I read something recently called the 5 minute rule. No, not when it’s okay to eat food that’s fallen on the floor, something way more useful. The idea that if you don’t do something within 5 minutes your brain actually kills the idea. I started practicing this new rule right away as that’s what this little rule is entirely about. Not tomorrow, not more than 5 minutes from now, but within the first few minutes you think of something, you must act on it or you will talk yourself out of it and your brain will go the extra mile and kill and bury any idea you don’t almost instantly act on. So since I read about this almost 2 weeks ago, I’ve lost 5lbs, I’ve become a better cleaner and organizer, a better enjoyer, a baker, a donating son of a bitch, a better mother, wife and all around I’ve become less lazy, less OCD, and more of a doer. I’d like to thank my 2am breast feed session which turned into me finding the actual end of the internet and brought me to this article that I’m telling you, has been changing my life!

So here it is. As you all know, my mom is no longer walking this earth with me. Some of the long term effects have shown their ugly faces ever since the shock and disbelief has worn off quite a bit, and now I’m living this new life as I know it. I’ve always suffered from a touch of anxiety, so though the feeling isn’t new to me, it’s absolutely more prominent. Since I’ve noticed this new part of my DNA, I have to acknowledge the things that once came so naturally to me, now sometimes feel paralyzing. While I realize being a 30 something with two little ones to raise, a marriage to nurture, a career to succeed at, a household to run and my own body to take care of, is a daunting task at best some days; I’ve talked to enough moms to know this feeling isn’t just all that, but that coupled with the loss I suffered a year and a half ago. So on an average good day, there’s anxiety now, and the greatest sense of being overwhelmed by making simple plans or running a 10 minute errand, or how pure panic sets in when being asked to do otherwise fun things, anxiety over taking on new endeavors, setting new goals, anxiety and guilt and pressure to teach two children while keeping them SAFE, respectful, well fed, kind and wonderful, is. A. Lot. It’s a fucking lot ok! And some days it’s a struggle but this 5 minute rule is seriously helping me out. It’s also inspired me to make a vision board. One that has my greatest hopes, deepest wishes, and biggest aspirations for this next year. Ones for me, my husband, and my children.

The five minute rule has opened my life up to this idea that I don’t have to be perfect but I have to do more than just exist, I have to LIVE. And I have to live now. And while I’m living, to be intentional about the seeds I’m planting. And how I love and lead while I’m planting these seeds. And how the fruits of my labor will be so much sweeter if my seeds are planted on purpose with a love bigger than me. With an intention greater than me. With a legacy I want to leave behind one day, in mind. With my babies, my favorite humans, having the best possible mother because she is taking care of herself while taking care of business. I knoooow that life can be down right hard, bitter, nasty. And if you have one experience that has knocked you down, you well know that sometimes it takes a minute to get back up. But it’s in that moment you realize that the universe is inside of you, and you have to give it back.

If you’re one of the truly blessed people who have a love that created life, then I’m talking to you! It’s our purest most innocent and important duty in this life to be KIND, to teach love without limits, and to spread the light inside of us. Yes it is extremely cliche on the last day of a calendar year to want to change and be the change and be a light or a life vest or a ladder for someone who needs it, but what about starting with yourself this year. Be who your kids need, who your people need. Be intentional. Be kind. Plant little seeds all over God’s green earth and plant those seeds with love. Lift someone up. Help someone out. Let someone depend on you. Let your light shine! And seriously, idk what article it was but it lit a fire inside my heart and I just wanna be the best version of myself now because I know at the very end of it all, n o w i s a l l w e h a v e.

This year, I’ve asked my husband, on many occasions if he could just try to love me a little bit more since I miss my mom’s love so very much. I’m normally not a very vulnerable person, and I hate to ask for help. And it was HARD to explain what asking for extra love meant because I didn’t understand it myself, I just knew I needed to be loved a little more by everyone and anyone who ever loved me, so I could feel again, so I could love again, so I could be patient again. And though he didn’t understand what that exactly meant each time I asked for it, he loved me more than he ever has. He poured his excess into my soul and filled a void inside my heart with his big unconditional love.

Together, we created a new life this year, we continue to teach our oldest son how to be a wonderful human and it’s been our greatest joy to watch our children play with and love each other. We welcomed new life on both sides of our family, we added my sister and her two dogs to our already wild life, and we let go of some very toxic people. We’re trying to live a life we are proud of while doing our best to make sure our kids have two happy and healthy parents. We, like many others are vowing to take better care of ourselves this year. To love better, to eat better, and to be better. To rise out of a primal, survival mode way of living to doing things out of joy and happiness.

This last year I tried so hard to find the silver lining in every situation, even the extremely sad or very frustrating ones. 2018 my mantra will be pray and walk away. Because with all of this being said, there are some people who just aren’t worthy of my light.

So, as this year, the second year without my mother in it, and the year I learned what true hurt with no protection felt like, comes to a close, I’d like to thank you. For reading my rawest and most vulnerable emotions. For saying nice things. For even reading this little blog at all. I hope for health, peace, happiness and success in whatever version you need it, but most of all I hope your heart is light yet filled up, that your mind is happy and I hope that your soul is free. If it’s not, please do something in the next 5 minutes to help yourself, or ask someone to love you a little extra when you need it the most.

Happy New Year friends. And cheers to you my mama 💛🥂⭐️

Despite the hustle and bustle of this holiday season, the world is a little extra quiet today; covered in a blanket of snow as the rain drizzles over it to make for a perfect kind of feeling. I don’t know that the feeling is all sad but for lack of a better explanation I feel melancholy today. It’s the second holiday season without you here. And the saying “things have to fall apart to …..whatever whatever something positive” is completely applicable to life as I know it now. Everything has fallen apart. Yes we have been blessed with two babies that would be your absolute pride and joy on this earth right now, but life got otherwise, ugly this year. Uglier than the pain of watching you leave. There have been the lowest lows, and I can really only count very few highs inside this last year. So mom, my Christmas letter to you in heaven on year number two is still a sad one. My heart hurts every day, and now it hurts more than usual. As I’m realizing I’ve become the matriarch of this family at an age I didn’t think I’d ever have to be so …much. Essentially I’m filling some very big shoes with half of the experiences. Because, I was still learning from you. I had just begun to learn so much about being a mom from the best. The very articulate mastering of all the different kinds of love you gave. The wisdom you had coming out of every part of your beautiful mind. The power you possessed and the vulnerability you weren’t afraid to show. The way you made me believe in Magic. I am not a quarter of the woman you were when you left this earth. I am not a quarter of the woman you were at age 33. I will never be exactly you because God truly broke the mold when He sent you down. Mommy, I miss you. I miss the big outrageous way you loved me. I miss the way your voice sounds. I miss the way you would reassure me. The shock is gone. I’m not entirely sure I believe and accept that you’re really gone so I still hold onto some little shred of light that some way you could walk through my door today. Tomorrow. Or even better, on Christmas morning. I guess I thought the hardest part would have been watching you suffer. Watching you take your last breath. Going back to real life without my every day dose of you. That was all hard. But the cloak of sadness has come and gone and when it comes it’s usually just as heavy as it was on the 24th of June 2016. I have so much sadness held inside my bones, inside my brain, inside my heart tissue. And when these days that used to be filled with so much love coming at me from you, everything stops and it just hurts. My wish is to find some peace. Acceptance. I’m ready for the good times. I want to worry less and fill up with more love. I want to live and love more like you did. Fearless, out loud, big ass love. I want to feel as good as you used to make everything feel. Safe. Light. Happy. I miss you every second of every day and sometimes still get confused when I get the urge to call you. I know you’re proud of us kids. I know you long for the day you see us again. I know you are at peace. I just wish I could steal you back for a second. Oh what I’d do for you. I’d give it all just to spoil you at Christmas.To feel your hair in my hands. To sit close to you on the couch. To hear you cackle. To love you in person again. I’ll hold onto my memories, while they’re holding onto me. Merry Christmas my angel. I love you to the moon and whatever’s after that.

Ya know how every year when you put up the Christmas tree you reminisce about the people you love, with the people you love? Yeah. We did that this morning. My favorite thing still is unwrapping the ornaments and remembering what each one means. What each one meant. How some have dual meaning or a whole new meaning this year. How some you’ve forgotten what exactly they mean but they’re still so special to you. It was just dan, mav me and acey and we were decorating the tree when our jubilee was happily interrupted by a phone call from my favorite aunt. I like to think that when she misses my mom she calls me, because I know when I miss my mom she’s the one I go to. We talked about packages that are coming in the mail, and how a card I sent her, made her thanksgiving. After we hung up I felt filled up, but also felt the looming sadness overcome me once again. I blinked a few extra times for a few minutes to bat the tears away to try and make this moment unsad, but then dan started having a memory out loud. Funny how some things that surrounded my moms passing are still so foreign and not at the tip of my brain, because I was so razor focused on trying to freeze into my memory something else at that exact moment. But dan said to me today “do you remember when your mom was….” and trailed off because I guess it still sucks for dan too, to say “died” because dying sucks. Imagine that. So anyway he recalled her being so worried about Allie. Like terrified and probably one of the main reasons she ever fought as hard as she did. One of the main reasons she hid how terrible she felt all those months. One of the main reasons she really felt alive at all. She asked dan, and yes I was in the room, but this was her moment with dan and she asked him “who will take care of my baby girl” and dan with a stern face and all the warmth in the world inside his eyes, he made a single statement, two words, and with so much weight and promise he said “I will.” And she must have trusted him and known what a good man my husband really was.. is. Even in that moment we had no idea what the reality would soon become. Death and dying plays some funny fucking tricks inside your brain and heart and logic. After all we have been through in our family since my mom has left this earth, somehow we still have love in our hearts and we care for each other. As my mom would say “we really give a shit about each other!” Though somehow we have moved through the months and found ways to make the hurt, throb a little less, we are still hurting. We have learned a lot about how my mother was the glue, the woman and the man of the family. The matriarch. The queen. I suppose she was the king too. The one who kept it all together. The important things, the trivial things, important dates, little trinkets of love, boundary-less love. This holiday season has been, dare I say, harder than the first set of holidays without her here. Maybe because shock was still protecting me last year. Maybe because my grief and disbelief was thicker last year. Maybe because people we thought would never make this loss harder, have made it just that. Harder. Than it ever had to be. But this year it is front and center that when I need her the most, she appears somehow. Today it was a song stopping in the middle and then “happy holidays” almost interrupting the previous song. Fun fact: this happened while dan was memory-ing out loud, and happy holidays was a song dan would sing overrrrrr and over again, consistently, just one part to drive my mom NUTS. So mom, thanks for that. And dan, thanks for that too. I just wish I could sit around my Christmas tree with my mom. And since I can’t have my mom here with me and my babies and my husband, then I wish I could sit with all her best friends who would talk about her like the queen she was. Telling us tales and stories about their childhood, their teen years, catholic school days, raising babies days, karaoke days, just ya know, her best days. Who would have ever thought my mom’s glory days would be one of the things I wish I could hear about MOST. Ugh. My heart. Well, I want to wish all my people the happiest holiday season. Do things intentionally and with your heart exposed. If you don’t, it’s not worth it. Love harder than you have to, forgive, forget. Love people who love you. Protect the people who protect you. If someone wants to be in your life, you’ll know it, because it’ll feel GOOD. I hope everyone has a healthy, happy, blessed and of course MERRY Christmas. As for me I’m loving up my three favorite guys, my newest roomie, and oh – before I forget – I welcomed my first nephew on my side and he is the perfect, most dreamiest little Apache baby alive. Send him all the love and blessings in your heart for me, would ya? Because new babies deserve to be covered in l o v e.

Oh hi perfect 💙