I’ve discovered a really great blog called Momastery. Apparently I am the last one of the planet, as the author Glennon has a newly released book and 81,000 followers on facebook. I’ve added her book to my goodreads and her blog to my reader and have immensely enjoyed her honesty about motherhood and the hardships she has faced (alcoholism and bulemia).

I guess I am just kind of a lover of tragedy – the overcoming of it draws me in every time. I love rooting for the human spirit. Momastery is a place which encourages moms to be real about their every day lives – it’s a breathe of fresh air in an online mom world that seems to embrace elaboration, exaggeration, and the elusive thing we call mom perfection. Here are some of her interviews. She discusses her theory that we have to just soak in the small moments of motherhood. It was a relief for me to realize that I wasn’t the only mom on the planet that dreads much of motherhood and that I can just power through most of the hard stuff (when 3 kids are having a meltdown while you are trying to check out at Target) and focus on really soaking up the ever brief  and sporadic small moments of peace and happiness in the family.

Back in the day, it was my hero Erma Bombeck who did the same thing for honesty in motherhood. I remember reading her book about motherhood years back and crying as I read of the mother imprisoned for killing her children. She had discovered Erma Bombeck’s writings in prison and loved her humor and honesty. She wrote Bombeck a letter to tell her thanks for her honest voice about motherhood.  She lamented, “If all moms would have been honest, I would have realized I wasn’t crazy when the weight of mothering was too unbearable.”

So when the baby is teething for a second year in a row and the toddler wiped poop all over her crib and the kindergartner comes home with a naughty note for calling someone a loser and the mean man at the library tells you to shut your kids up and all of these things happen in the same day (or not) just know you are not alone in motherhood. It is this hard for everyone. If the only moment you can soak in is after the kids are asleep and you sit down with a glass of grape juice and a good book to read one page and conk out in exhaustion it’s completely normal. Don’t fret. Sometime in the next day you may get the gem when your kids are holding hands while picking dandelions while the FedEx guy delivers you a box of long-stem red roses. Soak it in. If I know one thing about motherhood it’s this: the worst moments won’t last. And this: the next moment will be even better (even if it doesn’t happen for another month or two.)