The Root of It All and Zombie Babies

I feel like elaborating a little bit on what my recent depression stems from... maybe the only way out is through.  Story in a nutshell?  There are many days that this whole mom gig isn't the way I imagined it.  No worries... this isn't a poor me thing.  I love my kids more than life and being a mother was seriously my number one ambition since about the age of two.  So I'm not trying to bitch now that it sucks.  I think this is going to require flashing back to about the years of 1990 and 1991.  Back then I was in my very early teens and I had one pre-school sister and two toddler brothers.  Back then my parents were very low income and they barely scraped by in a small mobile home.  My mother had to work overnights so during the summers I was appointed by default to babysit the kids while my mom tried to sleep.  Mostly I just sat helplessly on the couch and let them run wild or park them in front of the TV because I didn't have the emotional maturity to know what to do with them.  I didn't yet drive (and there was no car during the day anyway) so pretty much we were all stuck in a dark living room in front of the TV.  I felt so trapped in my life and they felt just as miserable with me.  I vowed I wouldn't "end up" like my parents and made it my life's work to make choices to lead a different type of existence.

Since my husband started his new job a few months ago his work hours are later in the day than his old job and I'm with the kids much longer. Through a series of circumstances through the years I have come full circle just about exactly where my parents were all those years ago... barely scraping by in a small dark mobile home with three miserably bored kids.  I had all these visions of parenthood I'd tried out with my oldest and it turned out many of them didn't work out the way I'd thought they would.  All this is mainly where the recent depression seems to have originated from.

Again I just want to say that I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate my children.  I have a crap-ton of bookmarked blogs I read about some very sick children: children with deforming cranial-facial disorders, or crippling rare skin diseases, or childhood cancer... the list goes on and on and these mothers always seem to handle these insurmountable challenges with nothing but grace.  My children are healthy (for the most part) and I know I am blessed blessed blessed beyond belief.  I just wish *I* could handle my day to day challenges with the kids with more grace.

See this picture?

I work late nights and don't usually get to sleep until 1 or 2 am.  Then I'm up at 6:30 am trying to cattle prod supervise my daughter to get ready for school.  But many times before I can even do that my Boy Tornadoes (ages 1 and 2) wake up.  And they don't just wake up with an oh so cute pitter patter of feet across the house.  No.  They wake up screaming bloody murder.  And they look and act like Zombie Baby pictured above.  My heart always lurches into my throat every morning at those screams after my 3-4 hours of sleep.  And then its about 30 minutes of chaos sending Whoa Tornado to the bus stop and getting the Boy Tornadoes changed, calm, and fed.  And that's just the beginning of my weekdays.

I spent my whole 20s dreaming and obsessing about becoming a mother.  I guess I just thought I'd have it more together and would enjoy it more (instead of feeling waaay overwhelmed at least 1/3 of the time).  And that is the root of the depression.  Since I don't want to wallow here's a recent quote I found from an old book of shadows I once kept (from the 90s - lol!) that put things more into perspective for me:

Your overall outlook on life is important not only to your physical and mental health, but it is also a vital factor in your competence as a Witch.  If you are depressed, angry, floating through life with a feeling that all things you try leave you unfulfilled, you are doing yourself little good.  To be successful in any endeavor you must "think" success.

That was Silver RavenWolf.  As I've said before she's the writer that started me on the Pagan path long ago and at the time she worked well for me.  Pretty basic there... but its probably time for me to go back to basics.  The notes from the passage I'd copied went on to an exercise of controlling your thoughts for self improvement:

Create an aura around yourself by programming responses to a difficult situation.  Close your eyes for a light 5 minute meditation and mentally affirm to yourself the type of person you wish to project... as if putting a sort of mental spell on yourself.

Sounds pretty easy, basic and doable, right?  I just have to remember in those moments to actually DO something similar to that.

Even though life is...