It’s an honor and a privilege to be blessed with a child to raise. You want to keep your children safe and have them grow into healthy, happy, successful, loving, and productive individuals that will make the world a better place to live. You want the world to be a better place for them.

It’s no small task to be a parent. The hours are long, the work is hard, and the pay stinks, but the benefits package is priceless—snaggle-tooth grins, sweet belly-laughs, admiration shining in their eyes. Yeah, it’s totally worth it.

Having a daughter feels like even more responsibility, at least for me as a mom. I’m THE example in my daughter’s life of what a woman should be. Or if I’m horrible at this mother gig, maybe I’ll become a precautionary tale. (grin)

I feel it’s every generation’s job is to be better than the one that came before it. Our pasts should not be projected onto our children, and mistakes shouldn’t be repeated in an endless cycle. My mom was a great example for me in that respect. She didn’t have an affectionate, loving home growing up, but that didn’t stop her from trying her best to give it to me. I never doubted my family loved me.

My mom wasn’t able to give me was the confidence that comes from being comfortable in my own skin. I want to give this to my daughter so badly. I don’t want her to look in the mirror and zero in on what she sees as flaws. I believe how you actually look has little bearing on how happy you are. Beautiful women can feel lacking and large women can be living the best life imaginable. While I always want to focus on health, I don’t want my ten-year-old daughter to ever feel anything less than a goddess and unwilling to settle for anyone who isn’t going to love her fully.

Here are steps I’ve taken to help build her confidence, and so far, they seem to be working.

Being a good example: Actions always speak louder than words. No matter how many times I might tell her she’s beautiful, smart, funny, and sweet, my efforts could be for nothing if I’m critical of myself. My daughter is a part of me and therefore anytime I put myself down, I’m putting down a part of her. That may sound far fetched, but as I’ve grown into a woman, I see more of my mother in my features. If I complain about how ugly my nose is and my daughter has my nose, I’m telling her she is ugly too. (Personally, I have nothing against my nose. It does its job.)
Sometimes it means faking confidence when I may be wrestling with insecurities, but it’s amazing how something that starts out as pretending can become real.

Letting her fail and be successful: It’s normal to want to protect our girls (boys too, really), but always coming to the rescue can send the message that our daughters aren’t capable of handling things on her own. That’s a slippery slope because then her focus as she grows becomes how to find someone who can take care of her rather than her seeking a partner to stand by her side.

One simple way I’ve worked with my daughter in gaining social confidence is having her make her own phone calls to RSVP for parties. I model for her what to say, have her practice, and then stay by her side while she makes the call. Sometimes it takes a vote of confidence. “You can do this. You’ll be fine.” And I always follow it up with praise for how brave she is. I’ve done the same thing with helping her approach service counters and ordering at a restaurant. We also practice different ways she can respond to classmates who aren’t being nice to her.

Reinforce that she was born exactly the way she was meant to be:
As a teen, I remember hearing how pretty I was. And how I could be a ‘knockout’ if only I would lose five pounds. Oh, the ever present five pounds, the only thing standing between bliss and me. I know my mom meant well and probably thought she was being helpful. But in my head, I only heard “You’re not quite good enough.” It also seemed incredibly important for me to be a ‘knockout’ and to be attractive to the opposite sex. But you know what valuable lesson I learned eventually? I didn’t need to change anything to be loved. I only needed to love myself and once I’d started down that path, my husband came into my life. And you know what’s even more amazing? The things I considered my weak points – i.e. curves—he loves. So there ya go! I’ve told my daughter since she was a tiny girl that she is exactly as she’s supposed to be, because I believe that with all my heart.

Focus on her strengths:
I don’t give my daughter false compliments, and I don’t praise everything she does. I think that only makes kids more reliant on outside reinforcement that they are okay. But I do notice her strengths. She’s a decent singer, budding artist, and good writer. She is a great friend. She’s sensitive to others and she’s kind. Her teacher chose her for a special leadership program at her school because she is always helping other kids. In fact, in kindergarten she became the self-appointed buddy to a classmate with special needs, helping her get to the bathroom and into line for different activities. She has a great work ethic in school and she isn’t shy in the least.

So how do I know the efforts I’m making are working? If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve probably seen postings about things she says and does that illustrate how confident she is. Her latest show of confidence came when I said something about her talking distracting me from what I was doing, and she responded with absolute seriousness, “I’m sorry. I know I’m interesting.” Gotta love that girl!

Samantha Grace is the author of several Regency romance novels. Lady Vivian Defies a Duke (released May 7th) is the final installment of her Beau Monde Bachelor series. Publisher’s Weekly describes her stories as “fresh and romantic” with subtle humor and charm. She writes what she enjoys reading: romantic comedies about family, friendship, and flawed characters who learn how to love deeply.

Samantha is a part-time hospice social worker, moonlighting author, and full time wife and mom. She enjoys life in the Midwest with her husband, two witty kids, and a multitude of characters that spring from her imagination.

To Connect with Samantha, you can find her at:

Samantha Grace Author | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Lady Scribes

Geez. When I’m 77, I want to be proud of being that old. I don’t want to be ashamed of wrinkles or find them so distasteful that I have to risk anesthesia to fix the “problem.” When I think of my gorgeous but definitely aging mother undergoing unnecessary plastic surgery, I think there’s something very wrong. Here in America, we spend too much time trying to look way younger than we actually are.

But the truth is, I’m a hypocrite. I have the nerve to question why people my mom’s age try to look younger, yet I have some gray hair that I’m attempting to cover up myself. I’ve considered going naturally gray, but I always balk. As Nora Ephron said,

“There’s a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don’t look the way they used to, and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye. In the 1950′s only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all.”

I look at pictures of my grandmother at about my age, and I think, “Wow. She looks really, really old.” And I’m glad I don’t look like that. I honestly think I’d feel less energetic if I walked around with tightly rolled, graying curls. I think I’m going to be like Cher when I get older. I’m going to get a little crazy and colorful…glammed up granny, that’ll be me! I’ll pinch all the butts of the cute waiters I meet, too.

Maybe. <G>

So I’d better let up on my mom and let her do her own thing, you think? I guess we all have to deal with the inexorable march of time in our own way.

What about you? What kind of old person will you be?

Hi, I’m Kieran. My family loves music and anything that makes us laugh out loud. Along with Chuck, my husband of 23 years, I try to teach our kids that we have to actively choose happiness–and if I accomplish nothing else as a mom but pass that one lesson along to them, then I think I’ve done my job.

My oldest guy, Nighthawk, was diagnosed in kindergarten with Asperger’s syndrome, and now he’s a junior in college; his sister Indie Girl, who’s younger by 16 months, is a college sophomore; and my youngest, Dragon, is in ninth grade. For our family, it’s about managing your weaknesses and wringing everything you can get out of your strengths. And along the way, finding joy.

www.kierankramerbooks.com

I saw you there in the cold section, I was picking up yogurt for my family and you were there with your three kids – 2 in the cart and one walking beside you. Your little ones were what people affectionately call chubby, but I want you to know that cute chubbiness is going to change and what happens from there will shape your children’s lives. Your little girl, walking beside the cart, I’m guessing she was 7 or 8 and I’m sure everyone still teases her about her “baby fat” but those eating habits she has right now, they’re only going to get worse.

You see, I was that little girl the one with the baby fat. But once you hit Jr. High, no one calls it baby fat anymore. But then it’s just fat and people will still comment on it. There will be that boy who somehow gets a hold of her yearbook and writes in it cruelly, “save the whales, harpoon the fat chicks.” And there will be that girl who points and tells her that fat girls shouldn’t wear mini skirts. There will be the boy she has a crush on, the one who never looks her way and she’ll go home sad and only get sadder. And bigger.

Mom, know now that you are the one capable of changing her eating habits, of teaching her about healthy choices, fruits and vegetable and no, that doesn’t include french fries. Know that every time you offer her a candy bar or an ice cream cone when she’s sad, that only teaches her to continue to reach for those when she needs some comfort. Know that if you don’t fix it, she will have to, someday when she’s ready, if she’s ready, but that the burden of those extra pounds will cause her health problems and emotional damage that she’ll live with forever.

Mom, I know you love those kids, I could see it on your face, but I glanced in your grocery cart and honestly I don’t mean to judge, but please be careful with those choices for your babies. I know they’re kids, I know they should be able to eat fun “kid food” chips and cookies and every sugary thing in between. But they’re kids and they’ll love fruit if you give it to them, it’s sweet and natural and yes, it can be more expensive, but there is always some fruit in season or there’s frozen fruit. There are ways to do it. And you can do it!

Your window of opportunity is small, eventually this blame will leave you and fall to her. It will be her choices, those things she puts in her mouth. But right now, while she’s still little, you can  help shape her view of food and her body and her health. Right now, you still have time…

****

That’s what I want to tell them, every time I see moms with “chubby” kids. It hurts me. I ache for those children because I know, first hand, how horribly cruel kids can be and it only gets worse as you grow up. I hope that letter doesn’t make it sound like I blame my own mom because I most certainly do not. Things were different when I was growing up, no one knew much about nutrition in the way that we all know now. Convenience was king and still is to some degree, but we’re having a bit of a renaissance where people are getting back to growing their own food and infusing their daily food intake with more whole foods, grains, veggies and the like. We know more now. And for right now while we prepare our kids food, it is our responsibility to teach them about healthy eating. Of course that doesn’t take into consideration the picky eaters…but that is for another blog.

Social Media amplifies this, because so much of social media is a shout-out of greatest hits. We gush about what’s awesome. Fantastic. Amazing! Rarely do we admit to what’s not. Oh, I don’t mean the posts about having a headache or allergies or food poisoning, but the posts where we admit our fears and vulnerabilities. Where we talk about our nightmares, not our dreams.

But there you are, working through the reality of your life, while the barrage of Perfect! around you feels like one gut punch after another.  You want to be happy for your friends—you are—but at the same time, it becomes increasingly hard to feel comfortable in your own skin, when everyone else’s skin seems so-o-o much better. If I’m being honest, being real, here’s my truth:  I smile at the world—I keep that smile pasted so firmly in place—but behind it, way down deep, are all the dirty little secrets, the lifelong messages that play like a broken record through my mind: My legs are flabby. My stomach is too poochy. My butt is too big. The lines around my eyes make me look old. My mouth is too small. My eyelashes are too thin. My chest is too freckled. My house is disgracefully unclean.  My writing isn’t good enough, isn’t amazing. That I don’t have what it takes.  I’m not organized enough. I’m too selfish. I don’t volunteer enough. I’m not a good enough friend.  I’m invisible. I procrastinate too much. I’m not a good enough wife, mother…

On, and on, and on…

Those are my demons, and I fight them. I fight them hard, and finally, I think, after a lot of years and heartache, and a whole lotta love from some very special people, I’m making headway. I’m coming to realize—to accept—that PERFECT is an illusion. Sure there are perfect moments. Perfect days. Perfect chocolate chip cookies. But what I’m talking about is Perfect Everything. It doesn’t exist. It’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and like the rainbow, it’s always shifting. It dangles out there, tempting us, teasing…taunting, but no one ever really gets there—and anyone who puts on that they have is simply blowing smoke. They want you to think that, they want to think that, because they need it as desperately as everyone else. But it’s all smoke and mirrors…and that’s okay.

I look at my kids, my daughter especially, and I think about the truths I want to teach them, that real happiness comes from inside, that they are beautiful just the way they are, because beauty comes through smiles and grace and kindness, through love and compassion and forgiveness, from giving not getting. That the most amazing gifts are the simplest: laughter and hugs and wet, sloppy doggy kisses, the feel of the wind and the warmth of the sun, a walk through the woods, grass or sand between their toes, holding hands…  That there is no perfect weight, no magic number on the scale that suddenly is going to make life okay. That no one cares if your legs aren’t toned and tight, or if your mouth is small or freckles dot the bridge of your nose. No one is going to turn their back on your because you have thin eyelashes or are a size bigger than you’d like to be. That you’re not going to lose friends because your house is dirty (case in point: my daughter’s room is a disaster area…but seriously, I’m pretty sure that’s never cost her a friend!)  That life isn’t always sunshine and roses, that it can’t be, but that’s okay.  That as long as you have love in your heart, for yourself and those around you, as long you have compassion and empathy and forgiveness, as long as you do your best, everything’s going to be okay.

I have my demons, but if I have anything to say about it, they’ll never sneak up on my kids.

On the theme of weight…

I spent most of my childhood getting called fat by the other kids at school. For a long time, that wasn’t really true. But I had chipmunk cheeks. And that gives you a certain look.

I hit puberty early, and when it hit, it sucker punched me. I gained a lot of weight. Probably 60 + pounds in only a few months. I was twelve when that happened and let me tell you, other kids were not kind about the change in me. I’d always been picked on for my weight, but it got worse.

But I was a pretty strong kid and I had a sassy mouth, and whatever got dished out to me, I had no problem giving back. The taunting was never the worst part. It was the subtle things.

When I was a teenager, there weren’t plus sized junior’s clothes, at least not where I lived. That meant not only having a different body type than ALL of my friends, but not being able to wear what they did either. Gloria Vanderbilt jeans from Montgomery Ward’s with a stretch waistband? What thirteen year old girl doesn’t want those!? (Me. I didn’t. But I had them. Because…hey, I had to wear pants!)

I remember feeling like I couldn’t go to a party and eat like everyone else. Because while my friend who weighed 100 pounds could eat whatever she liked and no one would care, I, at 200 pounds couldn’t. Because I was afraid people would watch me eat that fourth slice of pizza and think: That’s why she’s fat.

Then there was the time I was at drama class and we were all in costume. A friend, for some reason, put on a pair of my pants and came out of the dressing room. They were huge on her. They looked like clown pants. And she was laughing, so was everyone else. Not at me, I don’t think anyone translated it to me. She had huge pants on, it was funny. But not to me. They fit ME.

I had friends. People were nice to me. But there were all sorts of ways that I was reminded, on accident or not, that I wasn’t like all the other girls.

This is the kind of crap that follows you, I know it’s followed me. Through my 60 + pound weight loss and into adulthood, it’s followed me. You absorb that stuff. It becomes a part of you. This idea that you’re wrong. That everyone looks better than you. That you’re deficient in some way.

I’ll admit that I’m often still self-conscious about what I eat in front of other people. That I’m very critical of myself.

I think I’m finally getting better. In part because I have a husband who is so free with compliments, and in part because I’m getting older and realizing how I look at other people. How little their weight matters to me. I don’t care what someone else eats, what their scale says, what the number on the tag in their dress is, so why do I think people are obsessed with me and mine? They aren’t. That’s just my old thinking coming back to bite me.

Oh, teenage angst, will you ever really leave?

I was reading the comments for Shana’s post and I saw that she mentioned the fallacy that we’ll hit a magic weight and somehow all will be right. I know I’ve done that. Not just with weight, with a lot of things. But there is no magic happy weight. Sure, I have a weight I’m more comfortable at for a variety of reasons, but it’s not the thing that will make me happy. Or make people accept me. Or make ME accept me.

At the risk of being super cheesy, you have to love yourself FIRST. As you are. Heavy, light, big nose (that’s me!), frizzy hair, socially awkward…doesn’t matter. Love that person, because you have to believe in you. You have the most invested in your future, so you have to advocate for YOU. You have to love you.

There is no magic weight. There is no magic time in your life, no secret THING that’s going to make you go: Oh, okay, so now I’m all right. I say this having been a variety of weights and feeling basically as awkward as ever at all of them. But I was always me, no matter what the scale said. And I was always just as valuable.

And so are you.

Yes, I have the lingering neuroses, but at least now I know they’re not allowed to control me. That’s the perk of being 27 instead of 17. Perspective, I haz it.

I’m going to leave you all with this helpful graphic about how to have a bikini body, which just about sums it up (pardon the language) : 

And maybe I didn’t realize I was sick because I was rewarded for being sick.

There are a lot of reasons women and men develop eating disorders, but it usually comes down to control. For me, it was an outgrowth of the powerlessness I felt in my life at the time. I couldn’t control my personal or my professional life—or at least I felt I couldn’t—but I could control my food and exercise. And I was really good at controlling my food and exercise. I lost a lot of weight, and I was praised over and over for looking so good that I was deathly afraid I’d gain it back. I had to lose a few pounds so I’d have a cushion. And then I needed a cushion for the cushion.

Before I knew it, I was about 100 pounds. I’m five-seven and not small boned. I looked like a Holocaust survivor. I knew I looked bad, but do you know what? No one told me I looked bad. I was still complimented and envied by many, many women. The most common comment I received was that I didn’t understand how hard it was to lose weight because it just came easily to me.

Little did people know how hard I worked to make it seem so easy. My weight, how much I exercised, and how much I ate were obsessions for me. I thought of little else. I couldn’t go out with friends because almost every social outing involved some sort of food or drink. I also devoted an enormous amount of time to exercise. Between exercise and work, I didn’t have time to socialize.

My whole life revolved around counting calories and making sure I ran a certain number of miles. I lived for weekends when I allowed myself to binge and then purge for two days. Mondays were brutal because I only consumed about 400 calories. It wasn’t atypical for me to gain nine or ten pounds over a weekend and lose it again within the week. When I finally got help, my lab results showed several of my systems were on the verge of shutting down.

At this point a few people did pull me aside and tell me they thought I had a problem. Of course I had a problem. By then it was too late for me to fix it on my own. I couldn’t even admit to myself I had a problem. If I admitted I had a problem, I’d have to fix it, and then I might gain weight. That kind of thinking could send me into a full-blown panic attack.

If you’ve met me, you can probably attest to the fact that I’m pretty much the same as anyone else. I have my bad habits and my quirks, but I’m just like you. I work. I take care of my family. I do laundry, run errands, see a movie once in a while. So why am I the one who ended up with anorexia and bulimia?

I used to ask myself that question all the time. But now the question I ask is how does any woman not end up with an eating disorder?

I, too, am a writer, but of a different variety than the lovely ladies who are regular contributors here.  For the past ten years, I have written a parenting column for several San Antonio publications.  Mommy Matters started out as a newspaper column for my local neighborhood newspaper.  The column grew until I eventually moved it to the magazine circuit where it changed a bit, but was still basically me talking about my kids and trying to come up with a “moral of the story moment” so I didn’t sound like a complete loser of a mom.  Mothers related.  Who knew?  My singular blogging attempt came at the request of my editor at the magazine, who was trying to bring all her regular columnists on board for the magazine’s new blog site.

You would think after all those years of writing a parenting column, it would be easy to sit down and knock out a quick blog about what was going on in my life, but that damn blog tormented me for weeks.  Bloggers were young and hip.  I was not.  Bloggers made people laugh and think about political issues.  I would not.  Blogs were streams of consciousness or pithy comments that flowed easily from the keyboard with little effort or foresight.  Seriously?  I could not.

When I finally submitted my one and only post, about signing my kids up for swim lessons or some other nonsense no one was interested in, I prayed no one would read it.  I think I got my wish though I’m not one hundred percent certain as I promptly forgot my password and never returned to the site.  (My editor never mentioned this.  I don’t think she knew any more about blogging than I did, or she read my lame post.)

So, when Shana asked me to be a guest blogger here…well, I was uncertain.  Then I read the topic for the month—food, weight and eating issues.  Now, here was something I could talk about.  Relate to.  Here was something I specialize in discussing with my girlfriends on long walks around the neighborhood!  Or at lunch.  Or while grocery shopping.  Most importantly, here is a topic that rattles around my brain incessantly all day, every day, and has for the past sixteen years.

I’m a forty-three year old mother of three children, ages sixteen, fourteen, and three.  Battling my after-baby-weight has been an ongoing struggle since baby number one and is still going strong.  Babies one and two came in my late twenties/early thirties.  Two years after baby number two came along, I was finally fed up enough with the baby weight I had been carrying around since baby number one to actually do something about it.  I joined Weight Watchers where I did have some success, met my goals, and became a lifetime member.  (Toot-toot.  That’s my own horn.)  I started running, and between the running and occasional returns to Weight Watchers for “maintenance issues,” I was able to keep my weight pretty stable for about ten years.

Then baby number three came along.  She was born exactly two weeks after my fortieth birthday and is the brightest little ray of sunshine in our family.  But this blog isn’t about her, so forget I mentioned that.  This blog is about me.  And my weight.  And my struggles.  Don’t put on your happy face.

I don’t care what Hallie Berry looks like right now, having a baby in your forties is NOTHING like having a baby in your twenties or thirties.  It’s as if the fat around my middle has been stuck there with Gorilla Glue and refuses to budge.  Same goes for under my chin.  And the back of my arms.  Three years after giving birth to number three, I am fifteen pounds heavier than that “goal weight” I maintained for ten years, and it’s not going anywhere fast.  Yes, I returned to Weight Watchers, and it helped for a while, but it was so HARD.  Much harder, this time around.  One tiny little glass of wine was five points, and my normal glass was probably more like seven or eight.  Times two glasses…I hardly had any points left for eating.  So, I gave up on Weight Watchers and decided what I really needed was a good get-skinny-quick scheme.  If I could just lose the weight really quickly, I would go straight to the WW maintenance plan to keep it off.  I justified this by telling myself that as long as I eventually got to the healthy eating aspect of the diet, it was a good, solid plan.

So, here I am, two years later, and that is still my goal.  Find the miracle cure for these pesky pounds, then keep them off using a sensible, healthy, portion-controlled eating plan.  Sound familiar?  Well, it’s been a long, hard road.  As far as diets go, I’ve tried them all:  Southbeach, Atkins, The Zone, Paleo Eating…throw in a couple more attempts on Weight Watchers, and that about sums it up.  I’ve also tried pretty much every diet aid on the market.  Here are a few I have tried so far that have NOT been my miracle cures:  Acai berry (juice and pill form), Ally (beware the Ally-oops!), Lipozene, Hydroxy-cut, Hoodia (Thanks, Oprah), Metabolife, Slimquick, Cheaters, Raspberry Ketone (Thanks, Dr. Oz), numerous cleanses and juice concoctions, and a cream that you rub on your belly before putting on this fat-burning belt.  I have even tried an illegally obtained Mexican diet pill sworn to completely suppress the appetite. (Don’t ask.  I will not give up my mule!)  To date, I have lost and gained the same six pounds more times than I can count.  But I’m still optimistic that the miracle cure is out there.  I will not give up.  I am anxious to get rid of these extra pounds, so I can get on with some good sensible eating.  Just as soon as I lose this weight.

The Stash

So here is the moral of my story:  parenting is kind of like dieting.  It’s not an exact science, and there is no miracle pill to make you skinny or the perfect mom.  It’s trial and error, success and failure, baby steps in both directions, and a lot of hard, hard work.  There are lots of experts out there willing to sell us a miracle—make us skinny, fix our kids’ problems—but really, the only miracle we can count on is the one God gives us every day.  The miracle of motherhood and the children who make every one of these pesky pound worthwhile.  Occasionally, we get a toot-toot moment, and that’s what keeps us going.  But perfection is rarely on the radar, and sometimes you just have to say, I’m doing the best I can.

Wishing you lots of toot-toot moments today.

Courtney

Courtney Burkholder is a writer, mother, and professional dieter who lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and three children.  She is currently a biographer for Epic Bound Books, a private publishing company for families and businesses, and an aspiring author of young adult novels.  She has recently completed her fourth manuscript and is, once again, on the hunt for agent representation.

Today, we’re fortunate to have her share a few thoughts with us.  Without further ado, Stephanie Maurer Whelan:

The other day I was home in the morning, watching my kids play and occasionally playing referee. My son is going to Kindergarten next year and I’ve been reading all sorts of articles about what kids learn and what parents should be teaching them or helping instruct them on. And it kind of struck me that all this stuff he’s learning and going to have to learn . . . isn’t the whole of it. There are so many important things I need both of my kids to know—tools I want them to have for their lives. They aren’t things that can be tested or measured according to standardized tests and exams. They aren’t things you can grade or “assign” as homework. This is a brief list of what I came up with that morning.

I want to teach my children integrity. The opposite of hypocrisy. Don’t say one thing and do another. Don’t smile to someone’s face and snarl behind their back. Don’t cheat on a test to appear better than you are. Don’t set one ideal of values for others and avoid keeping them yourself. Be honest in who you are. Be prepared to defend your choices and values in the face of criticism and disdain. Be prepared to change your mind out of intelligent and compassionate consideration rather than peer pressure and propaganda. Do not hold to ideas or opinions out of pride, but out of conviction.

I want to teach my children compassion. That every life has value and to treat any living thing like it beneath contempt is to harm your own psyche. That compassion is about caring, but not about being a doormat, or about being silent in the face of wrongs, or to accept falsehood in place of truth. To understand that the person you are facing may be unpleasant or rude or nasty, but you do not have to be in return. To love those who others deem impossible to love. To be guide and a hand and a mentor and to dispense mercy when you can. That compassion means loving others even at their worst, and even when they make you angry. To treat everyone with dignity, that a moment of kindness makes a difference, even in the face of the most awful things. To know that the words from your mouth are a double edged sword and can hurt or harm–especially when you aren’t thinking.

I want to teach my children responsibility. That no one else in this life is responsible for your happiness, and that sometimes being happy is as simple as looking at something from another perspective. That when you do a thing, even if it’s a bad thing or a poor choice, you own up to it. That you are responsible for the things you do and the actions you take whether or not you are caught out. A stolen pencil is no less stolen, a lie is no less told. To be aware of the choices you make, and know when you can make a different choice. Own up to punishments, face them, and learn what you need to from them. Responsibility may not always mean fair, or enjoyable, but to be a whole person who reflects outside what is inside means accepting all you do and the impacts it has.

I want to teach my children hope, confidence and imagination. I want them to step away from the words “I can’t do it” “don’t bother” “let someone else do something” and step up to doing, being and acting. If the situation is untenable, make an effort to change it. If wrong is being committed, speak out against it. If this world is in need of solutions try to find them. Think outside the box, believe you can do anything you set your mind to. Even if you fail to reach the goals you set, you will have succeeded in trying. Don’t place your self-worth in “winning” or “finishing”. The journey is our life, not the end result. If you see a problem, believe you can set yourself to solve it, no matter how vast. Sometimes it just takes one person to believe to convince others of it. Don’t give up on yourself, or on the world.

I want to teach my children to love themselves for who they are. This is no easy thing. We are told by the world around us we have to be better, we have to have the right car, the right clothes the right hair, etc to be loved and accepted. But no matter where we are in life, the lowest or the highest points, you can’t be happy and whole if you can’t love yourself for who you are. The core of “you” the piece of you that watches you act and interact, the thing that holds your deepest loves and values—that’s where you must love yourself. Because if you attach that love to your beauty, or ability, or your social status, then it is a fragile thing that will break and leave you with a broken heart, over yourself. You can hate what you do, but if you love yourself it will give you the tools to change those things you hate. If you cannot love the “self” you are, figure out why—it means something must change. There will always be those better at things than us in life, those that shine brighter, are more popular, have more money or more strength—this does not make them good people in and of itself, it does not make them necessarily happy or whole. There will be people that are worse at things than us in life, those that fail where we succeed, those that come in second to our first, those that aren’t as bright or as bold or as lucky. They are not “losers” or bad people because of this. They aren’t of less value or worthy of less. There will be people who will try to tear you down and make you feel you have no worth, unless you are useful to them. Don’t believe it, and don’t be that person. Love that self, find it and hold to it and it will be the lighthouse through the storm, the rope to hang on to when everything else falls away. Then take that love, and look at others through the same eyes.

I think it’s a lot to teach my children . . . and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. But they won’t learn these things in school, or without my help. But I think it is the least I can do, for them and for the future of this world.

** Be sure to swing by Stephanie’s fabulous blog devoted to children’s literature, http://shanshad1.wordpress.com/, where she explores all manner of children’s media related to speculative fiction, from the perspective of fostering more interest, understanding and conversation about the genres–particularly in how they relate to children’s items. **

Isn’t  she awesome?

Here’s just one look at the issue.

Seriously.

As soon as our doctor told us IVF (thousands of dollars, a couple small surgeries, hundreds of painful injections) was the only way we would be a family, I went straight to Google.

And stayed there for the next several months.

I stalked Trying To Conceive (TTC) websites like I would be tested on what they said. At our doctor’s appointments, I had so many anecdotes and testimonies from my online friends rattling around in my head, I questioned our doctor like his professional peer. Because, truly, at this point I probably was. I certainly spent more time reading about Lupron injections than he did.

The TTC world is a strange one. I knew more about strangers’ menstrual cycles than I did about my own. It’s also a sad world. Obviously. Most women going through IVF want a baby worse than they’ve ever wanted anything. No matter how much money they spend trying or how many hormone-altering shots they grit their teeth through, the process often ends in heartbreak.

This is the stuff of (really, really sad) Hallmark movies.

Because of this, the whole TTC world has kind of a dark cloud over it. Even if (yea!), you get pregnant, you’re so worried your cycle buddy won’t be, you don’t want to tell any of your online friends. You certainly can’t ask your dearest infertile friend to throw your baby shower.

This is why people name their IVF blogs and TTC websites “MY IVF JOURNEY.” Women need a somber tone for this terrifying, lonely business they’re going through…and “IVF IS HELL” seems so brash.

Anyway, if the Lupron and progesterone shots don’t get you down (they always do, by the way), this dark cloud of TTC websites will. I distinctly remember one particularly low day with I googled, “IVF Humor.” The response was, “Your search did not match any documents.”
Ha ha…eh.

All this to say I’m here with some perspective. Four kids later (yes, they were all conceived through the miracle of IVF) and ten years worth of perspective, has helped me see that all of IVF wasn’t hell.
Only the shots were hell, really.

And the miscarriage.

But, wait, that’s not funny.

Let me try again.
Here’s the lighter side of IVF…
1. Look on the bright side! With IVF you have the perfect opportunity to choose your child’s birthday! Or close to it. Actually, the laugh is on me with this one. I chose summer birthdays for all our kids. Which, really? Every mom who has ever debated her child repeating kindergarten knows summer is the WORST time to have a baby.

2. Conceiving your child through IVF means you can call your dad, tell him you’re pregnant, and also never have to admit you’ve had sex.

3. When someone says, “you can’t be just a little bit pregnant,” you can say, “Actually, yes you can.” You can be a little pregnant when you have a couple of perfect embryos in your uterus, and you’re waiting to see if they’ll “take.” So, there’s that.

4. Twins! Triplets! The goal for IVF clinics is “one healthy baby” per IVF cycle. But, let’s be clear, the goal of the patients is “as many babies as I can get for all this pain and money.” The idea of multiple babies to an infertile woman is like dangling Louboutins in front of a shoeless SJP. So, when the doctors tell the patient, “Now, you understand there is a risk of twins, right? You understand the stress two babies can cause, right?” The patient is thinking, HECK YES! I know about the twins. And that’s exactly what I’m praying for, buddy.

5. When your kid is older, and they claim you don’t love them, you can always bring up how much money you spent conceiving them. “Sure, Jimmy might have a new XBOX. But, we had you instead. Sorry, honey. But now maybe you understand how much we wanted you.”

6. Most every day you get a progesterone shot, which is one of those deep-tissue ones that goes right into your thigh muscle. It’s one of those shots the nurses describe as, “you’ll know your husband hit the right spot if it hurts really bad.” Yes. One of those. Every day. The bright side of these shots is that you have the most amazing dreams on Progesterone. Like 4D, super-magical, intense dreams that really give your brain a work-out. Which is nice compared to the mush it’s been before that with the estrogen suppositories (yes, seriously) and daydreaming about babies for months.

7. You get an up close and personal look at what your body was designed to do. While tracking your cycle and egg production and ovulation, you see how outrageously perfectly God designed your body to function. Even the most cynical, egotistical doctors admit that whether or not the embryos “take” was a miracle they couldn’t understand.

8. Prayers. When you’re going through IVF, you can ask your best friends or your whole church to pray you’ll get pregnant. They can even have a little prayer vigil while you’re high on Valium and your legs are in stirrups at the hospital, getting surgically impregnated. When you’re trying to get pregnant the old-fashioned way, a prayer vigil during the actual act is a little more awkward.

9. You will grow closer to your husband. We would do lots of fun little rituals together during IVF. My husband would name the shots he gave me. “Oh, look. This one is the DOUBLEYOURENERGY shot. Take this and you’ll wake up with twice the energy!” Truthfully, he should have named all of them the THISHORMONESHOTWON’TMAKEYOUSOCRAZY shot.

10. The best part of IVF is, of course, the babies. Our four IVF babies are a blessing beyond my comprehension. The years have faded the memories of the miscarriage, hormone shots, and heartbreak. But the joys of IVF—the help conceiving these precious, beautiful kids—is obvious everyday.
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Christina Hergenrader is the author of eight Christian books. When she’s not writing, she loves to bake, take pictures, and soak up life with her husband and four kids. They all live in Texas with their ancient Cocker Spaniel and unusually slow Greyhound. Her most recent book is Starring Roles, a devotional about friendship.