A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

This is both good news and bad news.

The good news is that you set the tone, make the choices, create the energy, and foster an environment of peace and learning.

The bad news is that it is up to you to set the tone, make the choices, create the energy, and foster an environment of peace and learning.

Sometimes we all wish we had a little less power and responsibility, right? Sometimes it’s a lot to carry, and we don’t realize it until our shoulders are slumped and we miss scheduled appointments or forget important deadlines.

If this is you—if the work you do to ensure peace and well-being at home is sapping your vibrancy and optimism—I want to be a voice today that says: “I see that. I appreciate you.”

Thanks for getting up in the middle of the night—again—with the baby and bed-wetter.

Thank you for holding back your tired, angry voice.

Thank you for hunkering down with a curriculum you don’t like but can’t afford to replace right now.

Thank you for making magic with vegetables and healthy snacks for reluctant-to-try-anything-new kids.

Thank you for overlooking the insensitive jab from your trusted partner because s/he is stressed and being a blockhead.

Thank you for examining your motives.

Thanks for exercising and/or eating right and/or taking your meds and/or trying hard to be healthy when it’s easier to give up.

Thanks for excusing childishness.

Thank you for celebrating childishness.

Thank you for being childlike with your children!

Thank you for being the chief source of comfort to your teen who sometimes doesn’t even like you.

Thanks for calling that friend, or your mother, or the sibling that wears you out because they needed you today.

Thank you for keeping house as best you can, in spite of the never-ending assault on your house by all the people who love you but love your house less.

Thank you for washing an unending parade of dishes, for laundering every last pair of socks, for cleaning behind the couches once a year, for hanging pretty things to look at on the walls.

Thank you for research, and appointments scheduled, and payments made on time, and performances attended with camera and heart in hand.

Thank you for not falling apart.

Thank you for holding it together long after you thought you couldn’t.

The work you do is invisible to many but well known to all of us who lead the same life you do. Well done!

Life morphs and changes; demands emerge and fade. Pay attention to your life; make choices that ensure the peace and well being of your loved ones.

That responsibility does fall to you, and we can be grateful that it does. With power, comes responsibility. Keep using it wisely.

As I like to say: “Keep going.”

Cross-posted on facebook.

Image © Noam Armonn | Dreamstime.com

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