A Mom's Life

Note: I wrote this before seeing the Pantene commercial or the recent Huffington Post article. I'm good like that. I am always saying sorry. It's mostly because of my big mouth and inability to think before I speak. I can't blame it all on myself, though. Some of it is situational. Being a parent and saying sorry go hand-in-hand. I'm always either apologizing to my children or someone else, on behalf of my children. I apologize to my kids every day. "Sorry, you can't eat ice cream for breakfast. Sorry, you can't stay up until midnight watching cartoons." Every day I break bad news to the kids and tell them I'm sorry before doing so. Then, there's all the people we encounter on a daily basis and my flow of apologies that come along with our interactions. "Sorry my daughter hit you in the ankles with her little shopping cart. Sorry my kid hit your kid in the face with a sand bucket. Sorry my kids are screaming on this airplane." So...

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in And stops my mind from wandering Where it will go." When I was 15 I would sit in the recliner at night, doing my homework, and I'd start to experience shortness of breath. After many nights of hyper-ventilation, my mom took me to the doctor, who performed a series of tests and determined that nothing was wrong with my body. My mind was another story. I didn't have asthma or cancer or any other illness that had entered my mind during those few weeks. The doctor told me and my mom that I was likely experiencing anxiety each evening. He explained that it happens to many people during quiet moments in their day, and this is what he suggested was happening to me. When I was relaxed and idle at home, my mind would wander. When tasks weren't directly in front of me, distracting me, my brain would find a way to go to a dark place and get stuck there. This dark place of worry would, well, worry me, and the shortness of br...