It’s already begun: posts everywhere about “Top 10 Things To Change in the New Year” and “How to Make 2016 Your Best Year Yet” as if I’ve somehow miserably failed in 2015, as if I wasn’t good enough this year, but next year I will be if I take their advice. I’m tired of being told that I need to look better, weigh less, do more, think more, be more in order to make next year “worth it.” Because even if this year was full of some truly sh!t moments, it was also full of such deep seated joy that it makes the dark times seem less enveloping. Every year is full of good and bad, better or worse, ups and downs because if life was stagnant we wouldn’t grow or change or move forward. If your kid didn’t shove that peanut up his nose and end up in the emergency room, he never would have learned that food is not for nostrils. If your grandmother and dog hadn’t died within a few days of each other, you never would have known that you had the strength to deliver a eulogy. If you hadn’t let your kid run face first into the ocean, he never would have discovered how unfortunate the ocean tastes.
In 2015, I discovered how having a baby has truly changed who I am. I changed the way I live to be more sustainable and eco-friendly, even making my moon cycle a happier and healthier one without sacrificing comfort or cleanliness as some may first imagine. I took a stand for nursing mothers and shared their stories, and I took an equally defensive stand for moms who formula feed or feed in other ways. I shared my pain as I struggled with infertility and related to the millions of others out there as we remembered the children we lost while spreading awareness of pregnancy and infant loss.
I shared lessons I’d learned about:
how toddlers best learn through play
crap not to bother buying for baby
unsolicited advice to take or ignore after baby is born
why finding momma friends is necessary for your sanity
and why you should encourage family to stop buying your kid toys.
I encouraged mommas to be empowered in their birth choices, shared the lessons I’d learned from my grandmother who had 11 children, gave myself grace when I realized I was saying “no” to my kid and “yes” to my phone and again when I struggled with my decision to stay home rather than go back to work as a teacher.
I failed and succeeded and struggled and soared because that is what living is all about.
I, for one, am proud of the year I’ve had, and you should be too. So, I challenge you to reflect on both the good and the bad from this past year and how it’s changed you for the better so that you can move into 2016 ready to take on what life throws at you and to continue to grow and embrace the person you already are. Because you are enough. You are worth it. You are momma, hear you roar. And no matter how you’re parenting today, cloth or sposies, nursing or formula, carriers or strollers, organic or non-organic, co-sleeping or crying it out, know that you are supported and encouraged here at Dream Diapers to continue to be the best parent you can be and to have confidence that…
if you are parenting with love and a conscious effort for your child’s well-being, you are doing it right, and we are proud to be a part of that.
Happy New Year, mommas, keep being yourselves!
Mommy Sincerest 