At a recent conference I attended, Dove posed an interesting question...how do you define what #BeautyIs? This seems like a simple enough question and then I tried to answer it. I struggled with it for a moment, so I thought that since pictures are worth a thousand words, I could define it with a picture. Nope! I could not find just one picture that defines beauty in my life. Beauty is having a picture of my mom where she is smiling and for a minute forgets that she is in one of the last stages of Parkinson’s Disease.
When you find out you’re pregnant your brain and heart fill with excitement and hope, joy and the thoughts of endless possibilities. It also brings with it concern and trepidation, thoughts of sleepless nights and being able to provide what a child needs.
I have four children who are as alike as apples, oranges, brownies and chewing gum. It often amazes me that these four children were birthed by the same parents and raised in the same home! They are very unique individuals and they have very different strengths and traits. And they require very different things from me, and yet different things from their Dad.
parents May 27
Favorites
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” ~Rumi
In a now infamous briefing to reporters, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said, “Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Yikes!
It is the unknown unknowns that may best describe the disconnect between parents and their teen drivers.
The other night, my wife told me - for the second time in 18 months - that she “needs a break,” which is her half-assed way of saying that she wants to separate. There is a long explanation of why we have come to this point, and that is another blog for another web site. With her announcement came all the natural emotions: sadness, frustration, anger, etc. but beyond all of that is the question: how to process this so it will have minimal impact on our kids. My son is 16 and my daughter is 13, which on balance is both a blessing and a curse.
Watch Later Queue
As the mom of a teenage daughter, I occasionally feel like I am parenting ona separate planet from my friends who have teenage sons.
Pages
