Why did I decide to describe this website as “Real Women Surviving Motherhood?”  Because that is what I feel as though I’m doing most of the time – barely surviving.  Not coincidentally, the idea for this blog came after day four of being (literally) snowed in with my six year old daughter and four year old (alien) son.  It’s been a long week.  More than once I’ve looked longingly at my boots and contemplated making a run for it.  Unfortunately, with the snow I would certainly leave tracks…

All joking aside – I LOVE MY KIDS.  They are the reason that I wake up every morning.  Granted, it’s kind of hard not to wake up when your son is holding your eyelid open, breathing onto your eyeball, repeating, “Mama.  Pancakes.”

In our short existence together, my children and I have been through a LOT.  I started this journey as a single mom, then got married and had a son, then lost a baby, then lost a husband.  Now I have simply come full circle and am back to doing the single thing once more – this time throwing in the complications of dating.  So, I think I have earned the right be opinionated about motherhood.  Note that I just said “opinionated” – not all-knowing or even correct.  On a scale of Roseanne Conner to June Cleaver I will always fall on the side of, “I figure if my kids are alive at the end of the day, then I’ve done my job.” – Roseanne.   

One of my best friends looked at me once and said, “You make your life look so easy.”  To which I chuckled, “Yeah, when people are watching.”  There is nothing easy about this job.  It’s long and grueling hours, with little vacation time and the pay sucks.  But we do it anyway.  Phyllis Diller said it best, “It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.”

I don’t think I have ever felt the natural urge to “beget children.”  I did, however, have the natural urge to do other things which led to the begetting of children and as a result, here we are.  Ironically enough, the day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter was during the last snowstorm in our city.  Upon reading the positive result and being in utter denial, I drug my roommate to the pharmacy, three miles on foot in the snow.  Three EPT’s later, I accepted the fact that my life was over.  I was going to be a mom.

Little did I know how wrong I was; life was only just beginning.