Being a Better Me

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 costs) and own up to
the fact that the woman that I had been was,
above all else, one thing: broken. And not only
broken but broken without the desire to heal the
pain. I wanted to be the victim because I thought
it got me attention. And it did 100 percent. But I
knew without a doubt that I wanted to raise a
child who became a strong individual and a
strong individual needs a strong role model - not
an attention-seeking victim. (Plus, the attention I
was getting wasn’t healthy or satisfying. I was
always left feeling empty. Nothing could fill the
void in the way I was trying to fill it.) So I began to unpack my hurts and mistakes of years gone by
and address them. I went to therapy and opened up honestly. (Never be ashamed to seek help when
you don’t have the answers you need. It’s a huge swallowing of your pride but it has a huge payoff.)
Each week I ripped off a new layer of shit that I had buried myself under until one day I felt like I
could kind of breathe again. (And then kind of breathe turned into breathe and breathe turned into
taking long, slow breaths and actually enjoying the air around me.)
When it all began, the first question I asked myself was who did I truly want to be and the second
was who did I want my daughter to see when she looked at me? The answers to both
questions lined up: someone who was educated, strong, wise, thoughtful, helpful, healthy and,
above all else, happy. I knew then as I do now that the person I was pre-mom was not a happy
person. I sought happiness but I looked outward and could never find it in work, in
relationships or in partying. So I had to be open to looking inward, which meant exposing the
ugly things I had been purposely burying in order to replace them with the beautiful things I
didn’t know that I possessed. It meant doing things I didn’t want to do, like cutting out toxic
people (some who I held very close) and continually pushing myself to be better (this required
a great deal of self discipline and man, oh man, did I hate discipline of any kind!) I was
always better at giving up than I was at making myself keep pushing through the thick of
things. How did I change that? I had to come to realize that I truly deserved better. I wasn’t
the piece of shit I believed I was. I was not the mistakes I had made. The past was part of my
story but it was not my whole story. When I realized that (it took time and help to get there)
then I could open myself up to seeing where I was weak and strengthening those areas. A
good example of this would be compliments. I could not take a compliment to save my life.
But I deserved to have them. So, I had to teach myself to not respond with, “You’re blind”
when someone said I looked nice but, instead, to simply say thank you and appreciate that I
was noticed. It’s a work in progress everyday but I can say that I am truly happier than I was
years ago. I am proud of the strides I’ve made to reach the goals I set for myself as a person
and as a mom. I am proud of who I am to my daughter even though I’m nowhere near where I
want to be.


As moms, we have to realize that our children head
down the path we begin them on. This means they
will imitate what we show them until they are old
enough to develop their own thoughts and opinions
and decision-making skills. Knowing this, we have to
be open to constant self-improvement because our
most important job is being their role models. We also
have to realize that there’s no such thing as perfect.
There are some struggles we will always have and the
only thing we can do is be honest with ourselves and
our children and encourage them to strive to be better
than us. I believe that, as parents, we should always
want more and better for our children. Even if we had
good things we should want them to have great
things. If we had great things, we should want them to have incredible things. There’s always room for a step up and
we should encourage our children to aim for that. And they should do the same for their
children. And we show them that by pursuing it every single day. We teach them forgiveness
by forgiving ourselves when we screw up and have to start over again. We teach them strength
when we overcome our personal battles and we teach them happiness and contentment by
finding it within ourselves and radiating the peace that comes with knowing you are right
where you are supposed to be on your journey.

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