The travelling mom

Guilt and Worry – Lessons from a Travelling Mom

 

I am writing this article from the other side of Canada today. I hopped on a plane a few days ago to attend a writer’s conference held in Guelph Ontario and I’m totally kid less. Being kid less is not a common venture for me, not for longer than a date night out anyway, and I think I am doing a pretty good job at it.
My knee jerk reaction to dropped items and fast movements is slowing down. I have had 4 cups of HOT coffee in 3 days. I haven’t adjusted any publisher’s shirt collars or licked my fingers to smooth their bangs. Therefore, I can say I have successfully transferred into the adult world without fault.
It’s not easy travelling away from our families with our hearts and minds constantly on home, we have a lot invested there. However, we can carry home within us. Home really is the sense of comfort and rest we feel when we are in the familiar.  Sometimes home is that quiet place within ourselves that we haven’t visited in a while. Its that time away that helps you rearrange you. Home is also the comfort of knowing all is well and that you are meant to be where you are resting right now.
It’s hard for a mom to quiet herself and explore her heart and mind without turning to the inevitable, I think it’s wired into our DNA, little guilt and worry genes binding together to create a nutcase. Oh those horrible voices that tell you all the things you have left undone, left unsaid and unsafe. Just breathe and repeat after me. Whatever happens it’s going to be okay. I promise. Worry is one of the most unproductive expulsions of energy known to man. ‘It profits nothing.’
Every mom, and  think some dads too, understand that at the end of the day, when you have turned off the last light, picked up the last toy and kissed the last forehead that it’s inevitable that there will be pillow talk. No, not sweet slumber party pillow talk but the inner self pummeling talk; the unproductive, unfiltered mom bashing seminar called guilt. Stop it!
Seriously, let me ask you a question. If you were to lay down at the end of the evening after a busy day of fails and success, or during a solo getaway with a lot of time to think, if you were to ask yourself to think of three things that make you an amazing mother how would that affect your parenting tomorrow? (pause for reflection….) Yes, exactly.
So whether you are miles away like I am at this moment, or just down the hall. Tell Guilt and worry to get a room, and travel home into you and stay there awhile.

2 thoughts on “The travelling mom”

  1. Alanna Rusnak says:

    So glad you pulled yourself away to come to the conference! It was great to see you and I’m sorry we didn’t actually say goodbye – you had to catch your ride so quickly 🙁 I hope you had an amazing welcoming party when you got home but that you can hang onto the truths you found during your solo reflections.

    1. Virtuous Woman Exposed says:

      Thanks Alana – yes I wish we had more times to chat! I’m excited to see what this next year will bring. Bless you and your family!

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