A Special Thanksgiving Message To The Mom Who’s Struggling

A special thanksgiving message to the mom who’s struggling today….

You are not alone.

……..

There are so many mom’s out there acing it today, and we see their posts and pictures because they are sharing-just as they should! I’m so happy for them. I seriously am, we all should be (if you are one of those mom’s you totally ROCK).

Here’s the thing though, we don’t hear from many of the other mom’s, the ones that totally fell flat on their face through the holiday preps. After all, that can be embarrassing to share.

I’d like to participate in normalizing sharing that too though because those stories are important.

Here’s my story…………..

I LOVE LOVE LOVE holiday’s, and especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. I started preparing two weeks early for Thanksgiving by cleaning the house, next was going to be starting early with making some food. I had really big plans to do some life school lessons with the kids and  make some sweet memories baking with them.

It all started spiraling out of control, beginning on Monday though. It started with a simple shower. I took a shower. What was I thinking (insert sarcasm).

While I was in the shower the kids didn’t stay on task, instead it appeared that they threw a party. They made such a big mess that caused my plans to change, putting Monday’s work onto Tuesday. Then Tuesday the kids started coming down with a cold my husband brought home last week (like what was he thinking, right? Why couldn’t he have scheduled that for next week-didn’t he know I had a tight schedule this week??? (more sarcasm).

Anyways, Tuesday’s plans went awry too, and from there everything.

Sleep deprivation is at an all time high again for my husband and I this week now and I wasn’t able to do hardly any of my plans because I was taking care of sick kids and trying to just get through.

I was only able to do about 1/4 of the Thanksgiving foods and special plans- I made pie crusts but never made it to the pies (a couple of the kids figured out how to make them while I was taking care of the baby). I have an auto immune disease tho and can’t eat wheat so I’m gluten free, and I ended up burning the one pie I was able to squeeze in (thank goodness I chose to save time and not make a gluten free crust for it)!

Then there’s the house. The house was clean and would have been easy to maintain had things gone as planned and everyone not gotten sick. But you can’t really tell I ever cleaned it now.

It’s been a really, really rough year for us. I know it has been for a lot of you too. On this Thanksgiving day that I did everything I could to make special (but just kind of exploded despite my best efforts) I’m honestly just starting to feel run over by life and with  feelings of invalidation, overwhelm, helplessness and feeling very alone.

Like so many of my other good plans for this past year my Thanksgiving plans were replaced with more work, struggles and tears and sickness and worries instead of joys and so the messed up Thanksgiving plans seem to just kind of underline how the whole year has gone.

On this Thanksgiving Day my eyes are swollen from sleep deprivation, and some from tears.

I know I’m not the only one so I’m sending this message to the other moms out there who tried making Thanksgiving (and the past year) special and who feel like you failed, and who’ve just been having a hard time.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it with being afraid to talk about how hard it’s been for fear of being judged or hearing back another invalidating cliché that just makes me feel even more guilty than I already do for not being grateful enough through hard times….

I’m saying this for myself and you today…..

Its okay.  It’s okay to not be okay, its okay to be struggling. It’s okay to say life has been cruel lately and that you are simply having a hard time. If you have anxiety or other issues, and struggle a lot, that’s okay too.

If that bothers somebody or makes them uncomfortable (which we all know it does) then that is their problem, if someone is making us feel like we can’t be honest then maybe that isn’t someone we should be investing time in anyways.

Speaking of investment….back to the kids….We have got to keep believing, for their sake and ours. We must believe, God willing, there will be other Thanksgivings that will be better. We must believe that things will get better. Let’s try not to lose our hope and resiliency to bounce back.

Let’s give ourselves  a break too.

Today, let’s just try to hug our kids, and love them. Those with spouses, let’s invest in them too. Let’s remember that it’s our love that WILL WIN. When we do this we are building our best tribe, and investing in our children and our relationships with them.

Let’s also draw a little nearer to God, even if we are a little upset with Him, not understanding why He’s let so many troubles knock us down this year. Remember, we love because Jesus Christ first loved us, and love comes from Him. We’ve got to keep our channels with Him open if we are to get through this and give the love to our families that we deeply want to.

I need prompts today. Thanksgiving prompts to do with my children. My therapist gave me a list and I’m going to be trying it out.  I don’t know if I will get to  all of them or even one, but I’ll try. Sometimes that is the best we can do and that is okay.

Here are the prompts we are going to be using.

1. Someone who’s company we enjoy
2. A fun experience we once had
3. Something we are proud of
4. Something beautiful we saw
5. Something a sibling did that made us laugh

I hope my story has helped at least one mama out there that needed help today.