I'm Getting My Voice Back!

Hello, everyone! It's been a long, looong maternity leave! LOL! Truth be told, it actually was 2 back-to-back maternity leaves. Yep, that's right. Just as I was beginning to think I might start going back online again, I found out I was pregnant once more, so I never bothered to restart. I'm a mother of three now, and my youngest just turned one. My daughter, who was only a few months old in the last post, is getting ready to start Pre-K this September.

So, obviously, a lot has happened since the last time I wrote. Adjusting to new life changes and being trusted by the universe to take care of little lives definitely forces you to dig deep within yourself, and I've learned much during these 3 and a half years. The past year in particular has been really intense, with website after website and books after books presenting themselves to me exactly at the right time, just when I needed it the most.

 The most important thing that I've learned is to be true to myself and to accept myself without judgement. This, I realize now, means I have to love and take care of myself before I can truly love and take care of others. I had allowed my life to revolve completely around my children because I thought that's what good mothers did. But in hind sight, all it did was make me build up this suppressed resentment that I had no time for myself, which caused me to be constantly stressed and short tempered. And then, of course, I would beat myself up because I got frustrated and angry with them! In my mind that was definitely not something a "good" mom was supposed to do. It was a vicious cycle.

There are 3 books in particular that has helped me turn things around. One is You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. This book showed me how important it is to love myself and challenged me to search deep within to figure out why I hated myself so much. The second book is The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. I got this book to read with my oldest son since I remembered enjoying it when I was younger. What I didn't remember (or realize back then) was how deeply spiritual this book is. It gave me exactly the messages I needed at exactly the right time. And I learned how important it is to "Do as you wish". The third book, which I just finished reading, reconfirmed what I had learned and refined some of the awarenesses that I had. It's called Dying to Be Me by Anita Moorjani. This is a book detailing how her terminal lymphoma was cured after a near-death experience. Her description of the afterlife and the spiritual dimention really meshed with my own beliefs about them, and it really reinforced the need to value and love myself exactly as I am, warts and all. (In my case, eczema and all!)

So that's where this blog comes in. I am searching deep within and piecing together my true identity.  Since I was so caught up in the daily chaos of motherhood, I had forgotten it.  But deep down, I am an artist and a writer. And I have things that I want to express to the world. If I truly want to be happy, I have to allow that "Self" to shine. I have to follow my wishes, as Bastian did in The Never Ending Story, and trust that I am always going in the right direction.