Hi, it’s me, fellow tired mom.
I wasn’t always this way, you know. Before I joined the ranks of other tired moms, I was just tired and a lot more carefree. I guess if you really want to know about me, I’ll have to start at my humble beginnings. I grew up in a very small town in Wyoming until my parents divorced and my mom moved me to a slightly bigger small town. On the weekends, I got to live on a ranch 15 miles from the closest town. I didn’t take well to ranch life. I got trampled by horses, cows, and a goat. I knew that whenever those big, dumb cows looked at me with their enormous, black eyes they were secretly plotting the many ways they could kill me. Due to my very real fear of cows, my dad told me to hide big sticks all over the ranch so that I could chase the cows away from me since a cow’s biggest fear is a stick (who knew?). I hid so many sticks that even when I returned home for visits after college, I could find sticks in my hiding places.
I was a young entrepreneur too. At age 6, I began to write and illustrate my own books and go door-to-door selling them to neighbors. However, my neighbors were really stingy with their money and refused to buy my bestsellers. So I turned to the next available resource to sell… my neighbor’s flowers. I would pick their flowers and arrange them into a pretty bouquet and offer them back to them at an extremely low price. Imagine my horror when not only did I get yelled at by my neighbors, but they told my mother and I was grounded.
I have been blessed with a great family. I’m lucky that both my parents chose to remarry wonderful people and we were able to blend families. As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched my mother struggle with breast cancer and my father beat lung cancer twice. I’ve watched as my stepmom’s mind has slowly slipped away to Alzheimer’s. I see my stepdad not be as strong as he once was. However, these are my people and the ones who have helped me through my toughest times.
I moved to Idaho to attend Idaho State University because my sister lives in Idaho Falls and I wanted to be closer to her. She has four kids who I was lucky enough to watch grow. I received a degree in journalism and moved back to Wyoming to an even smaller town than I grew up in to work at a newspaper. It was a great experience but I’m not much for tiny towns, and I soon moved to New Mexico and I loved it. There’s so much culture there and I loved visiting all of its historical sites. While there, I worked for a newspaper as its news editor and created a weekly outdoor and entertainment magazine. However, after a few years, I realized that I hated living so far from my family and moved back to Idaho Falls to work at the newspaper here.
I don’t write as much anymore, and instead turned my attention to all things legal and work as a paralegal. However, my most important and underpaid job is being a mom to two boys, who are 7 and 4. They are wild and silly and I would be lost without them. I recently got divorced and my life has been in a constant state of chaos for about a year. Thankfully, the light at the end of the tunnel has begun to shine a bit brighter in recent months.
Life as a single mom is tough, and I often feel like I’m doing everything wrong. There are times I lay awake at night and wonder if I am screwing up my kids, if I’m doing things the right way, or feeding them the right foods. I want them to turn into their best possible selves and my number one job is not to screw that up. It’s pointless to worry about these things because I know I’m trying my best, but it’s hard when you don’t have that extra parent to calm your fears.
I’m also a social person and I love seeing my friends although this has become much harder for me to do. I am in a monthly book club, craft group, and bunco group, and I can usually make at least one activity during the month. My favorite thing to attend is my book club though because I love to read and discuss books. Plus, it’s a good excuse to see my friends, chat about our lives, eat, and drink a glass of wine. You really can’t beat that!
