Tag: subculture

So what sort of mother are you, exactly?

A few nights ago, I was in tears because the weight of my different-ness was so heavy. It is isolating at times and the obvious answer of, “Um, maybe don’t be so different, duh,” is not the answer.

I have often felt that if I could just be “that mom” – the one who happily orders curriculum, sets up her home like a classroom and joyfully takes on the role of teacher, I could be happy and accepted.

But I’m not that mom.

If I could just be that mom – the one who journals creatively, builds furniture, makes Pinterest worthy birthday cakes and sews dresses for her little girls – I could be content and successful.

But I’m not that mom, either.

Maybe the public school mom,then? Taking first day of school pictures, packing lunches, chatting with teachers and going to Starbucks after the kids have all been dropped off?

But I’m not that mom.

So who am I? What kind of mama am I?

I am the only, very only mom like me. I believe that.

Look at me, tooting my own unique little horn.

But instead of making people ooh and aah at my uniqueness, I feel more often people shake their heads, roll their eyes and question my sanity.

Today I make a brand new declaration:

“That’s okay.”

Go ahead, world! Shake your nicely coiffured heads and roll your eyelash extensioned eyes. This is who I am. This is my family, my life. Time to be okay with it. Time to be at peace.

I can acknowledge that this is easier said than done. It will be a challenge every day to remind myself that I’m okay as I am, that my kids are okay. To ignore all the “you should”s that are ever-present in the world of motherhood and do what I know I need to do even if it looks vastly different than what everyone else is doing.

I’m here all night, folks!

I’ve had this bubbling in me for awhile. I knew it was time to start writing again, and seriously this time.

But not too seriously.

When speaking to a blogging friend recently who asked me what I write about, I replied easily that my favourite thing to do is make people laugh. And being a mother of seven (eight, actually, but one isn’t out in the open yet), I know how much laughter encourages me.

Psalm 17:22 says that “a merry heart does good like a medicine,” and I believe it. At the end of a long day with my kids, I am often served best by laughter. In our house, that means a lot of inside jokes with my husband and movie quotes galore. And just laughing at my kids (or with them, depending on the situation).

My goal here is to laugh at myself a little bit and let you do it, too. We are a weird family, choosing to have a lot of kids and homeschool yet we look nothing like the typical large homeschooling family. We are living counter-culturally within multiple different sub-cultures and that can be a little bit lonely at times. I can be okay with that most of the time because I see the humour in it and little by little am learning to accept that isolation comes with the territory.

I’ve been writing for nearly my whole life. I believe my first piece was titled, “Sally and Me,” or something like that. I started blogging way back when blogging was still a baby but writing has been lying dormant in me for awhile now. Time to wake it up. I know I have something to share that might just have a great purpose in encouraging other weirdos like me.