As I'm sitting here tonight, worn out from a full day working at school, a cheer practice, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry - and knowing full-well I've probably done no more than the rest of the moms out there...but tired nonetheless - I'm thankful I had the job to go to and will have it to go to at least the rest of the week, my mind turns to some of my sweet friends.
Times are definitely tough and more and more people are going back to work, selling their homes to scale down and just all-around trying to make ends meet a little tighter. Until you go through it, you don't get just how stressful it is and what an impact it makes on your life, relationships and even your kid's lives. While kids are very resilient once change happens, initially they are adverse to ANY modification to the system.
Many of my friends who watched us sell our home less than a year ago, downsize and set-out building a new foundation for our family are now looking at going through similar circumstances and coming to me to talk about how I handled it.
Just the other day, I was talking to a good friend who had just helped me pack my house only months ago. She informed me their house was now going on the market and she is understandably crushed at the thought of this change. What will happen? How will they adjust? Where will they go? It's scary. Not having your future plainly laid out in front when you have kiddos you are responsible for making sure feel secure can be nerve-racking, to say the least. Having neighbors and friends watch/judge/talk about it certainly doesn't help. Just seems to be part of living in the area we live in. Maybe it's that way everywhere, I don't know.
What I do know is I've surrounded myself with friends I completely trust and have culled the ones I don't. These types of life-changing circumstances have their way of making you reset both priorities and acquaintances. The small-minded gossiping that would have once bothered you is now nothing more than a annoying buzzing in your ear. More of a waste of time to listen to. What an alleviation of emotion!
We talked about how the house was just a house. Home is wherever their family is and she gets that. It's the unknown and I can totally relate. When your priority is the stable and loving upbringing of your kids, that is all that matters. Again...yes they are resilient, but when they are living the 'unknown' too, it's hard to avoid anxiety.
My only advice to her was to hold on tight to her family, because they all that really matters. As long as they are together, everything will turn out perfectly fine and this time in their lives will be a distant memory soon.
Having people look over your shoulder, stick their noses in your business and talk is simply a reality we have to deal with and an unfortunate nuisance...and I still deal with it. "When are you going to buy a house? Why are you renting? Why did you sell?". What gets me is when it gets back to our kids. When will 'adults' learn not to talk in front of their kids? As my friend Ang would say, "Interesting...".
Lessons to be learned around every corner I guess.
So here's to the continued schooling for adults:
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
I'm holding on to that and trying to be thankful for not just the good, but also the not-so-good.
Times are definitely tough and more and more people are going back to work, selling their homes to scale down and just all-around trying to make ends meet a little tighter. Until you go through it, you don't get just how stressful it is and what an impact it makes on your life, relationships and even your kid's lives. While kids are very resilient once change happens, initially they are adverse to ANY modification to the system.
Many of my friends who watched us sell our home less than a year ago, downsize and set-out building a new foundation for our family are now looking at going through similar circumstances and coming to me to talk about how I handled it.
Just the other day, I was talking to a good friend who had just helped me pack my house only months ago. She informed me their house was now going on the market and she is understandably crushed at the thought of this change. What will happen? How will they adjust? Where will they go? It's scary. Not having your future plainly laid out in front when you have kiddos you are responsible for making sure feel secure can be nerve-racking, to say the least. Having neighbors and friends watch/judge/talk about it certainly doesn't help. Just seems to be part of living in the area we live in. Maybe it's that way everywhere, I don't know.
What I do know is I've surrounded myself with friends I completely trust and have culled the ones I don't. These types of life-changing circumstances have their way of making you reset both priorities and acquaintances. The small-minded gossiping that would have once bothered you is now nothing more than a annoying buzzing in your ear. More of a waste of time to listen to. What an alleviation of emotion!
We talked about how the house was just a house. Home is wherever their family is and she gets that. It's the unknown and I can totally relate. When your priority is the stable and loving upbringing of your kids, that is all that matters. Again...yes they are resilient, but when they are living the 'unknown' too, it's hard to avoid anxiety.
My only advice to her was to hold on tight to her family, because they all that really matters. As long as they are together, everything will turn out perfectly fine and this time in their lives will be a distant memory soon.
Having people look over your shoulder, stick their noses in your business and talk is simply a reality we have to deal with and an unfortunate nuisance...and I still deal with it. "When are you going to buy a house? Why are you renting? Why did you sell?". What gets me is when it gets back to our kids. When will 'adults' learn not to talk in front of their kids? As my friend Ang would say, "Interesting...".
Lessons to be learned around every corner I guess.
So here's to the continued schooling for adults:
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
I'm holding on to that and trying to be thankful for not just the good, but also the not-so-good.
Everyone, meet my camera. My old, outdated, sometimes-doesn't-work, battery-lasts-15-pictures worth camera. Why on earth do I feel grateful for this thing? Because it took pictures of both of my kiddos when I brought them home from the hospital and every wonderful event after that. It is the reason they will have a ridiculous amount of photos to peruse through, laugh at and cry at when they get older. This camera is the reason MY