CHRIS’S CORNER Welcomes Guest Blogger Cindy Kane: Remembering Mama

Posted by chriskuhn on May 10, 2013 in Authors, Blog, Books, Chris's Corner, Guest Blogs | 9 comments

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. I wanted to honor mamas everywhere by featuring a clever lady I’ve just recently been introduced to by yet another clever lady, Dana Talusani aka The Kitchen Witch. And if the name rings a bell, it’s because you met Dana here last month as one of my first guest bloggers. Cindy Kane is both a published author and mommy blogger, and she would have happily shared these facts years ago. Now, however, she is excited to also tell you that she’s a stay-at-home mom. This has not always been the case, as you’ll soon read.

Cindy is a delightful read, funny, observant and not above sharing the good, the bad and the ugly of mommyhood.  Her blog Bad Mommy Moments will easily coax a chuckle out of anyone who has ever faced the joy, wrath and confusion of being a parent or been on the other side of it as a child, which covers just about everybody really, doesn’t it? Although there are a few celebrities and reality stars who I’m not certain hail from human beings, but that’s another conversation for another time. Cindy’s book of the same name is a witty mixed media archive of poetry, prose and photography and is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. (Click here for more information about that.)

I asked Cindy if she would mind spending a few moments with us here at my blog as part of CHRIS’S CORNER, my Friday guest blog series, and what do you know? Amid the crazy chaos that is life and in particular, parenting, she found a few minutes to sneak us in and I am most grateful!  So I will let Cindy introduce you to the sometimes magic, other times, madness that is being a mom. And to all birth moms, stepmoms (we sistahs must stick together after all!), foster moms and mamas-to-be, may I wish you a very special Mother’s Day weekend. Take it away, Cindy…

Oh, and you can follow Cindy on Twitter here.

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In the fall of 2007, four major things happened to me at once. I gave birth to my second daughter, had to resign from my job because her daycare fell through, moved with my husband, tempestuous 3YO, newborn and golden retriever into my father-in-law’s house, and then had to take my 3YO out of daycare. I was essentially a stay-at-home mom–the job I’d feared most–at someone else’s house, and my dreams of becoming a writer were pushed so far away that I couldn’t see them anymore.

By March 2008 I was broken. And by broken I mean cranky, impatient, lonely, and consuming so many bags of Cadbury mini-eggs that my baby’s face had the texture of a starfish. Growing up, I always dealt with stress by writing, but for the first time in my life, I had neither the time nor energy for it. I didn’t even know where I’d packed away my journals. So I started a blog, which at the time I thought was like a private, online diary. I’d never blogged before, never read a blog, hadn’t even heard of blogs. I just hoped that if I wrote a little each day I’d find the bits and pieces of myself that I was positive I’d left somewhere after becoming a mom.

I wrote my first post, felt a huge sigh of accomplishment at finishing something, and the next day had a comment. Someone who understood exactly how I felt and thanked me for being funny and honest about it. I couldn’t believe it. I had no clue how she found me, or who she was, but for the first time in months I felt like I wasn’t alone.

For the next two years, I woke up every weekday morning at 4:30 and wrote until my girls got up. Some mornings I blogged, other mornings I worked on a mixed-media book I’d started after the birth of my first daughter. I still struggled with my stay-at-home mom gig, but by writing about it, and seeking the humor in it, I felt hopeful that maybe I’d find my voice amidst the chaos. Maybe my dreams of becoming a writer were possible after all.

Through blogging I learned that I was introverted and my tendency to check out wasn’t because I didn’t like my kids, or my job as their mom, I was just missing a key element for any introvert – solitude to recharge. I learned that my daughter was suffering from night terrors, not just being an obstinate control freak (like her mother) in the middle of the night (not like her mother). And I learned that if I admitted vulnerability, or a downright failure, there was always someone else to chime in and join me. Affirm me. And laugh with me.

The downside was that while I was no longer feeling alone, my priorities got tangled up between the lives of people I didn’t know in real life, and the kids I was neglecting in order to keep up with posts. Instead of handling stress in an active, positive way, I’d disappear into the dashboard of my blog and obsess over stats, views and comments and felt like less of a person on the days when certain posts didn’t do as well as others. And in my more prideful moments, I’d tell people at my daughters’ school that I was blogging because I felt the need to prove that I was doing something with my life. This of course backfired when I had to censor what I wrote because of who might be reading and what might come back to haunt my kids later.

Writing and blogging eventually took a toll on my marriage, as well. I focused so much hope on finishing my book and getting blog posts up that I always wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere by myself so I could think and really dig into the editing. I even started sharing things without asking my husband what he thought – it was my blog, after all. And the loneliness I thought I’d combatted with blogging returned. Only now I was lonely in the middle of a house that was starting to function without me.

So I dropped everything and got my life back in order. Detoxed off of stats, stopped reading other blogs, and went back to just writing when I got up in the morning. It took me six years to finish my book. But I completed it. And my blog is still going, but it’s not the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning.

When I started blogging five years ago I’d hoped to find myself. What I found instead was that by losing bits of who I thought I was, I freed myself from my dreams, and could live the life before me. Sure, that includes writing and blogging and storytelling. But that’s no longer what’s most important. I’m a wife, and a mother, and a homemaker, which has taken me eight years to say with pride. But I am proud. I’m one of the luckiest girls in the world.