First drawing ever. I’m torn between cleaning it up and keeping it as a souvenir .
What a beautiful dilemma to have.
Monthly Archives: April 2014
18 month A3 made her very first drawing… On the couch.
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April 24 1915: A genocide today.
We know the history; we have known it for a long time. April 24, 1915 is the date of the Armenian genocide. All surviving Armenians and following generations know endless stories about the genocide, gory details, escape adventures, death. We know the stories but have we ever allowed ourselves to feel the pain? Or even just a glimpse of that pain.
Though those times have past, those times were real, those people were real, and those emotions were real.
The rumors we heard about them coming are real, I can already see the soldiers knocking on our neighbours’ doors, everybody’s outside, and I can hear screaming and crying. They’re now at our door. They’re telling my husband we need to leave right this moment. They say were temporarily being deported. My girls are running around excited, they don’t understand what’s happening, and I don’t understand what’s happening. “Can I bring my doll?” asks five year old A1. They’re heavily armed and are waiting at the door step for us to leave the house; they won’t even allow us to pack up. My heart feels heavy already, feels like an implosion of emotions. I am scared, but first I am a mother, so I am strong. As we’re forced to head for the door I look around trying to find anything I can take along. I grab a blanket. Two year old A2 is getting scared, she knows something’s wrong, we never leave the house this way, with strangers at our door, she wants me to carry her, but I’m already carrying A3. The moment we set foot outside the reality of it all hits us. The looks on people’s faces said it all. No one is asking questions, its complete chaos yet it is completely clear what is happening. The crying and the screaming is bone chilling. They order Jack to stand on this side of the street and point me and my daughters to the other. They’re separating the men from the woman. I am walking with my head up straight, carrying 18 month old A3, while tightly holding A1’s and A2’s hands. I don’t want them to feel my fear. I can’t even bare to turn back to see Jack having to watch us walk away. I can’t even think of what he’s feeling right now. A man watching his family being taken away, not knowing if they will be safe, not having the chance to protect them.
We will be taken away and we will walk for weeks through the desert. Those who can’t keep up will be killed; the rest will die from dehydration. How long will two year old A2 be able to walk on her own? How long will I be able to carry A3 in my arms? Which one of them will die first and how? What if I am killed first, who will care for them? How can I protect them from fear, hurt and death? How will I carry all three? How will I choose between their lives? Stay with my dying child on the side of the road or carry on with the other two? How will I be able to walk away? What have I done to deserve this? Why are they doing this to us?
With shivering hands and tears rolling down my face I don’t think I can write another word.
I am blessed to only have to imagine this pain. The 1915 Armenian genocide is real, the suffering is real.
This happened, these feeling were felt by Armenian Women, Armenian women who valued the same things I value today. Nobody deserves this today and nobody deserved it then.
We cannot forget the 1.5 million lives that were lost and we can certainly not forget the suffering they lived through.
Genocide is happening over and over again. We all need to speak up and react. We will not shut our eyes and mouths and let this keep happening. This April 24, speak up. Be heard. Stand up.
For all the mothers who watched their children die, for all the fathers who lost their families, for all the children who never again got to receive their parents love.
Stand up.
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Stupid with Honor
I claim to be a reality blog, yet most of my thoughts are filtered. Recently I was talking to a friend about one of my projects to host an online radio show. “You’ll make more enemies then friends” she said. “Freedom of speech is for those who are miserable”. Am I too happy to have freedom of speech? “People don’t like to hear about other’s success”. Another friend told me “Why do you want to succeed? It will only attract jealousy from people?” So should I not succeed to stay safe of people’s jealousy? I have more faith in people than that. What I truly don’t understand is why were so fearful of doing. I already fill myself with reasons not to do things and then I go out and search for validation. The reasons we set up in our minds not to do something and the way we listen to people discouraging us from taking action are just means to get away from doing, safely with reason. There’s something in your mind, you want to do it, but you don’t, because of this, or because of that, or maybe because we’re too afraid to. Let’s call things as they are. Fear is the base of all the “I can’t”, fear of change and fear of the unknown.
People will give advice, they are seeking what’s “good” for me, and they are trying to keep me safe. But I don’t think there’s anything to keep me “safe” from. There’s nothing to fear. Abject humiliation maybe, but one friend one said “If you haven’t looked stupid enough in your life time, perhaps you haven’t tried enough new things.” I don’t mind looking stupid, come to think of it, stupid is the only thing that I am truly able to be effortlessly. And the best part about it is not caring about that sentence fragment.
Is that it? Fear of being judged as stupid?
The only thing we can truly know is that we don’t truly know anything. So if I don’t know anything, and that makes me stupid, then I accept the title with honor.
Stupid with honor.
What a relief.
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Love is happy and happy is free .
I don’t know if it’s the raging hormones , the exhaustion or maybe the lack of outings, but I’m just obsessed with my children. I don’t know if it’s the love they have for me or the amount of love that pours out of my heart for them that surprises me more. I never thought I could love so much or that I was worthy of this much love.
I’m with them all day, and the moment I’m away I’m looking at pictures and videos of them and missing them. I don’t know what nature does to us, but I know that when I became a mother my world changed, my perception shifted and I grew everyday into a different person. Sure this sounds mushy gushy but I just can’t help myself.
I’m fully aware that one of the most annoying things can be parents who don’t stop talking about their kids…
All is good in right doses.
I don’t know, sometimes I just get overwhelmed by the whole situation. Nobody is never fully prepared to become a parent, and society doesn’t help by omitting all the real details of it. The last week of my pregnancy with A1 I kept asking :” Are they really going to let us bring the baby home?”, ” Are they really going to leave us alone with the baby ?”. I had so much mental blockage and was so not ready for what was coming. My circumstances we’re kind of special but that’s another story for another time.
Tonight I’m just in love.
There’s nothing more to this life than potential happiness . Every minute we spend not being happy is a minute wasted. Gone forever.
Be happy, seek love.
Love is just a way towards happy .
Happy is free.
Doesn’t really matter if everybody doesn’t get you, doesn’t matter what car you drive, doesn’t matter that your boss is an a-hole.
All that matters is how you feel in this moment. And only you and your thoughts can control how you feel.
Start by being happy and all will fall into place.
Feeling so blessed. How can not want to have more children?
Perhaps I should wake Jack up…
Filed under life, Motherhood, positive thinking, Success, Uncategorized
Night After Night, Day After Day
Written Tuesday night.
It’s 9:30 pm and I woke up 5 minutes ago on the floor of my kids’ bedroom. It was 8:30 when I took A1 and A2 upstairs for bed, A3 was already asleep, they brushed their teeth then fought over the stool to reach the sink. We settled that by seating one child on the steps of the bathtub “look there’s water here too, you can brush your teeth here”, of course they got water everywhere and wet their socks, we lost more time trying to find the perfect pair of socks because two year olds feel the little strings touching their toes and only one out of six pairs of will do. Finally get them in their room, ever since we moved A3 out of the walk in closet A1 and A2 have been sharing a room. They get in bed and then “please stay a bit”, they always ask me to stay and lie down for a while, and so I do. I must admit, as tired as I may be, that is one my most blissful moments of the day, that and giving A3 her last bottle of the day while sitting on the rocking chair.
I make such an effort to try and seize the moment, but it can be hard. Sometimes I watch old videos and I wonder where my mind was and how I missed what was happening right in front of my eyes. Lately, when I recognize a moment, I try to capture it in my mind with the most details possible from visual details to thoughts and emotions.
Last time I did this was a few weeks ago, we took the kids to the park and there was so much snow yet the swings were still up. We put A3 and A2 in the baby swings and A1 and I were on the regular swings. Jack was pushing the little ones, and all were singing and shouting. It was just one of these perfect moments. I grew in a house right across a park, and so I’ve spent a lot of time on a swing, even as a teenager it was where I went to think. So one day I’m 16, going oh so high, holding tightly onto the chains, closing my eyes, imagining that I am flying. And when I open my eyes, 15 years have passed and I’m still on the swing, except this time I am surrounded by these children, and this wonderful man, it is a beautiful sunny day and life is beautiful.
Once again I have shifted off topic and don’t even know what the initial story is, I need a moment to go back and read…
Oh ya, putting the kids to bed… oh this is going to be a long post….
So they ask me to stay, then A2 asks for a story, always the same story, the three little pigs and always the same part, when the wolf burns his butt going down the chimney. She doesn’t want to hear the rest, only that part, so we start at “the two little pigs ran into their pig brother’s house of bricks…” once that’s done, she always asks for another story, and it’s always the same one “goldilocks and the three bears” and always the same part, she only wants to hear about how goldilocks broke baby bear’s chair. Come to think of it she only likes the burning and breaking… what the heck? How did I never realize?
So then when story time is over I try to leave but they ask me to stay some more. And how can I refuse, one day they’ll be teenagers asking me to close the door on my way out of their room. So I stay a bit more, and sometimes I fall asleep. And this time, I fell asleep and forgot that I’m at the edge of my daughter’s bed drooling on a pink and purple lady bug pillow. I don’t know what I was thinking, I just know I woke up on the floor. I got up and started heading for the door when A2 asked “where are you going?” now you might think of me as a hypocrite, but as much as I love being with my kids, sometimes I have to put a limit. So I told her a little white lie. “Mommy’s going to the bathroom to do caca, and I’ll b back when I’m finished”. Of course I used caca so that she doesn’t expect me back in 30 seconds and hopefully falls asleep while waiting for me. A1 clearly understands this concept and is aware that it’s a lie to keep A2 from throwing a fit, we’ve had a talk about it. “You know when mommy says that she’s going to the bathroom and that she’ll be back? Well, truth is…”
It’s a similar scenario every night ever since I’ve been back at work. By the time we finish work, pick up the kids, feed them, change them and bathe them, we are finisheeeeeed. I usually wobble out of the girls’ bed room after they’ve finally fallen asleep and literally crash in my bed only to wake up a few hours later to remove my bra or socks and pass out again until that dream crushing alarm starts again at 5:15 am. Day after day, night after night.
Oui, c’est la vie. But what can I say other than, just go with it and all will be well.
All that matters is that we are happy, we are healthy, we are grateful.
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