A Mom Around 40

I was asked recently what my major plans in life were. My go-to response, of course, was to build my savings, finish my degree, buy a house, make enough money to provide my child with every opportunity. These are all good, respectable things but, as I sat pondering later that day (as I usually do), I realized that these were goals I had for myself and there were so much more I wanted out of life. My primary focus, and what motivates my every decision, since my daughter was born has become what kind of person am I; what kind of role model is she going to be looking to for the rest of her life? With that in mind, I have had to refocus, rethink and reprioritize. I figured out that there were three things I wanted that were fundamental to the kind of person I am and the kind of life I want to build for both myself and my daughter: live simply, love deeply and reach my goals. LIVE SIMPLY: I have always been an over-thinker, an over-worrier, with thoughts that

I have talked a little in my previous blogs about my disregard for long term consequences before I became a mom. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply that disregard ran and I am amazed each day as I wake up a mom at how much I have changed. It is really true that a child changes everything. The moment I found out I was pregnant it was kind of like my life flashed before my eyes. Every selfish moment I had where I did things because I wanted to, consequences be damned, came flooding to my mind followed, of course, by the shitty consequences I had to deal with. I knew in that moment, before I even left the hospital, that I had to leave behind the person who didn’t care what she suffered as long as she got what she wanted when she wanted it. This started a long journey of facing the reality of the kind of woman that I had been up to this point in my life. I had to look into the mirror (metaphorically speaking and I avoided that metaphorical mirror at all