As if I don’t have enough on my plate, today I was accepted as a regular blogger over at Empowering Parents. For those of you that have followed my travails as a military mom working through deployment and reintegration, I’ve really struggled.
About a week or so ago, an old high school friend reconnected with me via what else? Facebook. It was super cool to hear from her and we were catching up. She mentioned that she worked with behavior modification techniques for troubled kids. I thought cool and tucked that info away for future use.
Except that this weekend hit and my daughter had one of her famous meltdowns. And it was a doosey. I don’t know if maybe it was building up or what but boy did she let go (otherwise the weekend was pure awesomeness). But it was significant enough that I emailed Sara and asked if she could help.
So its taken me 6 months of screaming and crying and food battles to finally admit that I can’t do this alone and ask for help. I’m okay with that. We did a decent job, but I feel like there’s more we could do to make this whole thing easier on my kiddos. Because at the end of the day, I don’t get a do over and if I can work to make things better for them, to give them a smiling mom and the tools they need to be responsible adults (more on that at another time), then I’ll be able to send them out into the world knowing they’ll make good choices. Maybe not the ones I’d make but hopefully, good ones.
So when Sara recommended that I send a post into the Empowering Parents editor and see if I would fit for their blogging team, I was initially hesitant. But then, after she and I talked and I realized that my struggles might just help another military mom struggling through some of the same things, I figured I’d go for it. So while I can’t write my book (yet), I can write here and hopefully pass along some of the things that worked and haven’t worked for me.
Amazingly enough, the editor immediately offered me a slot, so I thought that is a sign that I’m meant to be doing something along these lines. After last week’s crushing disappointment about my book on military moms, I needed a boost and maybe this was the opportunity that I was supposed to stumble across, you know?
Anyway, I’m excited to be part of the Empowering Parents team and we’ll see what I can learn about helping out my kiddos. I’ll be posting links on this site to each post over there and I hope you’ll drop by and check them out.