Dad Street

This morning while laying in bed…What? Wait!! I was laying in bed! Thanks to my beautiful wife, even though the kids were up at their usual 6′ish (Yes, as in 6am on the weekend!) she let me sleep in.

So we were laying there and she reminded me that this was my 4th Father’s Day! I sat there for a moment recalling the last 3 of them and just noticing how grateful I felt. Having experienced 4 years of infertility we both only dreamed about celebrating Mother’s and Father’s Day. It’s almost like a second birthday for sure!

I haven’t really spoken about being grateful much in the past and thought now would be a perfect time. Just recently I made a conscious decision to be mindfully grateful.

What is Mindfully Grateful?

Basically my definition of this is that you are very intentional to be aware of what you’re grateful for. There are different ways of doing this. For me, I actually use an app on my iPhone called Gratitude Journal to write down specifically what I’m grateful for.

I can’t go any further without telling the whole truth…I got the idea of writing down things I’m grateful for from Oprah.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way I thought it’d be best for me to use an app. I’m a little geeky that way and I like the idea of having my list on me throughout the day. I need to do a better job of my consistency but basically right before I go to bed I’ll write out 5 quick things I am grateful for. Most of them are relevant to the the day I just had. Normally they are things that are very simple such as a glass of wine, the sun, a hug, etc. The point is in appreciating what I do have and what is in my life. Giving attention to what I have not only keeps me mindful of the positive things in my life but keeps me in the present (the now). I’m not thinking about the future and I’m not really thinking about the past. Everything I’m grateful for is happening right now and I do my best to live in the right now. So you can see how something so simple that takes literally minutes a day can have such an impact on your life and self awareness.

Below is a screenshot from the list I made tonight. I put my wife first on the list because I very literally wouldn’t be a Father without her. She was amazing through all of our Infertility and I owe all of this to her.

I had an amazing day filled with plenty of time with the wife and kids, even a little “me time”. It was so nice to hear from so many friends and family today as well. Special days like this make it easy to find so many things I’m grateful for. What’s even more special is that I know tomorrow night before I go to bed I’ll have my list and I’ll be celebrating all over again.

Are you mindfully grateful? Do you keep a list or take mental note on a regular basis?

Unless you’ve been completely offline today you’ve surely heard and/or seen the controversial cover on Time Magazine. There’s been plenty of talk about how old the child in this picture is – he’s 3 – and whether or not women should be breastfeeding a child this age. It seems all the controversy online today (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) has been around the topic of breastfeeding. Of course, this is an important topic and one that will be debated for years to come. I am very much in support of breastfeeding. Having said that, this post is actually going to talk about something much more important. It’s going to cover a topic that I’m not hearing anyone talk about and yet is, in many ways, killing millions of women and men alike.

Shame.

The cover of this photo states, “Are You Mom Enough?” Has our society become so used to being shamed, put down, questioned that we don’t even see shame when it’s staring us in the face? We wonder why so many of us have self-esteem issues and yet we don’t see some of the causes. One of the most common questions I hear women asking is (in one variation or another) “Am I enough?”. Whether it’s in the form of weight, beauty, intelligence, career, financial, caregiving…and the list goes on and on.

The bottom line is that every women who is blessed to have a baby is ENOUGH from the moment she gives birth to that beautiful child. No woman can ever be MORE THAN or LESS THAN enough of a Mom.

There is no judgement in truth.

“More than” and “Less than” statements are judgements and there’s only one truth. All Moms are enough all the time!

Why must our society/media put into question something as basic as this? Why must they keep our Moms doubting themselves? As if there isn’t enough things to call into question about our performance and even our inherent nature. The sad truth is that this is so common. What’s even more sad is that so many Women and Men alike don’t even recognize that this is abuse and it’s called, Shame.

Someone(s) at Time Magazine has a warped sense of what’s “Real”. Don’t let them fool you into thinking you ever have to meet some condition as a women and a mother in order to be enough. This is a complete fallacy and says much more about the owners and content creators at Time Magazine than it ever does about our Mothers.

On this Mother’s Day I want you to remember one thing Moms. You were, are, and will always be enough.

Of late, I have been much more aware and have gained a much deeper understanding and sense of self. No, I don’t smoke crack and the overwhelming smell of Jake’s diaper has not confused my brain…although, I did almost pass out once.

I’ve been thinking about feelings lately. There’s a weird statement, huh?

“Thinking about feelings.”

It seems that most of my life my feelings have been doing the thinking for me. How I feel determines what I think. I don’t think this is much different from just about every other person I know. This is just how we are raised and what society comes to expect as the norm. We have feelings about a certain thing and those feelings then become what we think of ourselves and of each other. What I never realized before was that my feelings don’t just come from thoughts but rather they come from the “meaning” I give to those thoughts.

Let me give you an example that I’m sure has happened to a lot of us:

I received an email from someone at work inquiring about a task they had asked me to accomplish on that day. Not long after the email I noticed that my boss was calling me. It’s not often my boss calls me (usually just exchange emails) so I thought she must be calling to talk about the task this person emailed me about. I thought that person was upset that I hadn’t responded quick enough and spoke to her and that she was calling me about it. I felt very anxious and defensive as if I had done something wrong and was going to be spoken to about it. These feelings were based on some prior history I’ve had in similar situations. It turns out she was calling about something completely different and benign and I had worked myself up for nothing.

I’ve become very aware that anger does not exist without fear (I also include anxiety in that category). The other day an amazing thing took place that I want to share with you. Our car happened to be parked on the street, curbside. I had both kids by myself and wanted to be very cautious getting them in the car since we were parked on the street. O’s seat was curbside and Jake’s was on the side of the car that was in the street. I decided to get O in first so I’d only have Jake to manage getting in the car with traffic, etc. Jake was standing next to me on the curb as I was helping O get in the car. I was constantly looking back at him to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere and that was really on my mind. O decided that now would be a great time to play around and not sit down. As this was happening I felt myself getting very mad and upset. Normally at this time I would start to yell and/or raise my voice at O to tell her to sit down. This time I did something a little different though. I allowed myself to feel angry for a moment and then explored why I was feeling angry (ie; what did I fear?). I realized that I was scared that Jake would run into the street while I was trying to get O to stop messing around and seated. So instead of yelling at her or raising my voice I turned to her and said, “Honey, Daddy is feeling scared.” O immediately stopped what she was doing and said, “Daddy is scared?”. I said, “Yes Honey, Daddy is scared that while you’re playing around not sitting in your seat that Jake is going to run into the street and get hurt.” She had this befuddled look on her face as if she understood what I was feeling but just shocked to hear it expressed this way. She immediately got in her seat and I felt as if we were one at that moment.

O wasn’t responsible for my being mad. I made myself mad as a defense to my fear of Jake running in the street. When I expressed my fear to O she related immediately and “understood”. Had I yelled at her to sit down, never mentioning my fear of Jake she would have resisted, I would have become angrier, and it would have been a horrible experience for both of us.

This is really the first time I’ve found myself in this type of situation and I was glad that I was able to recognize what my feelings meant and what they didn’t mean. I was also glad that I treated O with respect on every level even though she was doing something that I made myself mad about (note that I intentionally didn’t say she made me mad). In the end, I was authentic with myself as well as with her. She responded so quickly and in such a positive way. I’m really looking forward to trying this out again and even if the outcome isn’t exactly the same in terms of her response I’ll still be glad that I’m presenting the example that I want to show her.

A Grateful Father’s Day

A Grateful Father’s Day

It’s About @Time To Stop The Shaming! Moms You Are Enough!

It’s About @Time To Stop The Shaming! Moms You Are Enough!

Daddy is Scared?