We can worry over bullies. We can lose sleep over health concerns.

We can hope a boy or girl doesn’t break their hearts. We can try to teach them to be the sorts of people who won’t want to do the breaking.

Words do hurt, usually more than sticks and stones, and we can tie ourselves into emotional knots of fear and concern for our children—for them as they grow and experience all of these glories and tragedies of being alive with red, beating hearts—or we can hold them.

We can make sure they know they’re loved.

We can remind them of everything wonderful about them if they’ve temporarily forgotten. We can teach them how to be gentle and kind to themselves when the world feels harsh.

We can sit silently with them and listen; we can make sure they feel heard.

We can recognize that many of our fears as parents will not become their realities—fear is so often driven from our own life’s battles anyways, and not the ones that they might have to come to face.

We can feel helpless; so much of parenting is placing our hearts outside of our bodies, and then having to trust after that—trust in the world, and our kids, and in the truth that we are less in control in the larger picture of living than it feels like on many, smaller days of parenting.

We can honor the resilience, strength, courage and light they own, that’s so much stronger than the rest.

Sometimes all we can do is love them.

And this has to be enough.

The post When All We Can Do Is Love Them. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Each day, regardless of what’s going on, or which side of the proverbial bed I woke up on, my kids remind me how to enjoy my life.

They remind me that it really is these little, free aspects of daily living that are the most breathtakingly delicious–and the most easy to overlook.

They remind me to pause, just breathe, and of the power in doing these eight things daily:

1. Smile.

My kids smile a lot, often, and every day. Yes, they’re miniature people, so they, too, have better days than others, and days when they don’t feel great, etc, etc, but, nonetheless, they smile and laugh and find something to naturally enjoy.

They remind me that beauty and happiness are always simultaneously present with every other more difficult feeling and experience.

2. Forgiveness.

My kids get mad and upset occasionally because, again, they’re little people with feelings, personalities and their own life situations. That said, they move past these personal injuries more easily than I sometimes do. They remind me to check back in with how wasteful it is–of my energy and my ability to be joyful–and, equally, of how useful it is to try and move forward, and not let the past dictate my present.

3. Stop giving away f*cks.

Their presence is also so important in my life and in my heart, that when I look at their small faces, I’m reminded to not carelessly give f*cks away to other people and hurdles that ultimately don’t matter.

4. Beauty really is inside.

My daughters appreciate people who are kind to them, who make them laugh, and who look them in the eyes and are truly present with them. In short, my kids are continual reminders of the beauty in this world, and the beauty in people that has absolutely nothing to do with external appearances.

5. Racism is learned.

I honestly can’t help but wish I could postpone the day when my kids understand that this world isn’t as fair and as loving as we all deserve it to be. In the meantime, I’m trying so hard to teach them to love and embrace all people.

6. Individuality.

My children have personality traits that have been unique and present right away, and I have no doubt we’ll one day look back and see some of these exact same expressions and qualities in their adult selves.

This means that I try to give other parents the benefit of the doubt. More, I try to appreciate and accept our individual differences as people.

It’s our job as parents to guide these children to become who they are born to be, and not who we want them to be. It helps to be living examples who appreciate our own individuality, too.

7. Love doesn’t have to be hard.

My marriage takes work. Maintaining friendships lately takes work. Still, if the people that we choose to bring into our hearts don’t usually make us smile, feel supported and loved, and generally encourage us to be better people, then maybe we need to consider that love isn’t meant to always be a struggle.

8. Nothing is permanent.

I recently colored my hair blue. It’s been such an eye-opening experience, as far as celebrating my personality outside of my role as “Mama,” and in giving myself permission to enjoy my life without being overly serious.

Nothing here is permanent, from the blue dye that washes out of my hair with each shampoo, to these little-kid snuggles or these moments of “Mommy, I need you.”

I want to grow and evolve as a human being. I want to try to be better than I was yesterday, but I want to enjoy this time that I have here on Earth–and my kids remind me that embracing who and where we presently are is a huge part of finding internal happiness and success.

I’m so grateful for these two special tiny humans who open my soul to the reality that life might be hard, but that happiness is often right here in the simple things.

The post 8 Ways I’m Happier Every Day Because of My Kids. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

In it, she was laughing hysterically at something my grandfather had said. I noticed the sparkle in her eyes, and her invisible giggle. I didn’t notice if it appropriately captured her beauty, or if it was a flattering shot of her. Her joy in that moment with someone she loved was all that needed to be witnessed.

I think about the pictures of me that my own kids will fall in love with. They surely won’t care if I look thin enough in them, or if my nose looked big. They probably won’t be able to tell if I’m 5 or 10 pounds heavier in one.

Instead, they’ll look for my genuine smile—the mile-wide kind that initiates from crinkling eyes. They might look for pictures of me gazing adoringly at their dad. They likely won’t glance twice at my thighs.

Women are taught that we should generally look picturesque, especially in photographs that we share with others. (One of my absolute favorite memes is one with a commercial-worthy picture of a hamburger—fluffy bun and nice, thick, colorful layers—and a “real” hamburger—all smooshed and flat and ready to plow into—with the respective words: “A selfie you post” and “A picture someone tags you in.”Bwahahahaha!)

Yet, it’s true. I read an article recently about a celebrity that freely admits to using multiple filters and techniques to make her Instagram shots as “perfect” as they can be, and she doesn’t care if they represent her real life. And that’s fine, but, for younger girls—like mine—growing up only with these social-media training-wheels—where they’re on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Tumblr, etc—I can’t help but wonder if they’ll know how beautiful they are, without filters, or thigh gaps, or flawless complexions?

Sometimes I think back to my little group of best girlfriends that I loved and grew up with in high school. I imagine what we would have been like, had our group selfies not been taken on cameras that needed a week to develop the film.

There was always one of us with our eyes shut, or an almost grotesque expression captured at that awkward moment of shifting from talking into laughing. These types of pictures are special, and nearly dinosaur-like, because they are genuine candids.

My favorite pictures of my little girls are when I accidentally take one of them laughing together in between the “say cheese!” photographs I was trying for. My favorite ones of myself, however, are ones where I look my best. I’m terribly hypocritical.

Recently, I decided to share this picture of me with my two girls.

My baby had fallen asleep, which is rare—if she naps, it’s in her crib, and not in my arms. My oldest cuddled up next to me—another rarity, as she’s not much of a “sitter” in general, much less on the couch—neither am I really. But here I was with two of the most important people in the world snuggled around me, and my phone just happened to be right there on the edge of the couch.

I took a picture.

My daughter put her thumb up, and it was the silliest, cutest picture ever. It wasn’t the most wonderful portrait of me, but I thought about that picture of my grandparents on my dad’s plaid 70s-era sofa, laughing, and looking happy, and I made a firm decision not to care.

I’m not suggesting that we stop admiring well-thought-out beauty, or that we all ban filters on Instagram. I’m not even suggesting that this is a completely unique experience, since my husband recently pointed out that we’re almost regressing to paintings—the epitome of a properly developed visual portrayal.

I am offering that we remember what a truly great photograph captures—emotion.

Happiness.

Love.

A moment in time that was special enough to want to hold onto, and re-discover later.

My kids might not be going through old shoe boxes looking at Polaroids, but I hope that they take the time to appreciate all of these moments of their lives and mine that I try to freeze-frame for them. I hope, more than anything, that they notice what matters.

The post My Kids Won’t Notice My Thigh Gap in Photographs, but They’ll Notice This. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

There’s this meme that flies around Facebook every now and then, that bugs the shit out of me.

It’s supposed to be an introvert’s brain, and it’s this line that swiggles around in some form of, I guess, thinking pattern, that makes no real sense as to why it’s an introvert’s, unless, I suspect, you’re either an introvert, or a thinker.

I was always the loud girl.

I was the girl who friends told at my-first-slumber-parties that I was bossy. (Usually said in a soda-fueled chaos, equivalent to one-too-many-glasses-of-wine overnights a few years later.)

I was always assertive, and passionate, and outspoken.

I live, currently, in a house on a hill in the semi-country with my family; with two children and a husband. I have no friends, not really. I have several friends actually, but they live nowhere near me, or they do, but they don’t have little kids, or they have kids, but our schedules never mesh—that sort of thing.

I live, essentially, in reclusion—this writer on a hill with her young-kid family, and I would be the perfect introvert, except for that I’m not.

There’s this other idea that floats around in general, and it’s more permeative than a cute meme I see sometimes on Facebook. It’s that kind and smart girls are quiet.

I am kind. I am smart. I don’t prefer to be quiet.

(I’ve met a few people who I assumed were thoughtful or nice because they were quiet, only to later discover otherwise—there’s this funny thing about assumptions.)

Until we stop pretending that it’s either special, or different even, or ideal to be this introverted caricature, we will never fully embrace the roundedness of being human, let alone of being a woman.

My best friend is an introvert. My own identical twin is classically introverted as well. I am not dogging the introvert, but I am suggesting that these descriptions I often see are neither my sister nor my friend.

Both women are socially capable to the point of it being curious that they are introverts, if you didn’t know them better (or if you didn’t truly understand what it means to be introverted or extroverted). They are not necessarily shy. They are kind. They are smart. I think they would both prefer to hold their speech until it was properly thought through.

Yet I’m a woman raising two daughters. I suspect that neither of my girls are introverts. (Although both live in a house on a quiet hill, and are kind, and are thoughtful, and are smart.)

I would love to see us all embrace the loud girls. I would adore to see this done without pretending that we are fighting against a claustrophobic stereotype, like I am now.

When I find an adorable, extrovert meme on Facebook—especially when they are directed at women—we are considered fun. We are “wild.” We are “bold,” or “fierce.” We are these nice words for living, breathing people with ideas that need some sort of justification for opening our mouths and letting out thoughts.

Unless we would rather be called “bitch.” Or introvert.

The post I Would Love to See Us All Embrace the Loud Women. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

It’s easy to throw around cute phrases like “dance as if no one’s watching,” or to tell people to love themselves with wild abandon.

But in the real world, we have stress, and bullies, and hierarchies, and media, and relationships, and a myriad of other factors that contribute not only to who we are, but to how we perceive ourselves.

I spent a lot more time than I’d like to think about being eating disordered. I know that full recoveries are rare, but I’m one of them. Still, body image, self-love, and even food are things that I encounter every day, especially since I’m raising two girls.

It’s generally widely accepted that the concept and standard of beauty changes, and contorts generationally with time. With this in mind, it’s important to consider that having a stable, steady self-perception is likely not easy, or even normal. In other words, particularly as a woman, how can we embrace and love ourselves, when society is regularly switching up how we’re “supposed” to behave, and what we’re “supposed” to look like?

It’s arguable that we as women help to shape these morphing expectations, and I’m sure that in some part we do. Yet in a clearly patriarchal society, many of the displays of ideal femininity and appearance are not dictated by women at all.

So how do we do it?

How do we love ourselves in a world that benefits from telling us we’re too fat, and we need to buy this to lose the weight, or that these pants will make us look better, or that this goddess on the magazine cover is who we should try to emulate this week, and then let’s be her the next?

We do this:

1. We embrace change.

My body has changed so much over these years that I’ve lived inside of this skin.

Aside from growing into a woman from a girl, I’ve given birth twice. My body has shown me again and again that change is inevitable, and it’s fundamental that I embrace these changes rather than fight them. Even more, life doesn’t stand still, and life has its phases. It’s all temporary.

2. We embrace differences.

When I was younger, I was easily envious of other women’s beauty—until I learned that I can admire beauty without comparing myself to it. This mindset has made me, first and foremost, a more supportive woman to others, and it’s also made me a much happier human being. More than this, beauty has many forms, and it’s absolutely true that real beauty lies within.

3. We stay strong.

Sometimes the world will tell us we aren’t beautiful.

We will be too loud. Or too this. Or too that.

I’ve said that I’m raising two daughters, but I’ll say this as well: they are not the same because they’re both female. Their personalities are already gloriously unique, and gloriously different from each other. It’s a reminder to me, as a mother and as a person, that I want myself and my children to move through life with enough grace to care about how we impact these people around us, but without losing our innate individuality along the way.

4. We cry.

Okay, to be fair, I don’t like crying, and I rarely do it. This said, I believe in experiencing life and its difficulties rather than glossing over them. It’s been a powerful experience for me to acknowledge how I feel, and to sometimes acknowledge that I don’t like feeling this way, and to remember that just because I’m angry, or sad, or overwhelmed in this moment right here, this doesn’t mean that it’s permanent either. It’s just another sensation of being alive.

5. We dance.

This is so damn cheesy that I almost want to apologize for this suggestion, but I can’t and I won’t.

There are two kinds of people in life: those who dance at weddings and have a really great fucking time, and those that sit on the sidelines wishing they “could” dance.

We all can dance. We don’t need lessons. We just need to listen to the rhythm of our hearts.

The post How to Really Dance Like No One’s Watching. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Recently I dyed my hair blue.

I did it for one reason, and one reason alone: because I felt like it.

I’m a chronic, glorious over-thinker. I practice yoga pretty much every day, in addition to other forms of exercise, to get out of my mind and back into my physical body. Yet, if I’m being honest, I am someone who easily lives inside of my head.

So I dyed my hair blue, and I decided to not over-think it. To be fair, I had to make the appointment, and I did have a week or so when I could have cancelled it, so it wasn’t exactly as spontaneous as that stripe of green Manic Panic I did in my friend’s bathroom the summer before 9th grade. Still, it felt spontaneous and fun. I felt fun.

In my “real life,” I’m a mom to two children, a wife, a writer, and a handful of other roles that I can claim. These days, however, “Mom” is the role that I wear first and foremost, since my kids are small and physically dependent on me.

My oldest daughter ecstatically matched her dress to my hair when I came home from the salon. For days afterward, she would lose what she was talking about when she looked at me, instead stopping mid-sentence and uttering “blue” while staring at my hair.

She’s too young to care what her friends think about it. I’m mainly home all day. It seemed like the perfect time to do something so simple, and yet so freeing mentally.

I learned these things from randomly dying my hair blue at age 36:

1. People don’t compliment each other enough.

Many people have told me that they love my hair, and even that they’re jealous of it. Many people, too, have said nothing at all. I mentioned to my sister that this silence can, I guess, be taken for disapproval. I told her that I genuinely don’t care, since I (and my husband, and my girls) love it. She offered that, in her experience, people in general don’t offer sincere compliments like I do.

I believe in compliments. There’s no real downside to handing them out when they’re heartfelt, and, equally, most of us could use the practice in receiving them. (Here’s a tip: just say “thank you”—that’s it, “thank you.”)

2. Self-love really is internal.

If we’re looking outside of ourselves for approval and self-love, then every single time we will not find it. Loving ourselves truly starts within.

3. Children are hilarious.

As an overall rule, I believe that hair is an accessory to have fun with. In this spirit, I’ve done a lot of different things with my hair. One of my favorite ways I’ve worn it is full-on platinum blonde. I’d almost forgotten how children loved my platinum hair, until I was reminded of it after dying it blue.

My husband couldn’t stop laughing, as we were walking from the parking lot into the grocery store, and he saw an-about-3-year-old child press his face against the glass of a minivan to see me better.

4. Nothing is forever.

I lament this often—that nothing is for forever.

These days with my young children can be challenging, but their childhoods go by so quickly. I think back also on my marriage, and on us dating as kids, and how fast these years together are moving.

Hair? It’s important. To say that hair is not important would not be fully understanding how people use their appearances as an art of self-expression. Regardless, it’s all temporary, and the blue washing out of my hair slowly is another reminder of this. More, it’s a remembrance to live my life each day as best as I can. Some days, assuredly, I’m better at it than others. But I have this one life, and I want to display to my two children how much more I enjoy it when I don’t take myself too seriously.

The post 4 Truths of Being Human That I Noticed When I Dyed My Hair Blue. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Marriage isn’t as cool as it used to be, and I’m fine with that.

I’m both pro everyone getting married who wants to, and I’m also alright with anyone who thinks it’s not for them.

But this is why I got married:

I wasn’t always the girl who dreamed of the white wedding, the names of her children, or the picket-fence-surrounded house. However, I did meet the love of my life at age 14, and I married him at 25.

I loved him for over 10 years before we chose to walk down the aisle in front of our friends and family. We’d lived together, not only in a few different apartments around our college town, but we also moved across the country. We lived miles away from where we grew up, and miles from anyone else that we loved.

I already knew sacrifice. I already knew commitment. I already knew that love sometimes isn’t enough for two people, and that work, dedication and forgiveness are just as important as having the same sense of humor, or enjoying looking at each other across a candle-lit table in a crowded restaurant.

I already went through the “in sickness and in health” bit, too. In short, our relationship was significant to me before he asked me to marry him, and before I said yes.

I did say “yes,” and we got married, and I took his last name.

I wore a white dress, and I had a traditional wedding, including a wedding party of my favorite people, delicious food, and a dollar dance. On my left hand I wear an engagement ring, a wedding band, and an anniversary one as well.

I married this man that I call my husband, my significant other, my better half, my best friend, my baby daddy, and my lover. I married him because I wanted it to be hard — mentally and emotionally — to walk away.

When life gets rocky, when I resemble more of an exhausted mother-monster than the woman he proposed to 11 years ago, and when everything about being an adult is momentarily overwhelming, I wanted it to be hard as hell to walk away.

To me, marriage is more than an ancient tradition of dowries. I’m married, and I’m a feminist. I’m not religious. I got married because I wanted to love this one man for forever, or for as long as our forever on Earth could be.

Marriage also has practical benefits, and this aspect of a legal union is only a part of why marriage equality has been worth fighting for. More, as someone who does believe in equality, both inside of a marriage, at work and in all aspects of life and humanity, I can’t help but ask myself, rather than throw marriage away as outdated, why can’t we rewrite it to better fit into modern society?

Ironically, it seems that finances might even be the reason that marriage rates are plummeting. My husband and I were just talking about this while cooking last night.

While apathy towards marriage has long been accepted as the reason that fewer Millennials are wanting to get married, there are also a myriad of other considerations, and money is a main one.

A party like I had is expensive. Would I have gotten married without it? Absolutely, but I was extremely fortunate to not have to make that choice, and it would be easy for me, or anyone else in my situation, to say we would still get married without a large formal event.

Still, in my life, being a wife has been something that has always been positive. I’m not claiming to have a perfect marriage, a perfect life, or perfect circumstances, but being married, for instance, has made the legalities of having my children easier not only for me, but especially for my husband as their father. My married status has been convenient for many aspects of daily living, including benefiting from the insurance through my husband’s job. Yet none of these perks are why I got married, and they aren’t why I stay married either.

Divorce serves a place in society, not the least of which is to allow women to leave abusive relationships (just for example), and not getting married has a place, too. There are less tangible benefits to encouraging specifically women to date, have successful careers, and to see the merit in staying single. It’s becoming more and more socially acceptable to avoid marriage, and it’s becoming more commonplace as well.

But I wanted to get married, and I’ve never regretted doing so.

And although I didn’t dream of my wedding as a little girl, I do sometimes now daydream about dancing with him in my wedding gown — and that smile on his face of pure, delirious joy — when I’m feeling stuck in the trenches with dirty diapers and temper tantrums — my own and our kids’ — and I miss that rather naive girl who met him all those years ago.

I’m relieved we had to wade through our hardest years together after we got married, because we couldn’t just break up and move on and grow apart.

I’m thankful for something that others might see as just a piece of paper, but that I see as the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

The post This Is Why I Got Married. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Athletic greatness, handsome good looks, brainy grades—parents freely brag about these attributes and achievements of our kids.

I hear about how great so-and-so is at this particular sport, or how smart she is, or, even with tiny toddlers, how many words they already speak, or how much they’re already moving around.

I wish we valued kindness this way.

I see articles shared on Facebook about how to raise creative children, how to raise independent thinkers, or how to encourage genius. Over and over again, we confront or praise parenting styles, sleeping styles, and we debate food choices, and where to send our kids to school.

I wish we were as concerned with raising children who don’t bully, and who value simply being nice with being as fundamentally important as qualifying for the gifted program.

I’m not sure how my girls will do in school. Right now, they are only a preschooler and a toddler. I don’t know if they’ll excel in sports, or if they’ll need special help in math, or if they’ll develop ADHD like their mama.

I don’t know if my decision to not let them cry it out will end up being positive for their future relationships, or if the gymnastics lessons I put my oldest in will be something she still finds worthy of her time at 13.

I do want my daughters to enjoy school, and to find success in life, but I want them to know that my view of success might not be what is expected.

I want my girls to go to school and to be kind to others. I don’t want my children to tease other little girls over their weight, or their hair, or their clothes. I don’t care if I’m brought a report card filled with “A’s” if my children are cruel or bullies.

If we want to create a future world for our children that’s not dismissive of racism, sexism, or that’s so shallow in how we perceive and judge other human beings, then we need to be placing more effort into contemplating how and why we are praising our children—we need to examine our definitions of “success,” and failure, too.

Success to me is raising kids with enough self-confidence to not need to pick on other kids. I’ll be successful not only if I raise children who eat vegetables and who sleep well, and who can kick a goal on the soccer field, but I’ll have “successfully” parented if my kids know the value of offering genuine compliments, and if they show kindness and grace towards both themselves and other human beings.

I know this is idealistic to the point of being almost ridiculous. This idea that we could have elementary schools where kids aren’t afraid to go and be made fun of, where playgrounds aren’t breeding grounds for eating disorders, and where children are free to be their naturally wonderful, diverse selves is, arguably, not how humanity works.

Still, I’m trying to find the excitement in going on Facebook to see one more post arguing that co-sleeping is harmful or that “free-range parenting” is ideal, and I can’t.

Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, debating how stay-at-home mothers and working-outside-the-home mothers are different and the same, helicopter parenting—these topics are important, but I’m finding myself wondering why we aren’t talking about how our kids are treating their peers? Do we value competitiveness, winning, and intelligence on arbitrary tests as so crucial, that we forget that people aren’t this one-dimensional?

Confidence, ingenuity, and interpersonal skills can often get us far in life, and these talents aren’t tested as easily at a desk with a freshly sharpened pencil.

Yet I’ll continue to play this game of child rearing.

I will put my girls into sports, and help them at school, and teach them how to count—this is, after all, a part of what makes a person able to navigate life well.

I will also teach them “please” and “thank you.” I’ll teach them to have empathy when someone else gets hurt, and how to ask, “Are you okay?”

I’ll attempt with all my heart to show them that listening is more than waiting to speak, and that loving someone isn’t always easy, and that all of us have flaws and that all of us are special and wonderful, and needing to be shown care.

I’m trying to teach my kids kindness because I don’t know what lies ahead for them in their lives—not possessing any accurate crystal balls—but I do know this: that the future does lie in their hands, in the hands of their peers, and that I want so much for them to more readily reach out and hold onto one another.

The post Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping, and Helicopter Parenting Aren’t What We Should Be Arguing About—Parents Need to Talk About This. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Six things I want to tell myself:

I sat down to write a list of things that I’d tell pre-mom me, but I stopped after four items.

I realized that pre-mom me had been on the right track, and that my ignorance of some things—like not appreciating those times when I could sit on the couch and read a book without pictures for an hour and a half—was not only normal, but fine.

I never liked naps in my life until I was pregnant with my first child, and while I’d love embracing them now, I can’t. More, I wouldn’t want to change that pre-mom me was kind of hyperactive—I liked her just fine.

I would, however, remind now-mom me of this:

This morning, you were driving down the road, playing a song from your teenage years (The Flaming Lips). For that instant, in the driver’s seat of your car, carefully carrying your children to an appointment in the falling snow, you felt completely present in this space in your life. Your adult worries, and grown-up concerns dripped away, along with that catchy guitar riff.

Remember that music is transporting, and that your girls love it, too. Remember that on these days when the world seems too much for the little girl that still lives in a quiet corner of your heart, to turn on the stereo full blast and dance with your kids.

I would offer this to my current self as well:

You’re doing a really great fucking job. I know you get down on yourself for being impatient, sensitive and introspective, but you are doing better than good enough as a mom—you’re fantastic at it.

I would tell myself this, too:

Grow up. When you begin to care that you aren’t a famous writer, or if you have enough real-life friends instead of long-distance ones—grow up. You are a grown-ass woman, and your children need you to display healthy self-confidence.

I would whisper this:

Be gentle. When your temper rises, your patience leaves you, and your neck hurts from making important decisions for these growing people that you’re in charge of raising, be gentle with yourself. Remember that you are doing your best, that you are making good decisions (and that there isn’t always one good choice), and you deserve patience and tenderness. (And offering these things to yourself will help your children learn grace towards themselves, too.)

I would shout this:

Make more time for your husband! He’s missing you as much as you miss him, and he’s working earnestly to be a good husband and father. Take more time to really look into his eyes when you ask him how his day was, and when you kiss him, try harder to be there instead of thinking about some other concern that doesn’t need you in that moment as badly as he does.

I would write this:

Write love on your heart. When the world makes you feel bitter, angry and resentful, etch love over these wounds instead.

Write love onto your actions, onto your words, and be more careful with what you say out loud. Offer apologies freely when they are merited, and this includes to yourself, because you are human and fallible, even though you are also “Mom.”

The post A Love Note to Myself on a Random Day of Motherhood. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

We all have good days and bad days.

Everyone has days when we’re “on”—happy and feeling great—and everyone has days when we’re “off”—not feeling well, or we’re moody or grumpy. Kids are no different. More, how kids act at home, versus how they act with new people visiting the house for the first time, or how they behave out in public on any random afternoon in the grocery store, is not an overall picture of either our children or our parenting skills.

One Monday a few weeks ago, I was running errands with my girls all day long. I didn’t know it at the time, but the next day I would come down with mastitis—and the woman who shot me a blatantly dirty look, when she heard me speaking in slight frustration at one of my kids, surely had no idea either that I was already feeling incredibly weak, exhausted and worn down (or that it was the thirty-fifth pair of snow boots, inside of the third store, that my little girl had tried on and not liked).

We have no idea what a family is going through, or an individual for that matter. I think of this often while driving.

One day after two weeks of no sleep with a baby cutting four teeth at once—the true definition of insanity, I’m convinced—I was driving home with my daughters; maneuvering the winding, country road to our house. I turned a sharp, 90-degree curve, and was just about to put on my turn signal to head into my own driveway—being exceedingly careful, between my exhaustion and this precious cargo in my backseat. The man in the car behind us sped around and yelled, “You’re an awful driver,” so loudly that I heard it in my car, well into my driveway, with no windows down.  It shook me up initially, but then I thought about how sad it is that someone could have so much anger for a car going the speed limit and then making a right turn.

Another time, a few summers ago, after a childhood friend of mine died, I became the driver behind another car, feeling nearly fed up with her up-and-down speed, but couldn’t pass. It popped into my head that I had no idea what this driver—as a human being and not just another inanimate vehicle on the road—was going through. After all, my friend’s mom was out in the world going through her normal, daily motions, after the loss of a lifetime.

It’s easy to forget that there are people driving the other cars on the road, or that there’s a real-life mom on the other side of that computer screen, blogging her perfectly imperfect life.

Really, we have no idea what a child’s life is or has been like. We have no idea what struggles others face, unless we know them well, and sometimes not even then.

Lately, I find those over-the-top baby photos, of kids with gigantic bows and multiple filters, creating just the right look—no drool or rashes—grotesque. Kids are beautiful as they are, but I realize that my judgment is ironic and self-damning.

Who am I to judge the person who wants an adorable keepsake snapshot of their kid? Have I forgotten that I, too, largely share pictures of my children when they’re smiling, or candids that somehow turned out lovely and charming? It’s human nature to gloss over the ugliness. People don’t like messy.

We like our crazy and our chaos to be contained just enough to be able to turn it into a funny, relatable story, or to be fixable, so that we can feel good about ourselves, the heroine. We want the statuesque Madonna cradling the sleeping baby, but we don’t want the infant screaming his head off in front of us at the grocery-store checkout.

We want to place our children into milestone categories, and our reactions to be easily separated into “Good Mom” or “Bad Mom,” but we forget common, human variables like sleep, illness, worry, loss, or stress at work.

Being a person is messy—and motherhood and growing up are not always tidy, pretty and picture-worthy.

For me, motherhood frequently looks like finding simple ways to attractively put the hair up that I haven’t washed in three days. It looks like more food under the dining table after I just wiped up yesterday’s crumbs. It smells, recently, a lot like poopy diapers and fruit snacks. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.)

My oldest daughter is a people lover. She adores making new friends, and she easily becomes animated and energetic around new faces that she’s eager to play with. Occasionally, I’ll want to apologize for her excitable behavior, but I usually stop myself. I have to then fight feeling defensive—that anyone who doesn’t appreciate her sincere happiness—albeit maybe exuberance—to be in their presence doesn’t deserve my apology or explanation either.

And then we’re at home. We’re not running errands on an exhausted Monday, and I’m happy and healthy and rested. My kids are both their silly, wonderful, kind-hearted selves, and this is them on a typical day, and my reactions to the regular stresses of life with children are much different than when I’m haggardly bustling two kids in and out of car seats.

Let’s not forget that kids are not short adults. They are learning, and growing, and they have big emotions they don’t know how to deal with yet—and it’s part of my job as “Mom” to help them.

And I might be “Mom,” but I’m definitely no saint. Sure, my life is blessed and beautiful, but it’s also full of trying to figure out what on Earth to do with the baby while I get my 5-year-old on the school bus, and it’s less than 7 degrees outside, and my husband has left for work early. It’s filled with deciding whether or not the baby is crying in her crib because she needs a few minutes of restlessness before she falls asleep, or if she won’t nap that day. It’s filled with understanding when to hug my child instead of scold her; it’s recognizing when I need a hug.

Our lives are filled with choices. Sometimes we make good ones, and sometimes we don’t. I want to teach my children to give others the grace to make mistakes. I want to teach them, through example, how to give themselves grace, too.

The post What You Forgot When You Judged My Kids and Me. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.