Category Archives: Inspirations

This post is either for other moms of young kids or for women who’d like a reminder to be vigilant with their chosen method of birth control. You’ve been warned…

There was a day, long long ago and far away, when I dreamed of having a lovely family full of children to raise. I believed that Perry and I would have a home with laughter, deep conversations, and lots of hugs. Originally, we thought we’d have four, but after I was so miserable with the first pregnancy, we cut that down to two. With twins the second go round, we were up to three. Then, with divine intervention and a lack of prevention, number four came into our home. The dream was complete!

We’d have kids who played together and laughed a lot. He and I would craft their childhood to give them strong spiritual training, a worthy education, and protection from the hard things in the world, at least until we could help them interpret it. We’re still aiming for this.

So why do I feel like I spend all my time holding back the tide of kid junk taking over the house, and acting as referee for silly kid arguments? This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing as a mom, at least not this much!

And let me tell you something else. When people say that having kids is expensive, they need to be a little more specific. Anyone can imagine that having kids will incur some expected costs: clothes, shoes, food, diapers, high chairs and strollers, child care.  No one ever told me that the natural destructive tendencies of children would cause me to need to pay for things I’ve already paid for, like our backyard fence. Oh yeah, my kids spent time climbing up and over our fence so many times that after enough rain, the supports weakened and our fence fell into our neighbor’s yard. More than a thousand dollars later, we now have a repaired fence.

My kids also like to crush things into powder, like bricks and lumps of clay they’ve dug up in the backyard. If they were sentenced to hard labor, they’d keel over and die, but they do this for fun in the backyard. I still don’t know who figured it out, but some kid realized that the dirt in Georgia is mostly clay. So they dug it up, dried it, beat it into powder, mixed it with water and made tiny clay pots out of it, which they dried in the sun. Then they went in my school supply closet (yes, without asking!) and took paint to decorate their creation. So now we have crumbly little pots in random locations in the house and yard.

Recently I instructed them to make cards to go with their teacher appreciation gifts at the end of our school year. They were told to go to the basement craft table and use construction paper, crayons, markers and colored pencils for these creations. Someone (they won’t tell me who exactly) decided to get the fabric paint left from a birthday party craft and use that to make the cards. Not only were the cards heavy and sticky and took days to dry, but all my expensive fabric paint was gone at the end of this crafty incident.

They also like to do dangerous things. My middle daughter was sitting at the top of closed bleachers without a railing after church the other night. I almost had heart palpitations! We also had a neighbor stop by our house to inform us that they had found our three oldest kids perched in a tree that was leaning precariously over the lake in our neighborhood. The tree had started to lean after one of the big storms in the past year, but all the kids could see was an easy place to climb and hang out. Any adult watching envisioned the roots giving way and the kids being dumped into the water with a tree falling on top of them.

Yes, they were in this tree…

Another time they went off bike riding with their five year old sister and climbed another (upright) tree. The baby couldn’t get up, so they pulled her up with them. Of course, she also couldn’t get down. That led to another conversation, educating them about the limits of a five year old. I actually was glad they wanted to include her, just concerned about their lack of judgement. Remember my post about the five year old and her head injury at the unwitting hands of her brother? Oh, the plight of the youngest!

Maybe this post made you laugh because you have (or had) young kids who performed their own shenanigans. Or maybe you’ve set an alarm on your phone to remember to take that pill every day. Personally, I wrote this one so I won’t forget. Any of it. You know, it amazes me how fast the time is actually going by, even though it often feels like I spend the days picking up stray socks and turning off abandoned lights. I only have 7 years left with my oldest before she goes to college! And one day, my house will be quiet and neat and I probably will miss all the chaos of these days, even if I don’t believe it now. But I don’t want to forget about the backyard pottery, or the fabric paint cards, or the sugar free cakes they’ve baked for me. These are my babies, this is my family, and this is my life. And it’s a good one!

What about you? Any special memories you want to be sure to hold on to? Please share in the comments below!

My five year old split the back of her head open this week.

This was a classic example of the beating the youngest child in the family takes when her siblings are more than a couple of years older. I didn’t witness the incident: I was at work. So I’ll describe the situation as I understand it happened…

The kids were reciting a poem of some sort that was posted on the wall. The littlest one couldn’t see it well, so she stood up on a chair to get closer. When she started to complain that she still couldn’t see it, her brother decided to help her out and move the chair closer. Fast. Of course, that meant that as he yanked the chair forward, she didn’t move with it and fell over backward into the table.

A flurry of activity ensued, complete with crying and chaos. Their teacher immediately applied first aid to the head wound and called for my husband, who fortunately was working from home that day. I received a phone call from him just as I was completing one surgery and waiting for the next to begin. That prompted a volley of phone calls back and forth from me to him to the charge nurse at my office determine if she could be seen by the pediatrician. When it was determined that she’d have to go to urgent care to close her laceration, he loaded her up in the car and started driving.

The chariot..

Picture it: I’m in the operating room when I get the phone call that my baby is bleeding and may need stitches. I’m envisioning the excessive bleeding that comes from head wounds and the hysterics that were surely happening at the time. I think any mom that works outside of the home will agree with me on this statement: When you are at work and your child is hurt and you can’t leave, you feel like you might actually split yourself in two and simultaneously run out the door and stay and do your job. It’s almost an out-of-body experience.

So what did I do? I stayed on the phone as long as I could. I texted our regular pediatrician to figure out the fastest way to get her seen in our system and I kept getting the instructions to my husband. I listened carefully to my daughter in the background as he drove her to the doctor’s office. That helped me to know she didn’t have a concussion or any mental status changes, because she was very loudly clarifying for him that she wouldn’t need stitches because her “head was not broken”. I straddled the line between objective clinician and worried mommy. And I stayed and did my job. By the time I finished the three surgeries for that day, her scalp was patched up with skin glue and she was on her way to a Chick-Fil-A lunch with Daddy.

It was a tough moment. I mean, I’m the mommy – I’m supposed to be there to comfort and console and give the hugs and kisses and first aid! Besides, I’ve always handled the medical stuff, whether it’s the routine checkups or emergencies. Medicine is my other home, so I’m comfortable in that space, I speak the language, I know how to navigate the system. So I’ve always been the one to handle these situations. Well, not this time.

I learned an important lesson that day. My husband is a fully participating father, one who could stop everything he was doing and handle an emergency. He’s the one who distracted her so she wouldn’t cry while her head wound was being washed out. He’s the one who kept sending me updates by text because he knew I was worried. He’s the one who knew to loosen her hair elastic so the doctor could use her hair to pull together the edges of the wound once the glue was applied. He came home with the instructions for me about how long to wait before I washed her hair again.

Auntie A knew how to apply pressure and stop bleeding. She handled the emergency and the other kids racing around trying to “help”. She called in my husband and comforted my son (who felt incredibly guilty for causing his sister’s accident). She kept the big kids while he took the baby to get fixed up.

My back up is incredible. Would I have rather been there to take care of my five year old during the crisis? Absolutely. But knowing that when something goes down that my husband is completely capable of handling it is a salve to my soul. It’s hard to leave your children (sometimes). But when you do, the biggest fear is that something scary will happen to them while you are away. And things will happen, because kids are kids. The fact that it doesn’t have to be me that’s there in the case of every emergency brings peace. What a gift!

But I need to tell the truth here. I haven’t trusted him to be fully involved. Awhile ago, I read something about the concept of a “primary parent” and I attached myself to this concept. You know what that made him? Secondary. That thinking was damaging, both because it left him as less, and because it placed the burden of parenting on me more than him.  I’m not talking about the actual daily work of feeding and growing the kids. It’s the psychic burden of feeling that the load needed to be carried alone, maybe with his help sprinkled around like some pepper on top. It’s too heavy!

Maybe you are a single parent and that burden is yours because their other parent isn’t involved. But I think that whether we are single or married, many of us do what I’ve been doing – shouldering a burden alone that we don’t need or want to carry. I got into the mindset when I was breastfeeding that the baby care was all on me, which then in my mind transferred to child care and now preteen care being mine alone.  When I really pay attention though, my husband has been right there, training their character, teaching life lessons, encouraging play and creativity and bringing his gifts to the table. The ones I don’t have. And I’ve been missing it.

Is it possible you’ve been missing your support that’s been there all along? Whether it’s your spouse or another person in your life, is there someone there who has been helping you shoulder the weight and you haven’t noticed? Or maybe they’ve been willing to be more involved and you haven’t wanted to trust them with the responsibility. But aren’t you tired? That’s what trying to carry the psychic weight of raising four children alone has been doing for me. And the truth all along has been that I’ve never been alone; I just wasn’t willing to see the support I had.

So I’m learning. And growing. I’ve started keeping a new kind of list, one that remembers the gifts and contributions he’s making all the time that I would have missed before. His work, his gifts, his strengths: they’ve always been there. I’m the one who is seeing them for the powerful and beautiful thing they are, how my kids need him to balance my influence, and how much better I am when I trust him. It’s a lesson that’s been a long time coming. It’s not easy, but I’m holding on to it.

How about you? Who is your home base? How can you see your help and watch it grow? Please share in the comments below!

I think I’m finally getting it.

Here we are a few days before Mother’s Day, and I’ve been reflecting on what Mother’s Day is really about. I mean, for me, Mother’s Day isn’t about sleeping in (ha!), breakfast in bed, peace and quiet and someone else taking over my mommy duties. Until my kids are older, that’s just not what Mother’s Day looks like. It’s highly unlikely that unless I spend the day away from my house that this Sunday will look much different from most Sundays. We’ll get up, go to church, come home and prepare lunches, hang around for a few hours and then get cleaned up and have dinner. There will be cards and gifts exchanged to the moms and aunties and phone calls to those far away. But I’m starting to see that Mother’s Day is about something other than being appreciated and getting a day off.

I’m one of the fortunate women who still have my mother around to be able learn from even though she lives far away. I also have one grandmother, a godmother, and two mother-in-laws. Our aunt lives with us and my children have a godmother a few states away. So I have a wonderful group of women to appreciate, especially at this time of year.

Now, you know I’m a planner, right? I started thinking and shopping for Mother’s Day a few weeks ago. Many of the cards and gifts had to be mailed AND it’s Mother’s Day, so I have to come with my A game. No late deliveries for this holiday! At this point, everything has been mailed and has or will arrive before Sunday. So I’ve had some time to reflect on these women.

It’s interesting to look at the lives of the women who’ve cared for me, especially as I’m currently in the trenches of raising my own babies. I find myself wondering all the time, “How did she do that?” and trying to find ways to live up to the standard of motherhood that I’ve seen in my life. My own mother stayed home with my brother and me for a few years, went back to work part time so we could have tennis, piano, violin, ballet, football and other extracurricular activities. She drove us everywhere, kept up with everything, and always had food and kept the house clean and organized. No, everything wasn’t perfect, but who has a perfect home? My mom was a phenomenon (and still is!). My mothers-in-law are a constant source of encouragement and love. My godmother lived in the next building when I was growing up and was always around for advice, excursions, and a place to get away when I needed it. She’s recently been texting me pictures of drawings and art projects I made for her when I was small, and it’s been bittersweet to remember our relationship (because she also lives far away now). My grandmother was a tiny, 4 foot 11 inch powerhouse of a woman and I remember her feeding us at her house and visiting her at the beach on Martha’s Vineyard. My kids’ godmother is my best friend. Her love, support, and wisdom guide me and reassure me when I’m positive that I’m ruining my children, or can’t figure out what to do.

As a physician for women, one thing that I’ve seen over and over again is insecurity and fear. We all wonder if we’re doing “it” right, if we are smart and beautiful, if we are enough. When you’re a mother, that sense of not measuring up is amplified by the fear of failing our children. No one has a formula or cookbook for raising kids, and no one child is just like another, so most mothering is done on the fly, with instinct and hopefully, some loving advice and empathy. I don’t know what my mothering experience will produce in my children, so I have no perfect pearls of wisdom to share. But I do have encouragement! One of my favorite poems of all time is by Marianne Williamson, and this one is framed and hung in three different places in my house. It gives me courage and daring, two things mothers need in raising children. So in honor of Mother’s Day, here it is!

I don’t know everything you face in mothering. No one sees all the wins and messes you go through in your time with your children. But I know this: You are here and were made for them. The spirit in you is powerful beyond measure and you can shine in the same way you want for them. So be brilliant, talented, fabulous, and let your light shine! It is part of your legacy as a mother. And thank you for being the mother that you are, with all the love and care and energy you share with your children and with the world. Happy Mother’s Day!

Ahhh, spring! The warm breezes bring flower petals and the notes of early morning bird song, the light perfume of flowers in the air and… End of year testing! You might think that because we homeschool, we get to avoid the crunch of school testing at the end of the year. Far from it. We do the standardized testing that the state requires, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This week was Memory Master!

Huh? Let me explain. In our classical education homeschool group, each week our elementary school age kids learn a series of facts (called memory work) in english, geography, math, science, latin. By the end of the year, they have learned more than 500 pieces of information. Memory master is for kids who want to demonstrate that they have mastery of the information by reciting each of these facts for their teacher at home, a independent tester, their tutor at school, and finally the director of the program. They must know all of the information from memory to achieve Memory Master. This year, my two oldest girls were ready to sit for the test…

As soon as I knew the date for Memory Master testing, I took that morning off work so that I could take them for the exam. We quizzed and practiced and reviewed and went over maps and sang memory songs. We sent them to bed on time the night before their exam. The morning of the test, I cooked a special high protein breakfast and packed up the girls and their test booklets.

When we got there, we stayed in the car for a few minutes. I prayed with them and listened to them pray for themselves. They asked me for lavender and rose oil (for peace and calm during the test), and I put a little on each neck. We went in and waited for the tutors and the girls sat close to me. When everything was ready, they went off to test.

Since I was going to have to wait for them for 1-2 hours, I brought work to do. The August schedule needs work and I had a bunch of other things to do, so I sat down and got to it. As I set about my busy work, I kept praying for them to get through the test successfully. I was begging God to help them remember all the information they studied so diligently to memorize. I knew how badly they wanted to achieve Memory Master and how disappointed they’d be if they failed. So I kept praying.

But then I thought about a question Aria had asked me earlier in the week. She’d said, “Mommy, will you be disappointed if I don’t get Memory Master?” I’d told her no, I wouldn’t be. I hugged her and told her that it didn’t matter to me and I would be proud of her hard work no matter what the result. But I reminded her that she’d probably be sad if she didn’t reach her goal, so she should keep studying. And so she did.

So why was I praying so hard for them to succeed, to make it, to win? Was achievement and success the only way this test could turn out well? If they failed the test, is it possible that they might learn something important from that experience? It occurred to me that if they failed, I was afraid that they would be so discouraged and hurt that they would suffer a crisis of confidence and not want to try again. I worried that if they didn’t reach their goal, they would think they weren’t smart and wonderful and lovable. I envisioned the tears and the consolation and the need for comforting instead of celebration, and I cringed at the thought.

Then I realized: These are my fears. They want to know that no matter what the outcome of the test, they are loved and special and wonderful and amazing and lovely and cherished. Yes, they want to succeed and gain the bragging rights and t shirt given only to Memory Masters, but most of all, they want to know that test or no test, they are worthy of love. So I started praying differently. I asked to be able to reflect back to them their goodness, no matter the outcome of the test. I asked to be able to see the lesson and gift in a failure, and to be able to help them weather that challenge if it came. I prayed to help them celebrate their hard work and perseverance, no matter the result, and for them to know deep inside that they are loved. And I waited.

Aria came out first. I could tell from the wide grin and bounding steps in her walk that she’d done it! Her tutor followed behind and reported that she had indeed completed all the recitation without mistake and had passed her test. We hugged and I spun Aria around while she laughed. She wandered off to play while we waited for Ana.

When Ana came out, I wasn’t sure what was happening. She had a smile on her face, but she said she wasn’t sure that she’d passed. It turns out that she made a minor error in her geography, but not one that was unrecoverable. After the tutor and the director conferred, they agreed that she knew her information and that she’d passed too!

What a relief! My girls worked hard and are seeing the benefit of their efforts. I’m thrilled that they are getting that lesson, because I hope it will motivate them to reach higher and work harder. But every experience in their lives won’t be a success. And as their mom, even though I want to shield them from pain and struggle and storms, I’m not going to be able to do that. Truthfully, if I could do it, I’d probably handicap them from growing into strong, healthy, resilient people. I want my children to learn how to persevere, and some of that lesson will be through hard work and failures. But if they learn that failure isn’t the end, that they are loved no matter their results, then they will be closer to being whole. And I want that for them, more than I want them to avoid the pain of failure. So what do I do? I’ll keep being here, standing behind them as they go out in the world. I hope that knowing I’m there loving them gives them strength, confidence, and comfort.

Have you found strength in your failures? How do you recover when you face a mistake? Please share in the comments below!

Welcome to the recap of Tea Talk: Food As Medicine Part 3 – Extreme Eating! We had a wonderful time together on March 10th, but I know there were many who wanted to be there and couldn’t come, so here’s a few pictures and a brief summary of what we talked about at the event…

Each time I do a talk, I make sure that I give copies of most of the recipes I made that day. I also provide other handouts to help if people want to dive deeper into the topics we discuss. So here a picture of my education table!

Because the topic at this event was Extreme Eating and I was giving an overview of different popular diets (or eating styles) today, I created a menu that allowed my guests to sample foods from each of the diets. As I did for the first two Talks, I prepared all the food (except the dips this time). My main focus this time was to review paleo, ketogenic, and vegan diets, so those are the food categories that I served. During the talk, I also reviewed detoxes and cleanses, fasting, and elimination diets, but it’s harder to sample those!

These were my paleo cinnamon spice mini muffins, sweetened with applesauce and stevia. They were so light and fluffy and delicious – my kids begged me to bring some home!

I also made some ketogenic blueberry mini muffins. These were a hit! None left over for the kiddos…

My salad was a brussels and kale shredded salad. This was actually a vegetarian and ketogenic option, because I included parmesan cheese and used coconut oil mayonnaise, but it could also be made vegan with vegannaise and omitting the cheese.

This was the vegan section! Whole fruits, a veggie assortment, and tomato-basil hummus, horseradish hummus, and a garlic dip. Love those veggies!

These were the chocolate brownie cookies I promised before the Talk. These were so good that when I went back to get the extras to take home to my munchkins, they were all gone! Looks like I’ll be baking some more for them! (If you want the recipe, go back to my last post and you can make some for yourself!)

At the last Talk I did a short cooking demo, but this time I shared some of my favorite cooking tools and books. This was the display!

It was an incredible day! We drank tea and ate, talked and learned, and had a great time. The incoming rain waited for the afternoon, so we had sunshine and light for our time together. I’m looking forward to the next one – I hope you can be there!

If you were able to attend the Talk Part 3, what was your favorite part of the morning? Whether you were there or not, what would you like to talk about in future events? Please share in the comments below!

I’m such a complainer.

Yes, I am. Well, maybe not always out loud.  I have this external put-on-your-big-girl-panties-and-deal-with-it attitude, but inside I’m grousing about what I don’t like and how I think things should be different. And too often, I am complaining out loud. I’m not suggesting that it’s best to be fake it and smile like everything is ok when it’s not. But have you ever noticed how contagious complaining is? It’s probably done in a commiserating way, as in “We’re in the same boat!”, but in the end, it just seems like there’s an I-have-it-worse-than-you quality to it. I’m guilty of that, for sure. From my own personal perspective, my life/work/family is tough! And there are parts of all of it that are. But not all. And certainly not most. Maybe there’s a different way to see it…

Dirty socks and shoes all over the floor…

My husband was talking to one of our friends this week about a relationship situation he was working through. As he was talking to Perry, he shared an analogy that I want to repeat, both because it was incredibly wise and I want to remember it, and also because I hope you’ll find it useful. He said that gratitude was like coolant in an engine: whether the engine was running hot or cold, the coolant was there to keep the temperature regulated. That gratitude does that for our emotional engine, because without it, we tend to let our emotional temperature get out of a healthy range.

I needed to hear that. Sometimes I get into this place where all I can see are the problems and obstacles and challenges and I’m frustrated and angry, thinking that somehow if my situation would change, I would feel better. But it’s not true. There can be all kinds of great things happening around me and I’m miserable because I’m zoned in on the things that aren’t going well. Recently, I’ve been dissatisfied at work. Has anything changed? Nope. I’ve been the lead MD for our group for two years (lots of extra work) and I’ve been at a new hospital (too far from home) for more than a year. I’ve just been aggravated about both of those things recently. What I’ve been missing though, is gratitude. For my patients, fewer nights at work, the fun people I get to work with, a nice office chair – all sorts of things. I had to pull out my gratitude journal and focus in on what was good at work so that that gratitude could cool off the engine, because it was running hot! Not trying to be Pollyanna here – I am tired and there’re a lot of hard things to deal with each day. But I’ve been so wrapped up in the challenges that I couldn’t see much of anything good.

Sneaking away to read again…

Here’s the other thing. I know that I have it good. So many people are suffering through truly awful situations in their lives. From adult children going into a downward spiral, to major illnesses, to mass shootings like the one that just happened in Florida, people have so many impossible problems in their lives that I feel kind of small for complaining about ordinary life. You know what though? A lot of us don’t see what good is right in front of us until tragedy strikes, and then we wish we had those routine days back. I want to see the beauty and miracle of the moments happening right now, just like we do when we look back through old photos. We’re able to remember the fun and good feelings of those moments when we look back. Why can’t we do that as we live the moments? I think we can.

Kids in the overgrown backyard…

The gratitude journal is essential. You can slow time and capture the good moments if you write them down. This week, I went through the house and took pictures of normal everyday things, even things that would normally bother me. Then I looked at them with fresh eyes – what does this ordinary thing mean in my life? The pile of shoes and dirty socks on the floor mean I have four healthy kids who were able to play outside today. My preteen hiding away reading in a chair means she’s home with me, safe and happy. My handmade ceramic mug is just a beautiful work of art, and that means I can see and enjoy it. My kids sitting outside together? Well, they’re still friends, even though they fight all the time. You get it. It’s easy to fall into the habit of seeing what’s wrong, what’s off, what’s not the way we want it. But it’s a practice to keep our eyes trained on the good happening around us, and we have to fight for it. And when we do, we start to see the good gifts in our lives everywhere. We just have to look!

Love that mug! Isn’t it beautiful?

Do you ever feel like everything is going wrong? How do you help yourself reclaim the beauty in your life? Please share in the comments below!