Game Changers
Every other weekend, my husband and I make a 6-hour trek to visit our oldest son down in Ohio. My husband, being the shy sensitive type, is not one for much in the way of conversation, which makes these trips awkward at best. I, being the more talkative of the two of us, can get downright frustrated (to tears) when we travel for long stretches of highway with nary a word between us. Twelve hours of silence can really put me on edge!
But this weekend, we talked and talked and talked. And then we talked some more.
I had been praying for this breakthrough for a while. During the week before our departure, my husband suggested we create a list of topics to discuss on the trip so he could be “prepared”. Me? I don’t need preparation. I was great at impromptu debates and speeches in school. Give me a topic and I can talk for miles. Not so, my husband. So we made a long list. And we hit nearly every topic during our twelve hour ride.
We talked about football, politics, and my upcoming live event. We discussed marketing ideas, gardening, and the very sensitive topic of finances.
Then it happened: The Game Changer.
My husband said, in a somewhat off-hand manner, “I admit that choosing to keep our finances separate when we married was a mistake.”
Whoa.
I had to stop him. This seemingly trivial statement of hindsight changed the entire playing field of our marriage. Not only because he acknowledged making a mistake (draw your own conclusions, ladies), but because he vocalized it in a serious conversation with me.
I thanked him and observed how that small acknowledgment was actually a major Game Changer in our relationship. I then noted how often those kinds of off-hand, seemingly insignificant moments are the real Game Changers in our lives (and our businesses).
For me, there are BIG moments that changed my life – those are the easy ones to recall. Childbirth, marriage, moving across country, choosing a home-based career. Those are some of the defining moments of my life.
But let me tell you about a Game Changer that, once you hear the story, it might just change your mind about the details of your life.
I met my husband through an online dating service. We were ‘chatting’ and we planned to meet for the f
irst time, just an hour later. It was very impromptu, with no real planning behind it. He lived about an hour away, so I figured we had plenty of time to make it to the appointed destination, which was closer to my home than his.
Not only did he arrive slightly early, he held in his hand a flower he had picked up on the way.
That flower was a Game Changer and neither of us realized it until this past weekend.
You see my husband watched me to see how I responded to the flower. It was nice, and I thanked him for it. As the server came to our table, I asked for a glass of water (no ice) for the flower. I didn’t really know what else to do with it, since I didn’t want to put it on the chair or the table because it might get squished. So I cut the stem, right there in the restaurant, and placed it in a glass of water for the duration of our meal.
Doesn’t seem like much, does it?
But my husband was impressed with how I cared for that flower – how I almost seemed to cherish it. I didn’t see it as just a toss-away gesture that some guys make when they’re trying to impress a girl on a first date. I was impressed that he managed to be on time AND stopped on the way to bring me the flower. We didn’t plan it, so he didn’t have time to strategize, and he’s not one to just keep a flower on hand in case an “emergency date” turns up on his calendar.
That flower, that seemingly insignificant gesture, led to 9 dates in 2 weeks’ time. Nearly 7 years later, we have a 4 year old child and a 5 year old marriage that would not have happened, had it not been for that little flower.
Game Changers aren’t the huge, defining moments of our lives, but very often, they are the details that make the difference.
It’s the admission of guilt, which doesn’t change the damage done, but paves the way for forgiveness.
It’s the invitation extended to a stranger to join you for lunch, in an otherwise crowded cafeteria, that paves the way to a big business deal.
It’s the unexpected in the commonplace.
It’s a small kindness that pays a tremendous return – without expectation of any kind.
Those are the Game Changers. And I had a couple this weekend. You’ll learn more about them in the coming weeks, but be assured that these small details are everywhere – if we’re looking for them.
This Game Changer reconfigures our financial landscape. What that means exactly is still being determined, but it’s one more positive step in the process of becoming a true partnership, not just two people married to each other.
What are the Game Changers in your life? Can you point to the seemingly little things that made a big difference in who you are and what your life has meant? I’d love for you to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Read MoreDiagnosis: You and Fear
In working with my inaugural class of clients for The Power of Focus project, the biggest reports coming in from the field show that fear keeps rearing it’s ugly head.
“Am I doing this right?”
“How do I know if I’m doing this right?”
That old demon, fear is rearing it’s ugly head again, tyring to keep you from realizing your greatness.
The fact is, the only way to know if you’re doing anything right is by actually doing it! Otherwise, you’re not doing ANYTHING!
It struck a chord when I read Seth Godin’s blog this morning. Read Everything Is Not Going To Be Okay and you’ll understand what I mean.
We all walk around wondering, hoping and wishing for someone to tell us that we’re on the right path – and that we’re doing the right thing.
As moms, we’re especially vulnerable. I remember when I first brought my son home from the hospital (who’s now a teenager). I said to my friends, “I wish babies came with instruction manuals.”
I was met with comforting words and encoruagement that I was “going to be a great mom.” and that I “would know what to do instinctively.”
They were wrong.
I struggled and struggled at trying to figure out how to be a mom. It’s like pouring salt on a snail and watching him shrivel up. That’s how I felt each and every day of his young life. I wasn’t prepared for 2am feedings when I had to be to work the next day. I didn’t understand why I had to pay for a week of day care if teh kid was only there for three days. There was so much that was pretty much left to chance when my son was small that I began to feel like I was doing everything wrong.
So I came home, where my family offered a modicum of support.
Whether that was “the best” choice or not, I’ll never know, but it was the only one I felt I had at the time. Doing what you believe to be right in the moment is sometimes all you have to go on. Questioning that decsion only leads to indecision, stagnation, and more fear.
What happened when I returned? It was like being a child all over again – being told what to do and how I was doing everything wrong. I remember one of my aunts telling me my child would end up in prison if I kept on raising him the way I was.
Of course, that was before his diagnosis. Before the diagnosis, I was viewed as a horrible mother with a problem child. After the diagnosis, I was “doing the best I could in a situation with a special needs child”.
Funny how the dime turned, huh? I thought so, anyway.
So here’s your diagnosis: You’re doing the best you can in your given situation. Don’t let the unknowing, disapproving looks from family or friends screw with your brain. You’ll never know if what you’re doing is the perfect solution to any problem until the end of time, when you look back and assess the full value of the life you’ve lived. If you spend all your time now wondering, you’ll never live the life you were called to fulfill.
Fear likes to keep you in a space where it thinks you’re safe. Hey, you’re not dead yet, so you must be doing okay. That’s hogwash. Fear doesn’t understand that you need to take a step or a leap out of your “comfort zone” to be the person - the mom, the busness owner – you truly want to be. It only understands that you’re trying something new, something it hasn’t experienced before, and what if everything isn’t okay?
It won’t be okay. It will be uncomfortable at best and excruciatingly painful at worst. Just know it, accept it, and plow through. There’s fear in the doing, but most often, hen we come out on the other side of the doing, we are much better for the experience.
Read MoreReluctant Motherhood: My Dirty Little Secret
It seems to be a week of confessions for me. I’m bearing my soul on my direct sales blog as well as my blog over at Working Mother, so I figure it’s only fair I reveal a couple here:
I wanted to love my work and my kids. Is that so wrong?
I credit the origins of my independent nature to scenarios like that. And I’m NOT saying I wasn’t held enough as a child, or in any other way discounting the hard work my folks put into caring for us kids. I just realize that those elements of my past shaped my outlook when I was a brand new parent.
I didn’t have tolerance for clinginess – even with my husband. It’s something I learned to tolerate after we were first married. He’s a ‘touchy feely’ kinisthetic type. I’m a verbal, acts of service type. You know, don’t hold my hand to tell me you love me, wash some dishes or something productive.
But I digress. Long before I married, I was a single mom. And not a very good one, IMHO.
I didn’t chain the kid up in the basement or anythng like that, but I just couldn’t get that ‘mothering thing’ down. Too many contradicting voices from well-meaning family and friends left me paralyzed by fear that anything I did or said was going to traumatize my son for life.
But it didn’t start that way. My independent spirit led me far away from my family – to Utah of all places. I found myself ‘in love’ with a guy that wasn’t completely forthright about the whole “death do us part” thing. So in my mind, I was left ‘holding the bag’ playing the single mom role in a gig I never signed up for.
OoooooOOOOohh there was all KINDS of resentment going on there. “How could he?” “What about my career?” and a host of other stupid questions that didn’t help the situation one iota.
And lest you think I’m feeing the least bit sorry for myself, if I were talking to me then, I’d be telling myself how all that crap wasn’t gonna get me anywhere, and it was my fault for uncrossing my ankles in the first place.
There’s a reason I call it my ‘young and stupid days’.
Ultimately, though, I found myself trying to work a full time job and keep a kid in daycare. I liked work a lot more than being a mom. I was good at my job, but this mom thing wasn’t coming naturally to me.
Why was it that I could whip out a page layout for a client, but couldn’t get my kid to eat his cereal? Mom said I was potty trained at age one. Why wasn’t my kid potty trained yet? What was wrong with me? Why didn’t kids come with instruction manuals?
I remember the day I dropped him off at day care and he called his teacher “mommy”.
I obviously wasn’t getting it. And through much insistence, and a lack of local support, my family cajoled me into returning to Michigan to ‘get help with the baby’ – whatever that meant.
Apparently, my definition didn’t match theirs. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I envisioned something out of a Hillary Clinton book. You know, my entire extended family rallying around me to help me raise the perfect kid – with perfect manners and clean hands, and a sparkling demeanor.
Yeah. That didn’t happen.
I remember trying to take him to church – and spending most of the service chasing him up and down aisles because he simply wouldn’t sit still.
I also remember the disapproving looks I got – not from the other church members, but from my own family.
I remember working full time and going to college full time to try to finish my degree. I remember the night I came in to pick my son up from my Mom and found him in the middle of the floor, flailing, bound hands and feet with duct tape, SCREAMING “I HATE YOU!” at the top of his lungs. He wasn’t hurt, but I didn’t know how long he’d been laying there like that. All my mom would say is “I can’t deal with him. He’s too much. You need to do something about him.”
He was 3. The same age that my baby is now.
I was in a pickle. See, I needed to work, refused to be a welfare case, and needed to take care of my kid, too. I graduated early from college so that I could get to work before he started Kindergarten. I really felt that getting my bills paid and getting “on my feet” was the best thing I could do for my son. But the emotional outbursts and negtive attention getting behavior continued. He even set a pot holder on fire in my mom’s kitchen, which opened a whole new can of worms in my family.
It wasn’t long after that day that one of my aunts met me at my office to voice her concerns that Forest was going to end up in jail or something when he got older. I just needed to straighten him out and give him some discipline and structure.
Okay, that’s all great, but I didn’t know what that meant or how to make it happen. And it wasn’t like I was refusing help. There just didn’t sem to be any for someone in my situation. Clearly, I still didn’t have this “mom thing” down.
Maybe school would “fix him”?
Um. no.
In less than 3 months after starting Kindergarten, I had been called to the school at least every other day to pick up my child for his behavioral issues. Threatening to ‘kill’ his teacher (which I would hardly call a credible threat, but hey, they gotta follow the rules), spraying cleaner at the children (why was it in his reach anyway?), there was always a reason to come pick him up. Needless to say this made holding a job a challenge.
So I quit the 9 to 5 and started working from home. I even got to the point where I homeschooled my oldest for a year.
That’s when the tide turned. Not for him, but for me.
See, having him at home EVERY DAY at first was one of the greatest struggles in my life. I had a new baby, new business, and a ton of other demands.
Fortunately for me, Forest is incredibly persistent. He simply would not let me ‘ignore’ him in favor of the other demands in my life. It created even more stress. Incredible, incalculable anxiety, frustration and structural damage to our home ensued. For two years we’ve dealt with a young boy, growing into his adolescence, his hormones and the realization that he never got whatever attention and development of self-worth that he thought he deserved.
And I STILL didn’t feel like I was doing ‘this mom thing’ right.
This wasn’t what I signed up for. My husband came into the marriage with an understanding of Forest’s behavioral issues. He knew what he was up against – at least to some degree. But for 10 years, I fought it tooth and nail. I didn’t want to believe that this was my “lot in life” – that I was going to be ‘strapped to a kid’ and not have the ability to have a successful career or grow a successful business.
So on the verge of giving up, I gave in. I practiced being a mom. Listening to needs instead of telling him to “buck up” letting him be clingy. Being physically and emotionally present at every appointment. Holding a teleclass from his hospital room because he told me he wanted me to be there and that it was okay for me to do the call.
The last two years have been transformational for all of us. Not only have I recognized that we truly have done everything we know how to do as parents, I’ve learned that sometimes you need support, help, or an organization to step in and course correct (or even land the dang plane for you). I’ve stopped pulling against “the mom thang” and embraced it – maybe even charged at it headlong a couple of times – and experienced a better understanding of the JOYS of being a mom during some of our most trying situations. It is truly a re-birthing process that has given me a new outlook, a new vision, and hope for my family and – most importantly – my son.
It’s a dirty little secret that so many Renaissance Moms share: that feeling of imperfection, that we’re not quite measuring up, or that we have to feel guilty about being successful in business when our family’s in turmoil. Or vice versa. That we feel like we’re neglecting our business because we need to tend to our families.
Here’s the truth (and I learned it the VERY hard way): You can love what you do, love your family, and not make apologies or excuses for either. As much as I love my kids, I fully acknowledge there are some parenting things I just don’t handle well. Instead of sticking my head in the sand and hoping it will go away, I seek help. Books, doctors, specialists, counselors – they are all there, ready to advise. I also consult my gut and say a prayer. When you’re ‘in charge’ of another person’s life, you have to have their ultimate care and concern at the forefront of your mind in all that you do.
Does that mean you’ll always make the right decision? nope. Does it mean you’ll always be happy with the outcome? Nope. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t matter what you choose, you won’t feel like you won.
So why bother trying at all?
Because you are an important part of your family. And if Momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy! You need something to fulfil your personal passion. Self care? For me, for a long time, it was building my business. That brought me joy, and while I didn’t have much in the way of personal quiet time, it filled a void in my heart that my family simply could not fill. It was the piece of ME that was missing.
Your dirty secret may not wear the same as mine. Yours may take a different guise (fear is funny like that). The ultimate reality is that we are all perfect right now in this very moment. It’s up to us to acknowledge and recognize that perfection. We may not feel very perfect. That doesn’t negate or minimize or perfection.
So pull out the skeleton key, dust off the locks, and air out those closets full of old bones. If you were a reluctant mom, make a choice to be refreshed, renewed. Create your own Renaissance in every moment. Sometimes it’s a process, and that’s okay. Stop hiding, feeling like you’re the only one that feels like this. You’re not. i’ve talked with too many other women going through the same struggle.
Reluctance doesn’t serve you. It certainly doesn’t serve your family or your business.
In this moment, we are a perfect embodiment of every choice that has come before us. What do we want tomorrow’s perfection to look like? What are we going to choose for ourselves to attain that vision of perfection?
It’s our choice that determines the outcome.
Choose Renaissance, not reluctance.
It changed my life.
Read MoreThe Big 1-3!
Well, sort of.
My husband is putting our baby to sleep, as he often does to give me a few moments peace. My oldest is kindly getting ready for bed. It’s that lull at our home that, in my opinion, doesn’t come often enough.
But this is really jsut the calm before the storm.
You see, yesterday we finalized the plans for a whole new chapter in our life as a family. And tomorrow, my oldest turns 13.
The big 1-3. A teenager.
He would say “FINALLY!” I am a little more reluctant, and perhaps feeling a bit of melancholy abot the whole thing.
See, he started life as “an accident”. I was single, but not unattached. It was what I still call “my young and stupid days”, and I had no intention of becoming a single mom. And I began the mom journey with a LOT of resentment.
Don’t get me wrong – I have always loved my child. I spent most of his early years second guessing myself and my parenting skills all the time.
So now that I’m older, more experienced and able to appreciate what a greeat kid he’s become, I have to get ready to say goodbye.
Not just to him being a kid, but to him.
The bulk of this story will be chronicled on a special blog I’m keeping over at Working Mother’s MomBlog, but I wanted to make sure I at least introduced it and made periodic mention of it here.
You see, during his “growing up” process, my oldest has been diagnosed with several serious mental health issues. ODD and ADHD are just the tip of the iceberg. His emotional instability has led him into violent and destructve behavior that has given us what I think is more than our fair share of visits from Child Protective Services, the local police and countless therapists, social workers, dotors and hospitals.
Tired of the medical and governmental run-around, which essentially only made matters worse, we’ve taken matters into God’s hands and found a residential program designd specifically for boys just like my son. The average length of stay is approximately 18 months.
It’s called into question nearly everything I’ve ever believed about being a mother, a business owner, a wife and even some of my ideas bout faith. I’ve wondered if I’m doing the right thing, if I’m being a bad mother, and if I’ve really tried everything I know how to do.
And in the midst of all this second-guessing, he’s turning the big 1-3 tomorrow.
AndI couldn’t be more anxious and happy and nervous and excited and overwhelmed and grief-stricken and faith-filled and concerned and joyous and relieved at the same time.
It means many changes for my business, my brand, my family, and most importantly, my son.
Which is a big reason why The Renaissance Mom was born. Because I’m finally ready to embrace my mommy-ness, I guess. And because it isn’t easy. And because I wanted a place where it was *safe* (at least as safe as you can expect it to be online and in business) to share our story.
Forest (that’s his name) and I will both be documenting our experiences with his residency, which we hope will culminate in a book for release upon his graduation from the program. As I said, the bulk of the story will be told at the Working Mother site, but you’ll be able to find the highlights here as well.
This is a big, very public step in what is also a very private matter. Normally, I wouldn’t reveal such private details, but my son and I have agreed that this journey holds an important message for other families dealing with situations similar in nature. If we can offer even a bit of help/hope for others, it is part of our duty to extend that help.
So in the morning, when I rise, wipe the sleep out of my eyes, I’ll be heading to the local DQ to pick up the icecream cake – the last birthday cake I’ll share with my son for at least two years, possibly more.
I’m sure this can and will alienate a few people, moms, etc. I welcome your thoughts, feedback, and of course, your prayers.
But please leave the “old lady” jokes at home. 
About Me
Storyteller. Transformer. Entrepreneur. I've won a few awards for writing, music and design, and I'm not resting on my laurels. I focus my energy on helping you succeed and get results. Be sure to say hi, leave a comment and get involved. That's how I roll. Coming Soon
