Thought provoking stuff..

I have somehow found my way to this lovely lady and I am so impressed with her that I am currently reading all her archives. Amazingly almost every post makes me exclaim loudly that I agree! Absolutely! You fracken said it susta!

Anyway, Andrea has got me to thinking about our lots as mothers in Western society and it is true that we are heading for a meltdown if we don't all start being more honest about how difficult parenthood is. I look at the society of teenagers who are the children of teenagers and how little concept of structure they have and I worry that in years to come we will look back and discover that all the 'helpful' books and advice and guidance has only resulted in our children being obsessive about image and perception rather than about the reality.

I thought that I was prepared. I thought that I had been exposed to the concepts of parenting and children often enough to know that it would be hard. I didn't know. I still haven't been able to intellectualise the process that we are going through. I never thought that there would be moments when I felt physically ill with fear. Fear that I would fail myself and in so doing that I would fail my children. I knew about dirty nappies and sleepless nights but I hadn't experienced the constant demands that these things have on your life. I didn't have any idea about the financial burden that children bring - even though I thought that I had researched it, the true expense is far more than I could imagine.

There was something else that I thought I knew but I didn't and that was just how much love I have to give my boys. How often my breath catches in my throat when they smile. How horrible I feel when they're feeling sick or tired and I can't comfort them. I never thought for a second that loving my children could be so BIG! Or that expressing that love would feel so right.

So if anyone stumbles across this, let me say this. It is far harder than you can imagine. It is more tiring, more expensive, more difficult, more time consuming and most importantly parenthood is far more fulfilling than you can fathom right now. My advice is to try and live each moment and when the moments are too hard and you think that you can't do it, know that the moment will pass and another one will replace it - usually a better one, sometimes a greater one.

I am so grateful and happy to all of these woman for making me feel normal.

A