Less IS More...Adventure!

The more I take on the more I think I am helping. I started a company when I had a three year old and 8 month old sons. I thought I would make millions of dollars and then be able to have adventures with my kids. When it became evident that I was not making millions of dollars and the pathway to do that would be to minimize my role as a mother, I took a long look at what I was doing. Even though the company was profitable. I completed it and took on what mattered to me, my kids and my writing.

Even in my writing however, I thought Oh! I love writing. I will do that to make millions of dollars. Then we will be able to have the adventures with our kids.
I have been, as a Mom and wife, trying to help to provide income for our family. In other words I have been not trusting my husband to do that.


"Helping" my family by "doing it all" comes from love and care. I love what I did. And I would love to write and make millions of dollars. But to write only because I want to make millions of dollars is not empowering. It is not inspiring and doesn't work. (Writing about what matters to you is authentic,inspiring and works) To write, or do anything, to take on more, only to help my family/husband isn't effective or empowering. There is a certain result that must be obtained through a certain path and it is limiting.It gives others, and myself, less of me and I get less of them, not more.

It doesn't empower people to "help" them. This may be counter intuitive to many. Helping, when you get authentic about it, is seeing the person as small, as unable to handle the situation themselves (we are taking about able bodied adults here) and helping continues the pattern of whatever they are doing that doesn't work or doesn't work as well as we would like it to. What really empowers is being a listening for the person to transform themselves and the situation. This means listening to them as GREAT. Standing for them being GREAT. Sharing with them what is possible, listening to them create what they see as possible and then stepping back and creating a space for them to choose it.

Recently I got that I was busy working/writing etc to make million of dollars so I could have adventures with my kids...well why not just have adventures with my kids?
I trust my husband to provide, and he does. A wonderful life!

And, guess what, it doesn't take millions of dollars to have adventures...that is just an ideal. Ideals or standards or even dreams that we chase and allow to run our lives don't empower us. Creating in the moment does.
Yearning, wishing, doing less IS having MORE.

Rather than planning several weeks of camp, creating time and space for my sons to create their own adventures transforms their lives. A dirt pile is an adventure. Ants are an adventure.The ocean for a few hours is an adventure. The hot desert is an adventure. A new park and stacking rocks is an adventure. Letting go and letting them shoot the arrow without coaching or hammer the wood themselves at Scout Camp is an empowering and wondrous adventure! Camping in nature is the holiest of adventures.

As a Mom, I am taking on not helping, but transforming life, and that starts with me. I give up doing more, needing to help make money and take on being a Mom and doing less...and simply what matters to me (and us).
Through taking this on, I have found that some of my best writing is simply about having adventures with my kids!

This year, at New Years, we sat as a family around our Japanese wishing pot that my husband got as a gift for me on his travels. We all took turns writing down on the small curled up scroll, what we wanted to create for the year before us and who we are being.
The word I wrote for 2012 was "Adventure!" and I am moved to tears to realize that the adventure I was craving is not out there, somewhere, to find and pay for with millions of dollars, but inside, right now, simply in my perspective and being present to exactly the life I have.


Zen Honeycutt

The Provider Dad

So much debate is tossed around about the Stay at Home Mom versus the Working Mom. And it's all focused on the women. Of course. We women are the center of our universes.
What about our men? What about Dads?
The debate here would then be The 100% Provider Dad versus the what? 50% Provider Dad?
Ouch. Smarts a bit. No man want to think of himself as less than 100%.
But this is the reality of what a dual income family is. The man provides about half or maybe a bit more or less to the family. Our society, WE have come to think of this as equality and fair.

What is the impact however, of removing the responsibility of being sole, 100% provider to the family, on our men?

Here's the deal. Men are best when challenged. Super Hero's are super because the task before them is life or death.

Men lose interest if the challenge isn't great. Want to know why it is so challenging to get a man in his early to mid or even late twenties now to commit to a relationship and marry? He doesn't have to. All the women he dates make enough if not more money than he and he can party and play with them all. The urgency of finding a mate and providing for her to create a family has been watered down.

Want to know why so many men play video games and ignore their kids and nagging wives for hours? Because they can first of all, they are not the only one to provide for the whole family ( someone else can do it=perpetual teenager syndrome) so they kick back. Secondly, their wife is "doing it all", taking care of the house and working and her overwhelm and stress may be having her be so annoying that the only way to chill out is to check out. It's survival.

They continue to do their job to maintain and survive the balancing act of his wife "having it all" and having to give it all to their kids. They are last on the list and left feeling constantly inadequate....they may not admit it...but the fact that his wife works still means, deep inside, that she has to, and occurs to him as a reflection on his ability to provide.

What happens when men are not in the world of needing to provide for their family, and have their ass on the line as the sole provider, is that something is lost for them. Their purpose and pride and power silently occurs to them as diluted.


What is created when they do have full responsibility?

They step up. They provide. They expand their repertoire of skills, of communication and leadership. They broaden their horizons socially and politically. They connect with other high performing men and bridge the gap between where they want to be and where they are. And they do it willingly, with pride and confidence. They may be fearful, they may be challenged and not know how to do it, but they do it.They create opportunities to expand. They create opportunities in their jobs, careers, society and culture.

And in the end of the day, when they come home, they see the mess that their wife, who has the privilege of staying at home, has created with their children, the crafts and art etc...as proof that he creates a life of fun and adventure for others. He is proud, fulfilled and happy.

The man who is the sole provider for his family gets to know himself to be someone he never would have imagined himself to be... completely generous, dependable, the source of all that is important and fun. He provides the food. He provides the clothing, he provides the home, the education and the adventures on vacation. HE does all that. He is our HERO.

This is a role that men have fulfilled for ten of thousands of years and to have that removed in our society has an impact. For them to take it on and CHOOSE to be the sole provider is humungously huge of them. They don't have to choose it, many have dual incomes and the wife does something creative and empowering, he supports that, and that's great. I am not discounting the contribution that is possible to society with women working and the possibilities inside marriage. I am simply putting in, wondering about, especially while the children are young and most challenging, what would be possible if the father provided for the family and the mother mothered?

What if we women trust that they can and support them? In doing so, we have an opportunity to be surprised and delighted by our men. To marvel at their Heroics. We can relish in being a woman and care for and be amazed by our children...and in the process, we will amaze ourselves at our ability to trust, mother and be present to what really matters to us. Our children AND our men.

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