I have so many Moms who comment to me “I don’t know how you do it…  How do you work a full time job, raise two kids and keep up with this blog?”  Well, my life is not always as pretty as it may seem my friends.  Although I put a lot of my thoughts out there on a daily basis, it is generally design or fashion based.  I try to keep my personal life somewhat, well personal.

You all were so very supportive when I wrote about my diagnosis of Lyme Disease last year.  This has been hard (sometimes unbearable) battle for me and my family.  The past year of my life has had so many highs, but also some of the lowest of lows.  While 2012 was personally the toughest year of my life- I also learned a lot about myself and about life.  I learned that life doesn’t always go according to your plan and that shit happens.  I have learned to forgive people and to become less judgmental.  I have learned that life is a journey and to take that journey one day, or one hour at a time.  I am slowly learning to live in the moment.  This is something that I will always have to work on as I am about as Type-A as they come.  I have learned that time can heal most wounds.  That life is fluid and that (although quite uncomfortable) it is ok not to always have a plan.  Take.  Each.  Day.  As.  It.  Comes.

I am a firm believer in therapy.  And through that therapy I have (for the first time) allowed myself to feel.  You see, my mother was given a death sentence of 6 months when I was 12 years old.  For the next 16 years it was ingrained in me to pick yourself up and dust yourself off.  That’s what we did.  That’s what we had to do to survive.  While outsiders looking in were not surprised by her death in 2005-  I was stunned.  And two weeks later, I had given birth to E.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off…  I did what I was trained to do.

There are ups and downs in allowing yourself to feel-  but for the first time, I feel like I am actually living rather than just planning my life.  I have learned to allow myself to make mistakes.  And since then I’ve made quite a few.   You see, while I will always be a perfectionist, I have learned to tame my impulses.  And it’s come with a mixture of therapy (and Lexapro.)

 As my therapist advised…. first, start with a small mistake that only YOU would notice.  This advice came after I confessed to her my LOWEST motherly moment.  The heart picture that you see above was made for me by E.  Absolutely adorable right?  I told her about the guilt and shame that I felt because (of course I would never say anything) while I could  recognize it’s “potential, ” all I could focus on was the fact that a few of the paint chips had writing on them, or that some were not perfect circles.   I literally thought about taking it out of the glass and fixing it.

After I put the words out there I sat and flinched… I waited for her to chastise me for being the worst mother ever.  Instead she said “we will fix this.”  This was a trait that was passed from my mother to me– and I needed to break the cycle. So, the first step was hanging that picture with pride.  Hanging it in a place where everyone can see it and where it will remind me of how perfectly imperfect life can be.  And that’s what I did.  It is hanging in my hallway for all to see, but most importantly for ME to see and remind me of how perfectly imperfect MY life is.

 Just last week, in a mad-dash to get down to Savannah, I printed out the invitations for Lou’s party.  After I printed every last invitation out, I found not one, but two typos.   Don’t get me wrong, I had to calm the demons… but ultimately I sent them out.  There was no time to reprint.  I sent an email my friends mentioning the typos and my friend JJ said “I am just glad to see you are human.”  And that’s what we all are.. Perfectly imperfect humans.