Reflections...

There are many things the come through my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Many things that turn me to a thought provoking process, which on top of the recent water trine and my internal systems reaching a point of climax has meant that I've been all over the map. UpWorthy and Huffington Post have been major contributors to the recent trend of events for me.

Last week I saw this video... I was heartbroken to the point of bawling on a morning commuter train heading into San Francisco. I urge people to watch it, and to become aware - but only at the full disclosure that it is not, by any means, and easy thing to see. This instance is fictional, but it is a reality for too many. I was ready to hop onto the next East Bay bound train just so that I could scoop my baby up and never let him go. For the purposes of this post, I am desperately holding back tears from the mere thought of it - just as I do every single time it pops into the forefront of my mind.

It's a lot to take in and it honestly makes me question where my priorities lie. It makes me reevaluate what I'm doing with my life, what I want to do with my life etc. Hardly anything for me is stable right now, and with Tuesday's New Moon now is the time to rethink things. As I mentioned in my last post I'm going to start building a list of things I want for my life, for my self, for... the world.

Then this morning I saw this other video, that also put me to tears. Not on the train, and certainly not to the same extreme, but most definitely for the same weight of emotional pull. Watching it reminds me of how much I'm doing, and how important that work is. Regardless of what my family dynamic is, and what I want it to be, as it stands right now - this very moment - I am a single mother. I am the one who does all of the things, all of the time. I am the one making sure everything gets done, and that at the end of the day I've created a better life for my son. Extenuating circumstances came into play, no one left intentionally, but whether they did or not - it's still just me at home.

It's my job to make sure that my son is raised right. It's my job to make sure that my son has all that he needs to grow up to be the person HE wants to be.

So after all of that playing through my head, I stumble across this... I hit a huge "kick self in ass" road block and just sat there for about ten minutes. The amount of times in a day I use 'hurry up' with my poor child is probably upwards of a dozen on those real trying days, but still more than a handful on a more typical, low key day. My son doesn't stop to smell every rose on our way from point A to point B like the child in the article, but he does take his sweet time. I know that a lot of our problems are my fault for not giving him as much time as I've come to learn that he needs. The rest fall under the categories of scheduling too much and not wanting to be late. Plus then they're those days where I pick him up from daycare and it takes him 15 minutes to get into his seat and get his seat belt on, usually only after much convincing that he can't actually sit in the adult seat. I get so frustrated, and so unnecessarily (most of the time).

Why do I need that frustration? And why should I ruin his experiences due to my haste? Basically I came to the decision that I need to employ this new policy. I need to enjoy things with my son, as opposed to fighting him just to satisfy my desires to get going a little faster.