Tag Archives: mothering

A Mother’s Day Gift

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Magical JourneyBeing a mother is no piece of cake. From the beginning there is seemingly endless crying, sleepless nights, demands on your time and energy, exhaustion both physical and mental, putting your needs on indefinite hold—forgetting what your needs even are. Kids fight—with each other and with you. You know it’s your job to do something about it but seem to have no idea what to do. You need a break. But will you give it to yourself? Probably not.

This Mother’s Day I have a break for you. I find that in times of stress, when I’m full of indecision and don’t know which way to turn, when I know I want something but don’t know what it is, when I need to get something off my chest but don’t really want any advice—what always helps is an understanding ear and sharing with someone who knows just what I mean.

Katrina Kenison is that person who knows just what you mean and has been there in one form or another. Her books, The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Magical Journey are memoirs of growing and learning to let go throughout her parenting years. Together with all the changes, tragedies, and daily doings of each ordinary day, Katrina gives you that ear, that understanding—even though she doesn’t even know you.

Katrina has a way of telling us about her life, her thoughts, her relationships, and her parenting that feels like a warm blanket of validation. She is writing about herself and her experiences but at the same time is seeing you. Reading Katrina’s books, for me, was like talking to my best friend.

Every mother I know worries and fears at some time or another about the future—what it will bring for her and her children—based on her past—what she experienced and what she is unintentionally projecting. It is shamefully hard to live in the present, to simply be with your children, especially if the present is difficult.

If our children are screaming, dawdling, demanding, withdrawing, we have to do something about it. So we go into teacher or even dictator Gift of an Ordinary Daymode, and if that doesn’t work, we may give up. Rarely are we able to be present, accept what the moment is bringing, deal with the feelings arising, and honor those feelings with integrity. This is the journey. This is the lesson of our lives—to let go of what we fear will happen, let go of our past stories, and simply drop into the present.

In both her books, Katrina takes us along her journey and in doing so helps us see what our journey is about.

“As I loosen my grip on the past as I keep taking one small step after another in the direction I want to go, I discover I’m being supported and guided after all, and that as soon as I’m willing to embrace change, something or someone comes along and shows me how….When hearts are open, when love is flowing, magic happens.” Magical Journey

Here’s how to win one of Katrina’s books:

Write a comment about where you are in your journey right now, what it feels like, what you worry about, or what you cherish. Or simply say, “Count me in.” I will choose two winners at random from the comments and send you an autographed copy of either The Gift of an Ordinary Day or Magical Journey. Drawing will be held Sat. May  18th and the winners will be notified.

And if your appetite has been whetted and you like the sound of these books even if you don’t win, here are the links to Katrina’s website and her books on amazon for your search:

Katrina Kenison’s website and blog – http://www.katrinakenison.com

Her books on Amazon:
Magical Journey
The Gift of An Ordinary Day
And here are two videos you might like to see:
Magical Journey
The Gift of An Ordinary Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all you wonderful mothers!

 Congratulations to Laura and Jora !

They each won (via random.com) a copy of Katrina’s books. Thanks to you all for your comments. I know you would all love Katrina’s books so even if you didn’t win, do treat yourself to one.

And please keep on commenting.

 

For Mother’s Day: Is Mothering the Hardest Job?

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Thanks to Hilary Rosen’s comment about Ann Romney never working a day in her life, the subject of mothering has come to the fore once again – just in time for Mother’s Day.

While I believe that parenting, whether done primarily by a mother or a father, is indeed the hardest and most important job anyone will ever undertake, I do not think that society as a whole gives mothering any more than lip service. On Mother’s Day we can give mothers that pat on the back fulfilling our obligation and then be done with it. If indeed it is the hardest job, why do we not feel the need to give parents every opportunity to do the job well?

We certainly consider doctoring a critically important job, hence the years of training necessary to do it. The same can be said of any job. We need education to drive a car, fly a plane, work in a bank, be a neighborhood watchman. But giving birth requires no education at all. We place so little value on the job of mothering that it’s easy for a highly educated woman to make the comment that Mrs. Romney has never worked a day in her life.

Every mother out there, whether satisfied or dissatisfied with her parenting will tell you how important it is to know what to do and how to do it. From understanding child development and individual temperaments in order to know what is appropriate to expect of a child; to understanding child behavior and what it means so a mother doesn’t fly off the handle every time a child screams, “No,” a mother’s day-in-and-day-out responses to her children are critical to the future of our society.

I will argue that every abhorrent and dysfunctional behavior that costs our society megabucks as well as lives can be traced back to dysfunctional family relationships – to parenting.

We can argue that we have been raising children from the beginning of time and there’s nothing to learn.
Oh yeah? How many parents have argued, “I was raised that way, and I turned out just fine.”

Exactly the evidence needed to argue for parenting education. None of us even know our potential had we been raised in a better way. And how different is our present day culture from the one we were raised in, our parents and grandparents were raised in?

Things change; the need for educating parents on the latest research and in the context of more and more technology is a no-brainer.

As a society, we don’t even understand the meaning of behavior. We react to it at face value. If we like it, we reward it, and if we don’t, we punish it. Never do we look below the surface to see the needs that are provoking the behavior. Rarely do parents even understand what a child’s needs are.

Many mothers do better jobs than others and many children are easier to raise than others. The fit of a mother’s and a child’s temperaments often make the critical difference between raising a healthy child whose needs have been satisfied and an unhealthy child who requires external stimulation (often at the cost of society) to fulfill those needs. Many of our addictions, dependencies, physical and mental health issues have direct roots in parenting. And any parent’s current parenting has roots deeply embedded in their own childhoods.

Isn’t it about time we celebrated Mother’s Day with the gift of government-sponsored parent education free for all parents, with huge tax credits given to a parent who chooses to stay home to raise children, with strict and thorough education for daycare workers who are paid well enough to make a career out of it?

Imagine if teachers were paid as well as doctors. Would we get stuck in the quagmire of invasion of personal rights or would this save the government billions and help us raise a healthier society?