Happy Mother's Day To Them

For the past 18 years, Mother's Day has been a celebration for the three of them, my sons. The ones who made me a mother. I spend the holiday doing for them because they have made me so happy.

I don't ask my three for anything, but they still make me their cards and have their dad take them to buy me my flowers.

I'm happy at home, starting the day with the cinnamon rolls they love so much, and asking them what they'd like for dinner.

Because truthfully, in the life I've had, this holiday has always felt hollow and mandatory to me... until they were born.

Mother's Day is a day spent like any other of my days; in disbelief of the gold I've been given. The diamonds of my every days -- and though I have never not begun or ended a day since they've been born thanking everything under the stars for the jackpot that has rained down on me with them as my life, on this annual celebration, I say to myself over and over, I can't believe I am their mother.

I spent Sunday staring at their faces while they talked, the way their cheeks look so soft when the sun hits them from behind, reveling in the sound of the joy in their laughs, recognizing the uniqueness of each of their smiles and how one's lip curls up only on the right. I know just how one stands with his left leg jutted out, and how the other one always points his left knee out to the side.

Mother's Day is a day of granted requests, and I wait for them to sing to me. It's what I tell them I want when they ask me what I want them to do today. I laugh and order them, "Sing me a made up song!" And they do. Each one out voluming the other in hopes of getting the loudest applause from me, and at the end of it all, with furrowed brows, they scold me and say I can't clap the same way for all of them.

So they decide they have to do it again.

Thank you for today, my children, for giving me a holiday to celebrate. Happy Mother's Day to you.

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We live in an imperfect world, and as well intended of a sentiment as Mother's Day is, for many, it brings on an overload of complexities and life circumstances. If you're someone looking for shared words to help you feel like you're not the only one struggling with this holiday, here's a magnificent post I found: via hopefulworld .org (a great community site) In Case Mother's Day is Hard for You.

xo

The Pinality of it is...

Recipes you tell yourself you'll make. Beautiful shoes that will kill your feet, manicured fingertips that look like the ocean at sunset and will last two days tops at your house, arrangements of flea market pictures you'll never find above your kitchen stove -- you'll even stare up at the ceiling at night, wondering how you can ask your husband for a second honeymoon just so you can wear that layered chiffon wedding dress you just saw.

Welcome to the world of Pinterest, where we lose our minds and foolishly tell ourselves we can do things like cut our own bangs or bling our own jeans. Our eyes say me likee, but our effort says not in this lifetime. Pinterest is like a magazine full of only things you like, not a glossy paper one full of occassional seductive items -- nope, pinterest is something you can stay up until l3 o'clock clicking through and seeing what other people find appealing. It's better than going through their real life medicine cabinets because you know in an instant what they're really about.

I tried Pinterest months and months ago, but just as I said above, it became all too quickly obvious that the world would know what I was truly like -- so I got rid of everything I had up there. Because the everything I had up there was all 10 Ways To Beat Depression, and 15 Ways To Cook Chicken in Twenty Minutes. Also lots of shoes that my bunioned feet will say no to and clothes, coats, hairdos, inspirational quotes, crafty things that will never materialize -- all responsible for too many nights of Pinsomnia.

What was I thinking during that Pinterest phase? Pinterest makes me crave bacon wrapped anything in the middle of the night and has me convinced I look good in sleeveless breezy summer dresses that go waaaaaaay above the knee. A soft blue skimmer, really? After a week of 1 a.m. bacon wrapped meatloaf snacking??

It just didn't happen for me and Pinterest, though it isn't totally out of my life, I still haunt the site because it is eye candy, but I now enter that Pinterworld with the appropriate mindset -- that of Pinality.

Pinality -- the true reality of your pinteresting ways, in your world. First of all, you won't do, wear, buy, make any of the things you've pinned on your Pinterest board -- like saving every single paper towel cardboard tube and plastic cups so you can cobble together makeshift iPod docking stations for your kids.

Or spraying  brown sugar and water mix in your hair to give yourself caramel highlights.

And second of all, the pinality of it is, it'll just make you wake up with ants in your hair and bacon crumbles in the corners of your mouth.

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photo credit: Bunches and Bits {Karina} via photopin cc

Happy Birthday, Ann Imig!

I have always loved other people's birthdays, because you get the chance to use their special day as an excuse to let them know what they mean to you, their place in your life -- no questions asked.

Doing it any other regular day of the year, and depending on the receiving end, but it could make someone uncomfortable. We've all seen that situation set up in cartoons and comedies, "You changed my life! Now I will be your life servant! Your wish is my command!"

So yeah no, can't do that. BUT, today is Ann Imig's birthday, and I am going to take this opportunity of an open window that makes it socially acceptable and not scary in any way, to say Thank you, Ann Imig, you changed my life.

When I found your blog annsrants four years ago under Wisconsin bloggers, I never thought that four years later, we'd be working together -- and that I'd be the one bringing life change to others and into their lives.

I hardly recognize myself these days. Taking phone calls while on a treadmill, assembling 14 unique community voices into a beautiful ebb and flow of recognition of the art of motherhood as I bring a show celebrating motherhood to Milwaukee. All of this done with the fierce belief that we are all someone.

From the outside, my community may just see a woman driving around in a mini van that needs vacuuming with too many empty bottles of gatorade rolling around inside, but behind the wheel is a woman with a cast book in the passenger seat and a notepad of things to do right next to it, no longer wondering what she can bring to this world -- because I know now.

I can bring opportunity, and all it took is one person to tell me that all of our actions are a leap of faith.

The internet celebrates you today, Ann Imig -- just this year alone, 300 Listen To Your Mother Show voices. Add in the over 100 voices from Listen To Your Mother voices from last year, and 100 more from the year before, and the 100 from the year before that.

All of us shouting, thinking, feeling, brimming with grateful hearts: THANK YOU, Ann, for creating Listen To Your Mother and taking the leap of faith in us.

We don't do anything alone or without the help of others. And you inspire us to do what you've done, create community and spread the power of connection.

You have founded a movement that is generating universal energy and our words have been catapulted out full force with heart and soul, and that makes it impossible for things to ever be the same. How can they be when all of us involved with Listen To Your Mother are saying "I know what I can bring."

Happy Birthday, Ann Imig. THANK YOU for being on this planet.

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photo: Rochelle Fritsch

Thank You, Milwaukee, from Listen To Your Mother

There are formal thank yous that will be sent, paperwork to be filed, our homes can now go back to a somewhat balanced state -- but all that can wait.

Our first annual Listen To Your Mother Show took place yesterday at Alverno's Wehr Hall.

And Jen, the co producer, and I, have to thank the city of Milwaukee for coming to celebrate Mother's Day with us. We have to thank the cast for giving our show the magic we knew it would have.

Our guests found their way to our stage after the show to say, "I had no idea!" "Wow. I couldn't picture it, but this was amazing."

There was the wonderful "I'm coming back next year, with my mother!" But best of all, "I think I want to be part of this."

There are so many moments that are gratifying, like the executive director of our local cause thanking us afterward and telling us, "I really, really loved this."

All of this was possible because of the support of family, friends, and our community, through attending and being witness to the power of shared experience.

So powerful because there is energy being exchanged between reader, audience, producers. It's a charge that begins at point A and is received by point B who's been hungry for it, which thrills point A to be able to feed it, and grows into something like a Tesla coil that can't be held in a room anymore! I swear, mid show, I thought we were all going to faint from so many breath-held moments.

More on all that later, the almost fainting and all, but we can't begin today without shouting 
 

Milwaukee, the cast and production crew of Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee, THANKS YOU!!  

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photo credit: Tau Zero via photopin cc

Your Self Image Can Be Changed

"I don't do anything, really."

"I'm not the type of person to try something new."

"I'm just me, just.me."

"I'd never do anything like that, I could never do that."

Where do we get this idea of ourselves? Who told us way back when, where did we pull messages from, that say, "Nope. You're not the kind of person that does anything that takes planning, work, putting together, asking for favors, approaching strangers, RUNNING THINGS."

But, turns out, I am.

I tell people who ask me what's new, I'm putting on a show! With Jennifer Gaskell; and it's inspirational, emotionally gripping, moving, captivating, and so ass kickin' pura vida.

While the response I'd love to hear is, "Wow! Tell me more! Like where can I buy aaaaaaaaaaaaaall the tickets!, instead I hear, "Oh. I didn't know you did that."

Ha. Can't say I blame them. Because up until this year, I didn't know I did, either.

But with the shoulder to shoulder heave and ho of my co producer and co director, Jenny, and the generous mentorship of selfless women like Ann Imig, Deb Rox, and Stephanie Precourt, along with the community found on the pages of our LTYM Producer/Director Facebook group, We Did It.

The Listen To Your Mother Show Milwaukee is this Sunday, May 5, 3 p.m. at Alverno College's Wehr Hall.  

Tickets are available here.

Our cast is made up of some of the most intriguing voices in our area. I love each of these 14 stories, and am so proud for everyone to hear them.

And when the cast members of  LTYM 2013  look me in the eye, and say, "I've never done anything like this before."
 
I say, "I know. Isn't it cool???"

THANK YOU, Ann Imig, [founder and creator of Listen To Your Mother] from the bottom to the top of my ever grateful heart, for shaking my world loose, in the most incredible way.

Damn dust in my eyes, again. 

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