018 taught me a lot of things, it taught me how strong I am, how to cope with stress, how to live in the moment, how to appreciate the good regardless of the bad and it taught me to see how blessed I really am. I would not have learned most of these things if I had not experienced all the things in 2017 and then the things in 2018.

It’s all relative!

I recently had a conversation with someone about Mom Guilt. It seems many of us suffer from this. I think the only people who don’t understand this it is men. They just say, “stop worrying”. I always answer, “worrying is a mom’s job”. However, it really isn’t.

Why do we do this to ourselves? If our friends vent about their mom guilt, we are the first to point out what a wonderful job they are doing. Why can’t we see that in ourselves?

I think it starts in pregnancy!  Take eating a hamburger for instance – we think man oh man, we need that cheeseburger and gobble it down but then feel guilty because we are not eating something more nutritious or horror of horrors gain too much weight. We feel guilty because we do not exercise but honestly putting pants on is hard some days.

Then the baby is born. There is guilt if you bottle feed, there is guilt if you don’t do the dishes but guilt if you put the baby in a swing to do the dishes. There is so much to do in the house and you want to do them, but your baby needs you and is so fun to play with them. How do you juggle it all? Do you let your kids watch a movie so you can clean the bathroom? How else will you keep them safe and quiet while you do things that need to be done? Moms feel guilt when they spend and enjoy a second away from their kids when they are small. Men often do not. Men stop for a beer after work without arranging child care but just going to the grocery store alone requires 30 minutes of planning for moms.

My biggest form of mom guilt happened when my little girl got hurt. I blamed myself and felt awful. It was not my fault though and I realize that now. I guarantee everyone has accidentally bumped or bruised their child. Often, we hit them with the car door, clip their fingernail too short or pinch them with the safety buckle. I know people whose baby has fallen off the bed. It happens, to every good parent in some way or another. I always think of the television sitcom “Friends” when Monica and Rachael are babysitting Ben and he hit his head on the roof.

Often, the biggest set of mom guilt comes from working vs stay at home moms. There is guilt on both sides. There are many reasons to go back to work. You love your job; many people feel complete when they are at work. Sometimes your job is part of your identity (doctor, police officer or teacher) and it is important for you to go back. Working gives people a sense of achievement and accomplishment. If you stay home you successfully accomplish raising children, you do not get to finish a big project get awards, raises, fancy titles or recognition. You don’t start and finish a project each day.  It is really nice to be a person recognized outside your home for accomplishments. I know lots of moms that do not like to stay at home as they get bored or impatient staying at home. That is ok! Of course, the biggest reason to be a working mom is monetary.  Most families need two incomes to get by.

Regardless of the reason, moms going back to work feel the pressure to be the perfect mom. Somehow, we feel the pressure to work and be successful but still be the mom baking cupcakes for school, going to 6 am hockey games and keeping a pristine house. The guilt comes when that does not happen. It is impossible to do it all. Moms feel guilt about sending kids to day care or not making the field trip their kids want them to. Moms feel guilty about wanting to go back to work or even having to go back to work when they want to be at home but can not.

Stay at home moms feel guilt too. There are a group of moms that LOVE that life. I am one of them. I really truly love play dates, music class, and car pools. There are a group of moms that do not. It can be hard being at home sometimes. There is no before and after work, you are always there. You do not get breaks from the shouting and crying and poop. There is a lot of time listening to annoying kids things like “Baby Shark” and Paw Patrol. You can go days without talking to another adult.  There are a group of moms that stay home for financial reasons. Daycare is very expensive and after two kids it is often the less expensive option to stay home. Sometimes both these groups of moms feel guilty for not “loving” being a stay at home mom.

Often stay at home moms are busy. You run from here to there and try to get everything done at once. This leaves very little time to dress up or put on makeup. Really, why should you put makeup on? For the Safeway cashier? Stay at home moms also feel guilty for not being the perfect mom like in magazines and tv shows with perfect hair, makeup and clothes. You need to make sure you do crafts with the kids, go to the park, laundry, keep the house clean, shop and provide nutritious home cooked meals. Again, this is impossible, something has to give and, in my house, it’s the cleaning. My biggest guilt trip is if I sit down to take a break when the baby is sleeping. I somehow feel like I need to work consistently like if I was clocking in and out with my husband. What I do not take into consideration is that I do this 7 day a week not 5 and it’s a 24 hour job not 8-5. Sometimes choosing to stay home means less money. I often feel guilty that I can not afford shiny new iphones, bikes and fancy vacations. Moms just can’t win no matter what we chose.

Do you know who puts the most pressure on ourselves? I guarantee that my husband does not expect the house to be perfect, or the meals, or my appearance or the kids. It is me that does. I think we also compare ourselves to other moms and the moms on tv! Sarah’s house is always clean, and Betty always looks amazing. Joanne goes to the gym 4 days a week. What you do not see is what they have to flex to achieve those things. Desperate Housewives did not help us all. The absolute worst contribution to guilt is the gossipy judgemental mom. These moms are constantly discussing how one mom should do this and not that. Just listening to those judgements helps these expectations sink into unconsciousness and reinforce our guilt. Essentially, we are pressuring each other to be the perfect mom.

Now, if you are reading this and think “what is she talking about”? That means you are one of the very lucky people who have overcome these feelings or never had them. I have some friends like this. Do not worry, you are the healthy one. You are not supposed to feel this guilt.

For the rest of us, what I wanted to get across is that we often all feel this “mom guilt”. It doesn’t matter if you work or not, if you have a clean house or a dirty one, we can make ourselves feel bad. We need to stop!

I am going to change and own it. I am going to be confident in my choices. If you stay home or work, if you bottle feed or nurse, if you show up at the school to volunteer or only come to parent teacher interviews, YOU ARE DOING WHAT IS BEST FOR YOUR FAMILY! You cannot do it all. You have to chose what works for you and your family and know that you are doing what is important. We need to embrace ourselves and our choices. Stand up for them and be proud. Lastly, we need to surround ourselves by positive people. People who make us feel good about ourselves and others. Surround yourself with people with appropriate expectations and who are understanding and encouraging. I challenge you to change your mindset and overcome this guilt.

I would like to know your feelings of guilt. Is there something you struggle with? Please feel free to share your thoughts and your successes.

Since I am already out of my comfort zone with this blog, I feel like I might as well move onto a personal topic: Holding onto anger and forgiveness.

I am a pretty fun-loving person and I work really hard at being positive. I like to accept people for who they are, to appreciate and focus on their good qualities. This works for me really well. Over the past year, I have been really struggling with letting go of anger towards one person. No matter what I do, I can not seem to let it go.

I have a little bit of experience with this. In the past, I had to forgive and let go of my anger towards my ex-husband. He had done some things that took me a long time to let go of, so I was very angry for a very long time. One day, I realized that he did not know I was still angry. He did not care that I was angry. The only person the anger was affecting was me. The anger I was feeling had negatively impacted me but not him. It prevented me from being happy and caused negative thoughts. At this time, I let the anger go. I have forgiven him, but I will never forget it. I moved forward away from anger, so I could be healthy in mind and spirit.

Now this particular person I am working hard to forgive hurt my children not me. This person caused enough harm that my daughter has PTSD. I feel anger towards this person daily when my daughter is hiding in a closet screaming in fear. I feel it when she is crying in my car or worrying about her future.

My first barrier with forgiveness is that she hurt them and not me. I worry about the future, how this has affected them and what will happen in certain scenarios. I worry how their experiences will affect other relationships in their lives. I could forgive and let go of the anger easier when it was me someone hurt but it wasn’t. I feel very protective of my children.

My second problem with forgiveness is the constant reminders from my children of what she did and how deeply it has affected my children. There are melt downs and then they just need to talk about it, a lot. These kids have suffered, and she keeps moving merrily on with her life. It is hard to let something go when others bring up the subject every day.

So this leads me back to the beginning. How do you let go of your anger towards someone and forgive their actions? In my mind, I know I have to do this, I know this anger is harmful. Unfortunately, I have not accomplished it. I am working on it…..

I have shared these very personal feelings in hopes that it opens a conversation. I would love to hear your thoughts or solutions to forgiveness.

I never considered myself a negative person, I tried to roll along with life. What I know now is that I just did not train  myself to be positive. Quite frankly if you had told me five years ago I would be either blogging or writing about positivity I would laughed my ass off. What I have recently discovered and am still learning, is the Art of Positivity.

Lets face it, bad things are going to happen to everyone. We have all heard the expression “its how you handle hard times” that determines the kind of person you are. The problem is when you are having a hard time, you are having a hard time. It is hard to be positive. I learned that its an attitude you have to train yourself to do. Once you do, it actually makes life easier.

My road to positivity started with two friends, who I met through my business. These two were constantly vibrant and positive. They were encouraging and supportive but just did not dwell on the negative. So Step 1 for me was to surround yourself with positive people and spend less time with negative people.

People are drawn to positive people. Did I want to be a person people enjoyed being around? I decided to work at being positive. This lead me to Step 2. This was an intentional decision to try to be positive, to change my mindset. I really had to work at this. Reading good books with positive messages was  helpful. When I was being too negative, I would stop myself and refocus my thoughts. I could talk to these two friends who would always see the positive to make me feel better. I would stop every night and think of one thing that went well that day and one thing I was grateful for. This takes time but is worth it.

I feel like I was successful in changing my mindset last summer. I had a very early morning flight. For some reason, my alarm did not go off or I slept through it, I do not know. I flew out of bed and raced to the airport half thinking I had missed my flight. When I got to the baggage counter I said “Wow, how awesome is my morning? I slept in and still made my flight. This is going to be a great trip”. Now a year ago, I probably would have thought “This trip is doomed. I started my day by almost missing my flight, grump, grump”. My day continued on but I was happy and thankful I made that flight instead of flustered and grumpy. I understood that all my work in Step 2 had finally paid off. My mind naturally went the positive direction without me having to redirect it.

Now how does this effect real life? Lets say that you are working on losing some weight by eating well and exercising. Its Sunday morning and you go to breakfast with your husband who orders the big egg and pancake meal. You look at the fruit and yogurt but pick some eggs, toast, bacon and hash browns instead. As soon as you are done eating, you feel sick, you feel guilty, you feel like giving up and ordering dessert. Well what is done is done, you need to move on with your day. The best way to do this is to think of the nice meal you had with your husband, to appreciate the experience with him and your joy of eating it. You can count the meal as your cheat day and refocus your energy on having a good balanced dinner. You can’t change the past so “just keep swimming” a Dory would say.

I challenge you all to try this. Even actively trying to change one negative thought to a positive thought once a week will greatly benefit how you feel! I would love to hear about your experiences, please feel free to share them with me. I would love to hear from you!