My blog is a snapshot

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be honest, really, truly honest -- even if what I was thinking or feeling wasn't popular or was controversial. Because I honestly felt like women don't talk enough about what pregnancy is really like or breastfeeding or motherhood or marriage or being a working mother, etc. It's like an advertising for the circus, where everyone only exclaims about the spectacular sights and the cotton candy and no one tells you that the whole tent smells like elephant shit.

Consequently, when people hit hard patches in life, it makes the hard patches feel even worse, thinking that you are the only person to EVER go through whatever it is that's happening, or to ever feel whatever it is you're feeling.

Everyone else just sailed through nursing - what's wrong with me? Everyone else's kids are well-behaved. What's wrong with mine? Everyone else's houses are clean, marriages are thriving, bank accounts are full. Everyone else is running marathons and taking classes and going on hot dates with their hubbies and planning creative excursions with their kids and buying big houses and getting promotions. What's wrong with me???

If we knew that everyone felt some fear, anxiety, doubt, unhappiness, restlessness, boredom, frustration, resentment, disappointment, wistfulness, etc. (along with all the joy) -- maybe, just maybe, we'd know that we were normal, and that this too shall pass.

So I vowed to be honest - about the good and the bad. Missing my kids like crazy during the day and then wanting to send their crazy butts to bed 10 minutes after I walk in the door. That kind of thing.

But it's hard, I've discovered, to really be as honest as I'd like on this blog. One, because I made the choice to make the blog public, which means other people read it -- and are likely to judge or form opinions. I've had this happen before with some things I've written, where readers/friends have taken things slightly the wrong way. Not wanting to be misunderstood, I guard myself and my words more than I thought I would.

And most importantly, this blog is most often about my life with the most important people in the world to me. I don't want to ever embarrass or hurt them, or give them the idea that something I'm feeling temporarily is something more serious than it is. Generally, my thoughts are just my thoughts right now -- who knows what I'll be thinking next week? But if you had a chance to read your Mom's journal and came across even one entry where she expressed frustration or disappointment about her life as a mother, wouldn't you wonder if that was how she really felt, secretly, all the time?

This blog is a snapshot, not the full picture. So I feel extra careful about what part of the picture I choose to share.

That being said, I have things I plan to post in the coming days -- nothing Earth-shattering or life-changing, but just deep down real thoughts I've been having -- but I wanted to get this out first, a preamble, if you will.

So hopefully when C, D and C read this blog years from now they'll know in what spirit to take any entry they land on.

And maybe the rest of you will too.