Love your kids. Go ALL IN on the time you have with them

But… Don’t stop going ALL IN on yourself, too

On your marriage, your relationships with friends and family, your inner strength, your joys, passions, and dreams. Don’t take your foot off the pedal where your health, happiness, and wholeness are now. 

Yes, being a mom is the most important, precious role you will play in this life.

But…

It is still YOUR life.

Your kids will grow up.

They will build their own lives.

Their once overflowing laundry bins will be empty.

Their beds will remain made.

Their rooms turned into guest rooms, or that office you’ve always wanted.

They will forge new relationships.

There will be new loves in their lives.

They will move to another state, or another country.

And Mom, though special and loved, will become less present in their lives and minds.

You will then be face to face with yourself. 

The days no longer filled for you, but by  you.

This is when you can no longer disguise an unhappy marriage, or an unhappy heart.

This is when moms either sink into depression, or soar into their own new lives.

This is when moms gives their kids the greatest gift they can – permission to move into their own lives.

This is not the time to hold your kids back, to shackle them in your shadow, to place the onus of your happiness or your well-being on them.

They were and always will be yours to lead by example.

So.. LEAD

Time has changed things.

Now, it is you who must go to them.

It is you who must respect their new lives, their careers and pursuits, their wives or husbands, their roles as parents, themselves. 

Take the road trip, book the flight and hotel- go visit them in their worlds, without demanding they cater to yours. 

Love on them. Love on the people they love.

Dance at their weddings, or recognize they will find love on their timeline- not yours. 

Rock their babies for them so they can go out on a date night.

Make sure they know your home is their home, and there is always a pair of loving arms ready to embrace them there.

And they will come, from time to time, and they will soak up that love from their mom, just like they used to.

They will laugh in wonder at the stories of your adventures, and at your jokes, and your joy. 

And then- they will leave again, secure and happy in the knowledge that their mom is happy. 

And you will miss them.

And that- is okay.

*** Get Barb’s moving, raw and even funny book, What Not to Wear to a Murder Trial (and other tips tragedy taught me) ***