Moms are Ultra Strong! Thanks to Hefty® for sponsoring this post.
The last year has taught me that you can be incredibly strong and also completely vulnerable at the same time. I never would have predicted that at 34 I would find myself bald, separated from my children and fighting for my life. I never anticipated the support that sharing my story would bring. Or the comfort it might provide others who found themselves in the same position. I am thankful to experience motherhood during a time when it’s okay to share the highs and lows that real life brings.
The interconnected world we now live in allows us to find others who are also going through whatever it is that we are experiencing. But it hasn’t always been that way. I look back at how it must have been for my mom. Raising four kids on a budget, re-entering the workforce after stepping out of it for two decades. Living in a time when the only way to make friends or find your people in a suburban town was to bump into them at school or the grocery store and hope you had things in common.
This past year tested my strength as a mom. That goes without saying. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how it must have tested my mother’s strength as a mom too. Calling my parents and telling them I had cancer was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Being a mother myself, I could only imagine being in her shoes and how much harder it had to be for her as the parent than for me as the patient.
True to form, my mom put on a calm and happy front. She washed dishes, did laundry, helped Craig with Kayla and Blake and probably did a hundred things I’ll never even know about. Because that’s what moms do. Moms are ultra strong. No matter what, we show up and make it as okay as we can for our kids. Regardless of their age. I hope that I can do the same for my kids. Show them that they can be strong and vulnerable, they’re not mutually exclusive.
I’ve had many people ask me how Blake is in the wake of having his mom gone for a long time and seeing me go from long hair to bald. I feel lucky that Blake at two was mostly oblivious. At three, his only real memory of me being sick was that “mommy was in the big building” and “mommy had spiky hair.” Thank goodness.
These days, I get to be a little less strong. Or maybe strong in a different way. I get to come back to some of the normal worries most of us have as moms. Helping our kids find their independence, giving them enough attention and if we’re being honest, keeping them from destroying the house.
Fortunately, I have a little help from my friends at Hefty®. They’re celebrating strong moms (like us!) who tackle strong messes on a daily basis. Because with all of that cuteness kids bring, come some serious messes. You know.
It’s no use crying over spilt milk…unless of course you’re the one who has to clean it up in the 30 seconds left before you also need to be in the car to make it to school on time. Yeah, it feels pretty good to get back to “regular” mom stuff.
Like decluttering your kids’ rooms while they are at school and hiding the evidence of the new donations you plan to make to a local charity. I think the folks at Hefty® designed the Hefty® Ultra Strong™ trash bags in Blackout to make it so you don’t have to see trash. OR, maybe they consulted with moms like me who need to hide what they’ve just removed from their kids’ rooms because mom knows best.
However they got there, I’m a fan. Hefty® Ultra Strong™ trash bags have Triple Action Technology to resist tears, punctures and leaks, a break resistant grip drawstring that prevents the bag from falling inside the can and ARM & HAMMER™ patented odor neutralizer. So they can stand up to pointy toys, stinky diapers and of course, spilt milk.
But can they stand up to a child determined to unroll the entire roll in one sitting? Perhaps the better question is how do you distract that child with something more fun that unrolling 50 trash bags? If you find out, let me know.
Until then, I’ll be collecting hugs and slowly sneaking the clutter out of our home.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Hefty®.
