Editor’s Note: This is one of Cat Koehler’s first blogs ever posted on the site. Enjoy!
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Who shows us how to be great moms? Do we just stumble our way through it hoping to minimize our children’s future therapy bills? Where do we find these mommy mentors?
As a first-time mom, I was lucky enough to be introduced to some great women and moms. Each one taught me something different that I still carry with me today.
The many lessons these moms taught me were bigger than when to use diaper cream and how often to bathe the baby or swaddle her perfectly. The lessons weren’t about the baby; the lessons were about me.
I learned that making time for yourself is important not only for your own sanity but for your child’s well-being. A mom with too much on her have-to list and not enough on her want-to list gets cranky, and that leads to cranky children.
I’m not a terribly patient person. Actually, I have almost no patience — it was left out of my genetic code entirely. One of my mom friends had so much patience, I often wondered if it was natural or possibly drug-induced. Either way, it was amazing. I would watch her discipline her children with a low, calm voice and think it was a much better alternative to my mommy-dearest approach. To this day, when I find myself getting worked up, I wonder how she would handle the situation.
Who would have thought the biggest lesson would have come from a teapot?
When I left that group of great mamas in Michigan to move back to Omaha, one of them gave me a teapot. Artfully, she had painted a message on it, and it is a message I will always carry with me.
Here’s to good women.
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we raise them.
The message on that teapot is so true. In order to raise our daughters to be good women, we must first be one. In order to be a good woman, we must know one (hopefully more).
We don’t have to all have the same ideas or lifestyles — we just have to be moms.
There is a lot to learn from a woman who raises her children differently. (Anyone else addicted to reruns of “Wife Swap”?) The first step is admitting you have something to learn.
So let’s all take a moment to get over our catty egos and realize that other moms have good ideas, too. Heck, check out the forum on momaha.com. All kinds of moms share their knowledge there.
Let’s reach out to one another to share and learn. Let’s form a sisterhood of support.
No one but another mom knows all the heartache and love involved in this job.
Cat Koehler is married with two children. She works full time. Read her Mondays on momaha.com
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Read the original blog, by clicking here.
