When I got pregnant, I worked at a museum putting on events and teaching classes to children and I had a great relationship with my step-daughter.

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I was supremely confident about my decision to become a mom and I had a lot of expectations about parenting.

 

Like many moms-to-be, I faced a difficult choice to either continue to work or to stop working and stay home with my new baby.

 

I choose to quit my well-paying job with excellent benefits and stay home but I thought I could have the best of both worlds and find a way to work at home. 

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Fast forward two years past the birth of my baby, and I had gone from feeling like I was pretty good at everything in my life to feeling like I was good at nothing in my life. 

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That's really where my journey to high-vibe began.

 

All my life I found looking on the bright side and being positive to come pretty naturally to me, even through the difficult times I always found a way to get up, dust myself off, and move forward seemingly unscathed. 

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But being a work at home mom was like nothing I had ever experienced before, and maybe because I went in with my expectations so high, when I got knocked down, I fell hard, and I stayed down.

 

My entire perspective on life changed in two short years. Gone were my generous interpretations of others' motives, gone was my reliably easy relationship with my step-daughter, gone was my usually unshakeable sense of self-worth.

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The thing is that I don't regret one bit of it.

 

The thing about jumping off a cliff to an uncertain fate and being bold is that it's not easy but sometimes it is entirely necessary.

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This was not my first leap of faith.

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I was a really shy teenager and while most kids were going off to college and having their first away-from-home experiences, I honestly didn't see any way that going to college was a real option for me, but I wanted to get over my awkwardness with my peers. 

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So I threw myself into the unknown and went to work on a cruise ship 3,000 miles away from home surrounded by total strangers. 

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I not only got over my fear of talking to people but I came home with the knowledge that I was pretty funny, that people actually seemed to like me, and that I could work my ass off  13 hours a day, seven days a week, for six weeks straight. 

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The gift that becoming a parent under really challenging circumstances brought me, was the knowledge of how to take a really honest look at myself, how to start looking for help, and how to claw my way back to my old self.

 

Only I wasn't my old self anymore, hardship had done what it does best and it had caused me to grow into a better, less afraid, more compassionate, version of me.

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The thing about being a good parent is, at some point, you have to face the fact that you have to become the person you want your kids to be.

 

Not that they have to follow a path you've mapped out for them or risk your everlasting displeasure but that if you want them to be happy, healthy, balanced, caring citizens of the world you have to become your version of those things. 

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Maybe it would have been better for me to try to attain some ideal of perfection before I had kids but I don't think so... and I don't think that's even possible but it sounds like something I would try to do.

 

I think that we teach our kids the most when they see the transformation, when they see us struggle to be better, and fail and try again. 

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So here you will find the perspectives of one imperfect mom trying to stay high-vibe.