I’m so pleased to present to you another “Mama’s Story” Wednesday. This post is from my bloggy bestie, Lindsay, of A New Breed of Mom. She’s a total sweetheart, super supportive, so funny, completely genuine and we have a ton in common. I’d go into it more, but she tells it better than I do. Thank you so much, Ms. Lindsay, for sharing with us.
Just a Mom…Seeking to Encourage and Inspire Other Moms to Dream Big
My name is Lindsay Williams and I am the woman behind A New Breed of Mom. I am a ‘has been’ single mom who’s always been a working mom, a wanna-be stay-at-home mom, learning to be a step-mom, new breed of mom. I am also a wife, daughter, sister, and friend. Three short months ago, out of a desire to transform my own life and live out the life of my dreams, A New Breed of Mom was born.
A New Breed of Mom is a collection of articles, anecdotes, and advice meant to encourage and inspire modern day moms like me. We want to do it all! There are a variety of other roles we play in life besides being a mom. So how do we juggle it all? How can we be everything to everyone and still find time for ourselves?
I am still searching for the answer to that question.
Only, now I am searching for the answer to that question while also being a part of a community of strong, independent, and determined women – moms who blog. That is how I met Jessi. She was the first bloggy mommy friend I made out there in the blogosphere. Actually, our friendship pre-dates Mama’s Got Flair.
What I love most about Jessi is that she is authentic. She’s not putting on an act to draw readers to her blog. Her posts, about women’s issues, are entrenched with her great sense of humor and her unbiased opinions. Jessi’s goals in life are very similar to mine.
My five year plan includes writing and publishing a book, launching my life coaching program, and creating enough revenue from these endeavors to become an official WAHM – work-at-home-mom. The book will, of course, be titled A New Breed of Mom: Motherhood for the New Millennium. Although, I’m only in the very beginning stages of a very rough draft of the book proposal, I do know exactly what I want the book to be. It will be a book to encourage and inspire other mothers to step out of their comfort zones and start living the life of their dreams.
The Life Coaching Program I have been working on has made it a little further into the realm of possibility than the book has at this point. A Life Coach is a cross between a cheerleader, a spiritual leader, and a therapist. But, life coaching is NOT therapy. The Life Coaching Program that I am working on (and will hopefully be launching in the next couple of weeks) is called The Transforming My Life Project. The 90-day program involves a process of guided self-discovery aimed at mothers who are ready to start living their lives by design.
Currently, I am in the process of transforming my own life. The short story is that I had my son when I was twenty. I was not married, I was uneducated, and I was in a bad relationship. My son deserved better. I finished college, graduating with a Bachelors of Art Degree in Psychology and went on to get my Masters Degree in Social Work. I found my way out of that unhealthy relationship. Then after six years as a single mother, I met the love of my life and was married last August. Our one year anniversary is August 22nd.
The day I became John’s wife, I also became Khegan’s stepmother – for better or worse, til death do us part. Becoming a stepmother has been a challenge for me, and not for the reasons that most people think. Whenever I commit to something, I do it wholeheartedly. I doubted that I could ever love Khegan like I love Riley, but I was going to treat them just the same. To my surprise, I fell in love with that little boy and can honestly say I love him like my own. However, it has taken a lot of soul-searching and patience to form a positive relationship with Khegan’s mother. It’s been touch and go, but we are slowly starting to develop into, what I like to call, one big modern family.
Our first year of marriage has had other challenges as well. To my dismay, I did not immediately get pregnant after our wedding. I am still not pregnant. Secondary infertility has been a big hurdle for us to overcome this last year. After about 6 months of trying to conceive, I was getting pretty down on myself. Since the time I was 20, and committed to my beautiful, little, blonde-haired baby boy that I’d make something out of myself, I have always been working towards one goal or another. And I’m not talking about little goals – I’m talking about big, giant-sized goals. College. Grad School. My own place. A promotion. Finding love.
A side-note here about finding love… I had a list. A list of qualities I wanted in a man. A list of qualities that I didn’t think existed in one human being. My mom always had faith for me. She had faith that God would bring that man to me. I had hope, but not faith. When I finally started believing, truly believing, that someone was out there for me and I just had to find him – I found him. Almost immediately. It just took me six years to wise up and believe in myself.
But I digress.
Goals. I had always had giant size goals, and now, after the wedding was over, and the planned pregnancy did not happen, I had nothing – no next big thing. I needed a next big thing. I was a touch depressed, in all honesty. So I decided to start focusing on something I had wanted to do my whole life – write a book.
In the past I had never had any good book ideas, but about nine months ago, as I was starting to slip into depression, it occurred to me that I was a new breed of mom. It occurred to me that moms today are different than ever before in history. And with that thought, things began to flow. We have the power to dream big. We ask. We believe. We achieve. I decided that I was going to share this knowledge with other women. However, since I couldn’t just run out a write a book and expect a publisher to buy it, I had to have a platform. For that reason, I started my blog.
That brings us full circle. My life’s purpose is to encourage and inspire other mothers to Dream Big.
Motherhood is a journey. Life is a journey. We can groan and complain and resist and fight against life’s indignities. Or, we can start changing our thinking. We can start re-framing our thoughts. We can start living our life by design.
If you would like to share your story on a Mama’s Story Wednesday, please contact me at mamasgotflair at gmail dot com. ~Jessi
