The Mom Blah Blah Blog

This last week we were talking about the different phases and stages of our lives.  In the book You're Already Amazing by Holley Gerth she likens them to the trip taken by the Israelites coming out of Egypt.  When they were in slavery trapped in Egypt is a parallel to when we are stuck in a rut, doing something that is not beneficial for us or just outright sinning.  The second phase was setting out.  This is when we make a change to remove ourselves from those issues or problems we are stuck on.  Third is being encamped.  This phase is a difficult one in a lot of ways.  It's when we stop moving towards our goals.  This pause can also happen for a lot of reasons.  We could need time to heal from hurts we have gotten on our journey, we may be to tired to continue and need some rest or it could be that the thing we are heading towards is not attainable yet for any number of reasons.  The final phase is the promised land.  We move into it when we have reached the goal of our journ

I was just in Virginia on vacation with my mom and kids.  I don't often make it down there so every time is a learning experience for me.  That being said I thought I would share with you 5 things I learned in Virginia. How to prepare and cook a squirrel.  Commemorative shot glasses make grate gifts for kids. Dairy is not necessarily the first ingredient in half and half.  Every radio station plays the same 10 songs every hour. We get ripped off when we but ANYTHING in Canada.   I knew I should have bought a lot of Easter Peanut butter M&Ms.  I don't even know if they're sold up here.  

The theme of loneliness continues to pop up in my life right now.  In things I see, things I read and in the lives of those around me.  What I continue to discover is now much insecurity in connected with loneliness.  It seems our confidence in ourselves can hinder us from reaching out to those people we see and think, "She is so amazing, I wish I could be better friends with her!"  There can be so many different reasons we feel this way but I know for me it stems from a feeling of not being good enough for that person. There are things about myself that I don't really like and I attempt to hide them.  Sometimes I think I'm hiding really well and there is NO WAY anyone is going to spot me there.  There are other times when we are called out and we are confronted with those parts of us that we wish weren't there.  Have you ever overheard someone talking about you or had someone tell you about the bad things they have said?  I know I have and though it might see

When the movie Anna Karenina came out a while back I had a mild desire to see it.  However, when movies come out that are taken from novels, especially classic novels, I will usually read the book first. It sort of slipped my mind for quite a while though until I found it as a free book for my Ereader. Quite a few years ago I remember this book was one on Oprah's Book Club.  One of the first things I found myself questioning was whether or not she ever even read anything more than liner notes or coles' notes at best.  This is a long book....I mean really long.  This is coming from someone that has read the Game of Thones series (A Song of Ice and Fire).  What make this book seem so long is all the superfluous information you encounter at every turn.  I seem to recall that it was more than 10 chapters before Anna was even introduced.  Though the side story is pertinent and somewhat interesting, it can often overshadow the main storyline. What also makes this story difficult

In keeping with the endeavour towards improved self esteem and confidence I have discovered one area of my life I need to work on is my tendency towards loneliness.  It is something that plagued me for as long as I remember.  It's this idea that I don't fit in, that I am an outsider and a fear that the people that really and truly get to know me would not like what they find.  Of course when I struggle with loneliness that also means that I assume I am the only one that feels this way.  I see the relationships of people around me and become jealous of the intimacy and the comfort they feel with each other and it leads me to not only feel the sting of this but to further withdraw into my own shell determining that it's too late for me to find my place in these social circles so I might as well just give up.  I can now see that this would be a self fulfilling prophesy and have attempted in a few small ways to try and break the pattern I have set in my life when sadness and lo

Once again we are in the midst of another season of Lent.  Some of you do practice Lent and some of you don't but no matter what camp you fall into there can be something very helpful about taking time to look at how you can improve as a person.  A few years ago a wonderful woman I know took on a difficult "Lenten Fast" of giving up negative self talk.  This was a big inspiration for me.  It not only encouraged me to take my head out of the sand and actually start chipping away at my negativity towards myself, it also showed me that I am not alone in my struggle.  Here was a woman that I thought of as beautiful, kind, considerate, fun, cool and collected who could not see these same qualities in herself.  This affirmed in my head, the thought that every woman struggles with self esteem.   There was something comforting in that thought.  It was helpful to me to know that people I esteem are struggling alongside me.  Though this thought can be helpful initially in helping