The Song of Summer

The stretch of summer would loom before me, endless days and weeks with my three boys home every day. Every. Day. Home, with me, cooped up, antsy, or perhaps lazy, laying around watching way too much TV and aggravated by the idea of going outside on our hot, baking brick patio to play. My mind would go into panic mode. WHAT am I going to DO with them all summer? I knew I had the beach and lots of activities in So Cal, but with every day being ALL ON ME, with three active boys, I was stressed. I would scour the parenting magazines and city rec guides for camps. I would declare that my husband's bonus would be the source of paying for the multiple camps and when he balked I would not budge. I would get tight lipped and edgy because he didn't understand....HE wasn't the one home all summer with their whining and fighting and belligerent bad manners. They were mostly good boys, but they were boys all the same. We had our moments where I felt like I was going to crush them all like HULK woman and a whole summer of that would surely put me over the edge. So I booked them with activities. We might have a week in between camps, but when we did we simply stayed home and if I really tell the truth they probably watched 5 hours of TV most days. Embarrassing. Boring. Exhausting. And it definitely induced those cranky fights I dreaded. After the TV went off the screeching accusations, grabbing and aggressive behavior was enough to make me either scream so loud I avoided the neighbors for weeks, or I would resist, resent and retreat and shut the door for far too long to be considered being an actual parent.Then I would regret. Disgraceful. Dangerous even. I was a disapointment of a Mom...to myself.
I was just surviving the summer. Fun was stifled.

This summer is completely transformed. It's like I have a new song. I created the possibility of Adventure, Love and Generosity and my world has entirely shifted. Through my seminar at Landmark and my weekly buddy calls, I have created being accountable for my life in a whole new way. Maybe other Moms got this when they first had kids, I am just grateful I got it now. I am the source of my happiness as a mother, not my kids. Not the circumstances like, whether it is summer or hot or not or they are sick or not or we have extra room in the budget or not. No. No matter what, I am the source of my happiness as a mother and I am the source of how our household goes. I set the tone.
So I set it. Adventure is our tone. Love and Generousity is who I am being.

This summer the boys went to one week long summer Cub Scout camp and I went with them and volunteered. I got to be in their world and it was dirty and busy and filled with raucous summer camp songs! A week an a half later the older boys went to a weekend camp with Daddy and I stayed home with Bronson. 100% Bronson and Mommy time. No "break from the kids." And I am not in the least bit tweaked out by that. We could afford camp, I just don't have the need to send them, the panic is gone. I am planning fun days, and we are thoroughly enjoying each other's company.

Today as we watched a YOUtube video and learned how to make origami swans and ninja stars I just relished learning something new with them. We created something together. I didn't just tell them to do it and walk away to do dishes. I sat, got curious, we struggled, we started again and we completed them. I learned something new and creative with my kids rather than paying someone else to do it. The swans are our trophies of a successful summer day.

I realize that my boys have been delightful and surprising the past couple weeks of being home. They have been asking to help around the house,they have been reading and doing math when I request it. They have been playing with each other as the bestest of friends in the world and hardly fighting. They care about what I ask them to do too. I got that the more time I spend with them, the closer and more bonded we are. The closer the bond, the more loving we are and the more agreeable they are to cooperate with me and the more FUN we have. The more time I spend with them, the more I want to spend time with them.

Later when I rested and watched a cooking show while they played legos, we got inspired by the cookies, so we made four different kinds because it's summer and we get to do WHATEVER WE WANT, whenever want. I felt so joyful, free, so grateful and so in love with my kids and my life.

When I sent my husband Todd a picture of us doing origami and baking cookies he emailed me back..."statistics are that So Cal parents are paying ten of thousands of dollars per year for enrichment for their kids. You are doing that with them. What you are doing is priceless."
My eyes welled up with tears. My husband, whom I once thought secretly wished I was making money to contribute to the family and doing something he could be proud of, was acknowledging that the choice we made for me to be a Stay at Home Mom, was priceless.
The greatest adventure is one of love and generosity... I wish you many such adventures, and may every day be summer and full of songs.

Zen Honeycutt

The Case for the Stay at Home Mom: CHOICE

My husband recently shared and article with me: "Elite Women Put a New spin on Debate"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/elite-women-put-a-new-spin-on-work-life-debate.html?_r=1&hp
It's about high exec women who are starting to say that being 80% responsible for the children's care ad 100% responsible for a job and 80% responsible for household management just mathmatically doesn't work. It may not be "having it all". It may not be what it is all cracked up to be.The feminist movement may have, in fact, enrolled millions of women into an idea of a lifestyle of constantly being overwhelmed, feeling inadequate and resentful. They aren't saying the latter part out loud yet, that was my doing, but as a former business owner with two children and now three, I can see now that that was there for me. I thought I wasn't good enough unless I was doing it all. And that had me not satisfied with anything.

Many Moms were that way before, dissatisfied and resentful, of course, being the stay at home Moms and handling all there is to handle in raising human beings to be responsible and a contribution to society. The job is humongous on it's own....and at one point that job for women occurred to us a "have to". We "had to", we had no other choice.

And in the past 60-100 years we women have added new dimensions into our expectations of ourselves that many are seeing now don't serve us as women and our families. We are grateful to have choice now....and some choose to not partake in the corporate world while raising children.There is nothing old fashioned or non feminist about that either.

Steven King was asked what defined success and he said "I define success by how interested I am in the thing I am currently doing."

In other words by how present, lit up and alive he is...by how much fun he is having in the moment.

The debate need not be about judging others, but looking to ourselves. How interested am I as a Mom in what I am doing? How successful do I feel as a Mom? Or as a working Mom? Whether we take on corporate or entrepreneurial endeavors as well, how interested are we right now in the moment in doing only what we are doing? Are we choosing what we are doing?

As a corporate or entrepreneur Mom of young children especially, this is incredibly challenging. It just doesn't work to be present and lit up by a conference call when the baby is screaming for a diaper change. It just doesn't work to be interested in the droning on of co workers at endless meetings when we are feeling guilty about not being able to stay home with a sick child. It just doesn't feel successful to yell at your child for demanding something when you have a deadline to meet and they don't understand that. I have been there. We may be able to put the pull of our children aside for a few hours and accomplish something and feel good about that, but in the quiet hours of the night we wake up, feeling like we missed something, and wondering how much we matter in the guidance of our child's development.

We women are compelled to focus on more than one thing at a time, and we often do, but we are most fulfilled, feel most accomplished and effective when we are present to one thing at a time....and to what matters to us most. It is a lot more fun, too.

I submit that we women work because we want to provide for our kids, so what really matters is not the work, but the kids. We also want to feel fulfilled and accomplished, and doubt ourselves that we will feel that way being "just a Mom". What possibilities in partnership open up when we trust our husbands to provide and we trust ourselves to nurture our children?

We all get to be present to what really matters to us.

For the child to have their mother to be present and curious about them, to gaze at them, listen, and hear about the world through their sparkling eyes...and then to whisper those stories to your husband before sleeping, has him filled with purpose and pride that he provided that.

To be home when they are sad and distraught after a school tiff on the playground IS having it all.

To go on an adventure with your child on a Tuesday to the beach, to volunteer at their schools and see them learn and grow or to manage the budget on one income so you can go on a camping vacation and let the boys dig in the dirt for hours....IS having it all.

To choose to live on one income, where ever that works, and create partnership in the marriage where each partner's role create trust, support and dependability as the foundation, IS having it all.

To be present to the concept that to be a working Mom is not a "have to" but a choice is meant to be liberating, not create guilt...that inside that choice there is actually possibilities and freedom, trust in the abilities of your husband and your self, and relatedness with your child.

To be the Mom available for snuggles, comfort, complaints to be heard and stomachs to be filled, to be open to be crawled on and tattled to, to be relied on to find things and wash stuffed animals, to be THE One that is always there for your children is fullfilling beyond any amount of money or recognition. In being present to our children we are present to the greatest gift we have to give, ourselves.
The fact is, that CHOOSING to be a stay at home Mom means sharing in the greatest adventure of all with your children, LIFE.
THAT is having it all.

Zen Honeycutt

"Just" a Mom

On Mother's Day I find it fitting to come out. As "Just" a Mom.
Yeah, Yeah. I know the connotation is one of condenscention. "Just" as if that is all there is, there is something better and I am "just" sitting in a lounge chair by the pool watching my kids lay on floaties, reading books like little angels,or like there is nothing else that I could be doing, I am good for nothing except being a mom, I am put out, tired, overwhelmed, so that's allI can handle... "Just" like people should feel sorry for me or something.

My ego wants to scream out...but I am not JUST a Mom! I have been a Mompreneur for almost six years, creating a gorgeous product line and company called "Zen's Purple Garden"!
I am a writer too, a wife and I am a trained artist and designer...

Yes. All past experiences. All things I did in the past that need not define my future. Every moment I have a choice. Every moment. I am choosing to be presnt with my kids.
Just because two people are married doens't mean the person has to come home to you at night, and you don't have to be there waiting for them. Every day is a choice, every moment is a choice.
So often I choose to do two or three things at once, be a Mompreneur of a company, start a Non Profit, raise two children, be pregnant and create a Green Earth Festival. SUPER Mom it. Somewhere in there my kids and husband hope for the crumbs of me that are left over.

We Moms do that, we multi task on some many levels that we forget where we started, what our intention was, or where we put our keys and then wonder why we are exhausted at three in the afternoon. We don't leave any room to JUST be a Mom.
To focus, to be present, to be a Mom and only a Mom, is such an empowering place to come from, such a generous gift to give our children, I choose JUST being a Mom and I am excited by the possibilities of what we are going to create.
Yes, I will continue to do Zen's Purple Garden when it works for our family, and eventually, when I cause completion with integrity, I will stop. I don't have a feeling of sorrow or failure about that. I am choosing a new focus.
I will continue to write as my creative self expression, and when I DO those things I will JUST do those things. And my writing is in complete alignment with my being a Mom, in fact my Just being a Mom inspires and feeds my writing. I may home school, which will be tremendously inspiring for us and my book. It's all one.

AND who I am being when I do those things and everything else, when I am listening to my child, helping them with their homework, reading to them, and yes occasionally, sitting by the pool...I am JUST a Mom. It is a distinctive shift. It's a big deal. I am not resisting what's happening and thinking that my time would be much better used doing some errand or selling or marketing. I am present, lit up with aliveness, inspired by their energy and love for the world,choosing them, being their Mom, listening, empowering, creating the life of our dreams even when it's not going the way we wanted it to, as Just a Mom, I am creating them to have the power and self expresssion to behave in a way that has them be proud of who they are in the face of any circumstance.

I am JUST their for them, wholly and completely, moment to moment. I am making a singular and complete choice. Empowering. Just. A. Mom.
There is freedom in choosing a singular focus. In fact a Buddhist monk said "The purpose of meditation is not to empty the mind, for nothingness, but a steadfastness of a singular focus."

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com