Monday, December 8, 2014

Finding Inspiration

When you're a mom, it's easy to get lost behind the Mom title. Life is no longer about us. Showers turn into a luxury rather than a requirement. Make up is for special occasions only. Yoga pants are not just for yoga, but daily attire. There are no other shoes besides flip flops in the summer, Uggs for winter, and tennis shoes the rest of the time. A "nice" dinner is take out after kids are in bed. It's tough to find a life of your own. New mom's go through an identity crisis. You want to be "your old self" but your body is telling you no, your mind is clouded by hormones, and your heart now lies with an 8 lb. gassy baby. I went through this same identity crisis. Not because I didn't want to be a mom or because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Motherhood actually clicked really well with me. I didn't know just what this new, semi-mature self required.

Eventually I found my stride. I opened up my own business (an in-home daycare so I could be with my kids). I began writing again (a long lost passion I had convinced myself I was over and would never do again). I recently found the inspiration to complete one of my life's goals: I wrote a book.

I would love to tell you that I found my inspiration to write a book as I meditated, or on a hike in the wilderness, or on my fifth glass of wine. No, instead I found my inspiration to write because my kids were being little shits (like, for real, the biggest shits on earth, but from here on out I will refer to them as stinkers. It seems like the polite thing to do).

It was a hot summer day. Eight kids were lined up against the fence in their fourth time out of the morning. No one was getting along. No one was listening to anything I was saying. My usual go-to's were not working. Thank god it was rest time. Eight kids rested their grouchy little heads and I opened my laptop. When there's a problem, I set about finding a solution asap. I knew what worked for the kids, I knew what didn't, and I knew what interested them. So, I sat on our couch and spent ten whole minutes typing quickly. I wrote out all of the morning's problems and wrote out the solutions to the problems: what they should be saying but aren't. That is how I wrote my book. In ten minutes...and all because I was aggravated with the kids.

Those little stinkers woke up from naps and I read them what I had written. They requested for me to read it to them, again, and again, and again. On the seventh read through, my oldest son grabbed paper and began drawing what I was reading.

All summer long, I read my words to them from my computer screen. The drawings kept growing. At the end of the summer, I had my daycare kids request my computer screen to take home with them so they could share the story with their families. That's when I decided to self publish my book, which I appropriately titled "Let's Use Our Words!" All three of my minis helped color the pictures, did the background coloring for it, and Hubs did all the rest of the work with publishing software. I even had the help of Amazon's Createspace.

Sometimes it takes the help of other's to get where you're going. Sometimes it takes friends telling me they'd love to hear what we do at my daycare, so I started my blog. Sometimes it takes people sending me links of crafts and activities to try out with the kids to get my creative juices flowing. Sometimes it takes a friend telling me to check out a really cool website called What The Flicka? (http://whattheflicka.com/) and submit my work. Sometimes it takes being completely frustrated with my children to complete a goal in life.

Whatever your goals are, I hope you find your inspiration to complete them. I find myself completely in awe and at peace with life because I finally found my biggest inspirations and frustrations all rolled into one: my 3 little stinkers.

Want to check out my book? Find it here:  Let's Use Our Words