A Musing Maralee

December 17, 2015
by Maralee
58 Comments

What I learned from Arguing with Men About Porn

I have found that when you read an article on the internet, it is best not to read the comments. If you decide to read the comments, you are likely to lose your faith in humanity. While I don’t often read internet comments on random articles, I do read the comments left on my posts. Comments here are generally well thought-out, respectful and kind. While my blog is primarily read by moms, I recently had a post that inspired some men to leave comments, both here and here. I also saw many of the comments left on Facebook shares of this post. I decided not to get involved in arguments about the post anywhere other than on my actual blog and here in my own little corner of the internet I was going to respond as thoroughly as I could because this is an area I think people need to be educated about.

It was kind of a fascinating process. I was a little surprised at how many men want to defend porn. I spent lots of time pulling together responses, collecting resources, and entering into conversations with random guys on the internet. Random guys who are really passionate about porn. Here’s what I learned from those interactions:

Men are so defensive of porn, they can’t distinguish between adult use and a child’s use. I very clearly wrote a letter to my young children about how they can be hurt lifelong by porn use in their early years. Porn use by children creates a lifetime of problems, as has been documented by the American College of Pediatrics. And yet, I had man after man telling me how they use porn and it’s no big deal. While I don’t even agree with them that their adult use of porn is no big deal, I find it so odd they felt compelled to be defensive about something I wasn’t even addressing. Whatever your personal feelings about porn, we should all be able to get behind protecting little children from sexually explicit material.

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December 15, 2015
by Maralee
2 Comments

A Newbie’s Guide to Self-Care: What works for you?

When I first read about the concept of “self-care” it seemed entirely overwhelming to me. There was a description about why it was important and then a list of possible self-care activities. As a rule-follower, I looked at that list and instead of it looking like a bunch of life-giving suggestions about how to invest in myself, it looked like one more to-do list when I already felt overwhelmed. Okay, I’m supposed to be feeding my kids, doing the laundry, keeping the house clean, investing in my marriage, staying up on current events, be involved with my church and now also perform all these self-care tasks? Run a marathon? Get a pedicure? Take a cooking class? None of this sounded good to me, but I felt like this was now what I had to do if I was going to check off the self-care box on my list of Things Good People Do.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography: “Reading a book for fun is a special pleasure. Not only does it feed my mind and rest my spirit, but it also models the love of reading for my child. Win-win.”

It took some time and introspection (two things I don’t have much of on a regular basis) to figure out that wasn’t at all how I was supposed to be thinking of self-care. I decided to think about the things I was already doing and enjoyed, that felt rejuvenating and fun and ask myself some questions:

What is it about this activity that I enjoy?

What need is this meeting for me?

How is this helping me treat myself with kindness?

This helped me prioritize some activities I was already involved in so I could be sure I was carving out time to make them happen regularly. I’m going to share what some of those activities are here, but my goal is not that you would adopt MY form of self-care, but that it would help you think about what might be good for YOU. Hopefully this list will help you think about what you might already be doing that you could start to think about not as a guilty pleasure, but as actual self-care.

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December 14, 2015
by Maralee
0 comments

A Newbie’s Guide to Self-Care: Self-Care vs. Selfishness

(This post is part of a series on self-care. You can read my introductory post here.)

I started digging into the concept of self-care from a very depleted place. I have a lot of little kids. My marriage was not healthy. It was winter in the midwest, which if you’ve lived through winter in the midwest you understand why that contributes to a depleted feeling. I was too busy parenting and working on my marriage and just trying to keep my head above water to be involved in my church community the way I had been at other seasons of my life. There wasn’t much I was doing that was intentionally rejuvenating for me. (I am not AT ALL saying my kids or marriage are just a drain, I’m saying what every mom knows to be true– parenting can be wonderful and exhausting all at once.)

So from that place of exhaustion it’s kind of funny that I began to read about the concept of self-care with a very skeptical attitude. “Self-care. That’s for wimps. It’s selfish and weak and who even has time for that?” I was pretty sure I didn’t need it. I could be sympathetic that OTHER people should be doing a better job at taking care of themselves, but I just didn’t need it. I could continue to give and give because I am mostly a mom-shaped robot and I’m FINE. Pay no attention to the woman hiding in the closet with a bag of Chewy Sprees. And no, I’m not starting to resent these little people who CAN’T EVEN PUT ON THEIR OWN SOCKS– why would you even say that? And I probably always cried when my husband put a dish on the counter instead of in the dishwasher. . . that’s totally normal, right?

Not paying attention to your self-care needs has a price.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography– “It requires some planning and sacrifice (mostly by my husband!) to attend a weekend with girlfriends every year, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. These women have seen me at my best and my worst and they still love me. They encourage me to be a better person in every way as we walk through life together.”

But for some of us who are not used to thinking about the concept of self-care, it can just feel like selfishness. Self-care and selfishness can even look the same from the outside. I can’t tell you what is self-care for you and what is selfishness. It’s a huge matter of discretion and some of us black and white thinkers have a tough time with those gray areas. If it could be perceived by someone else as selfish, then I’ll just avoid it entirely because I’d rather you see me as a selfless martyr (exhausted, cranky, plastic smile) than as someone who seems to be prioritizing my own needs at the expense of others.

Since there isn’t an easy answer way to categorize what’s self-care and what’s selfishness, I’ve learned to think through a few key issues when I’m trying to evaluate it in my own life. Continue Reading →

December 9, 2015
by Maralee
4 Comments

A Newbie’s guide to Self-Care: The role of self-talk

(This post is part of a series on self-care. You can find my introductory post here.)

It was almost a year ago now that I first read the words “self-care” and felt the stinging realization that while I knew what those words meant, I wasn’t sure what they meant TO ME. “Care” is a nice enough word. I take care of my kids, I care for my friends, I know God cares for me. It was just that “self” part that kept tripping me up. It sounded selfish. It sounded weak or weird and like one more thing I didn’t have time for. But when you come to realize how emotionally empty you are, how physically exhausted you are, how spiritually dead you feel, you know it’s time for a change. And that change might be learning what self-care means to you and how to think about it differently.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography: “Sometimes I have to give myself permission to slow down and simply create. Whether it’s pruning a rosebush or coloring in a book, writing a journal entry or cutting a snowflake, the act of creating is soul-nourishing.”

I don’t want to present to you this picture that my life has been all about serving others at the expense of taking care of myself. That isn’t totally accurate. Obviously meeting just the physical needs of six young kids can be draining and will eliminate a lot of options for “me time” the way other people define it, but I have had plenty of moments of fun in my daily life. I think fully half of my self-care dilemma wasn’t that I wasn’t taking care of myself, it was my ATTITUDE about taking care of myself. Tell me if these scenarios sound familiar to you:

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December 8, 2015
by Maralee
6 Comments

A Newbie’s Guide to Self-Care: The 5 Ws and an H (an introduction)

Who: Hey you. Yes, YOU. Are you a human person? Then you need to be practicing self-care. Are you a mom? Then you REALLY need to be practicing self-care. If you are spending your life expressing love and nurture to little people who often test your patience, wet YOUR bed (it happens), and require your help to do simple things like STAY ALIVE, then you need to be taking care of yourself. You are really important in the lives of those little people and it matters that you are functioning at your best. If you are constantly emotionally drained, physically wiped out, and spiritually dead, it’s going to be pretty tough to teach them how to be healthy people.

What: Self-care is both extremely simple and thoroughly confusing. It is what it sounds like– it is taking care of yourself in ways that are refreshing and rejuvenating for you. This is going to vary GREATLY from person to person. What is self-care to someone will feel like torture to someone else. Running, sewing, baking, lunch with friends, reading, woodworking, solitude — all great options. . . unless you hate them, in which case they do not count as self-care for you. When I’m evaluating what is self-care for me, I want to know if I feel better after having done it, more inspired in my daily life, refreshed, and if it helped me connect with some aspect of myself that doesn’t get enough attention during my normal activities. I have also noticed that when I’m involved in an activity that qualifies as self-care for me, I generally have a strong emotional response. It’s not even always a positive response, it just connects me to a feeling I might not have been able to deal with while parenting, working, etc.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography– an answer to my question, “What does self-care look like to you?” Her response: “Placing real flowers on my kitchen table brings me life–the colors, the beauty—it all tells me that I am valuable.” She’ll be adding her view (literally) on self-care to each of my posts.

When: You are likely already doing self-care, but you need to reorient your priorities to see it as self-care and remind yourself of how important it is. Do you have a nightly time when you read a book? Self-care. Do you go for a run three times a week? Self-care. Do you go out for coffee with a friend every other Tuesday? Self-care. So the first part of the “when” is to recognize when you are already doing this and affirm that these aren’t “guilty pleasures” they are a necessary part of being a good friend, mom, wife, etc. The second part is intentionally scheduling and prioritizing self-care time that may not come as easily. Every other Thursday is my self-care night. My husband and kids are prepped that this is time I spend by myself to do what I need to do for my sanity. If it wasn’t scheduled, I can promise you it wouldn’t happen and other things would creep in during that time.

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December 3, 2015
by Maralee
2 Comments

Embracing the Joy of being a Homebody Mom

Today I took three of my kids out to run an errand with me. My older kids were at school, so it was the three-year-old, the two-year-old and the one-year-old that went with me to pick up basketball shoes for my older boys. As I was buckling them into their carseats I tried to remember the last time I had taken the three of them to run an errand. . . and that’s when I realized it may never have happened before today.

I have six kids. Somewhere around kid number four (when my oldest was 5), I stopped trying to do all the things. “Simplify” became my life motto. It isn’t that my kids couldn’t behave themselves if I took them out and about. It isn’t that they didn’t enjoy occasional outings. It was just that I found I was becoming a woman I didn’t like. And having a mom you know loves you is more important than attending library story time.

Some of you moms LOVE being out. It energizes you. It gives structure and purpose to your day. You feel like your life has meaning if you’ve put on shoes and run around town a bit. But there are those of us who do not find public parenting to be an enjoyable act. We get grumpy with our kids and we want a nap when we get home. We get actual literal headaches from the stress of trying to hold it together while wandering the aisles of Target with whiney kids.

We get exhausted by having to help a toddler use a grocery store bathroom (I didn’t even know grocery stores HAD bathrooms until I had a toddler who saw public restrooms as some kind of tourism opportunity) while holding a baby and trying to keep a preschooler from unrolling the toilet paper. When we’re exhausted we huff and roll our eyes and say unhelpful things like, “Are you kidding me? Remember when I asked if you needed to potty AT HOME? Can’t Mommy even pick up MILK and BREAD without having to wipe someone’s bottom?” I do not like that woman I become and at some point in my parenting journey I decided to limit her ability to damage my kids.

This is my bottomline: I don’t want to yell at my kids. I don’t want to shame them in public. I want them to feel totally confident that they are loved and treasured. This is not the kind of mom I was being at library story time or at the children’s museum or in the park or at the McDonald’s Playland. But I can be that kind of mom at home. I can give my kids freedom to play and make mistakes and use the bathroom without it becoming major family drama. I actually love being in my home where we can do puzzles and have dance parties and make messes and sing and wrestle and read stories on the couch. I’m not brooding about being stuck in the house with these kids, I truly enjoy it. Over the years I have become better at handling the stress of running around town with a toddler, a preschooler and a baby, but I’ve also learned to prioritize when it’s worth adding that stress into my life and when we’re better off at home.

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November 22, 2015
by Maralee
0 comments

A Life in Status- August #2, 2015

If you want to feel better about your life, come observe mine on Facebook or Twitter.

“We don’t wipe our boogers on Mommy.”
‪#‎thingsmomssay‬

I thought we bought a kingsized bed so all the kids could pile in on a Saturday morning. Turns out we actually bought a kingsized bed so all the laundry could fit piled up on a Monday morning.
‪#‎momconfession‬

He was a little confused when I started crying looking over his homework. But sometimes when he does things like take his homework up to his room without being asked, do it on his own, and do it all correctly, all I can think about is the doctor saying they had no idea about his longterm outlook, if he’d even be able to walk and talk like his peers. Sometimes it’s the simple things that remind me to be grateful. And proud. SO SO proud of this kid.

(Trying to help a frustrated Joel learn to zip up his jacket.)
Me: Remember the Daniel Tiger song? “Keep trying, you’ll get better! Keep trying you’ll get. . . ”
Joel (3): TIRED.

Can’t figure out what’s more frustrating- the almost four year-old who insists he can’t dress himself (but he totally can) or the almost two year-old who insists she CAN dress herself (but she totally can’t).

Grape rolls down into toddler’s shirt. She can’t figure out how to get the grape out of her shirt. She proceeds to chew the grape through the shirt.
‪#‎toddlersolutions‬

Joel (3): Can I turn on the water, Mom? Since I’m an excellent water manager guy?
Who can say no to that?

3 year-old just tried to blame his older sibling for something. He forgot the older sibling has been at school all day.
‪#‎toddlerproblems‬

(Joel was looking for the peanut butter and saw we had a big jar and small jar.)
“Do you want the lowercase peanut butter, Mom?”
‪#‎futurewriter‬

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November 19, 2015
by Maralee
0 comments

I Don’t Care About Report Cards

My kids brought home report cards a couple weeks ago. My daughter (a Kindergartener) mistakenly thought they were called “reward cards” and was kind of bummed when we didn’t actually reward her for her grades. I know as parents, many of us want to find ways to reward our kids for academic performance in ways that will encourage them to do their best. If what works for your family is to reward grades, go for it. But for us, we’ve gone a different route.

I was a high-achieving kid who was internally motivated towards academic success. There wasn’t a reward my parents could offer me that would have made a difference in my performance because I was pretty terrified of failure. I did well because I had the ability to do well and was motivated to do well. Not every kid is wired that way and I’m learning to work with the strengths of my kids.

We could reward them for good grades, but what I’ve learned from looking at their report cards is that they are all working hard and doing their best. Depending on their intellectual abilities, their hardest work is going to result in different grades for each child. It doesn’t seem right to me to provide a reward based on a blanket standard applied to kids who have different kinds of intelligence and abilities. What I really want to reward are character and effort. There’s a better way to figure that out than via their report cards, especially in the early elementary school years.

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November 15, 2015
by Maralee
0 comments

A Life in Status- August #1, 2015

Come be part of the fun on Facebook or Twitter.

My kids are watching “Reading Rainbow.”
‪#‎fullcircle‬

Josh (8): Oh, I’ve watched “Reading Rainbow” before! At school! It’s that show with the black guy who has all the stories.
‪#‎nailedit‬ ‪#‎LeVarfanclub‬

I want the kids’ first day of school outfits to (figuratively) say, “I have parents that love me, I am well behaved and ready to learn.” My children want them to say, “EVERYBODY! OVER HERE! THE CLASS CLOWN HAS ARRIVED!”
‪#‎shoppingwithkids‬

Scold a child for trying to bother you while you’re in the bathroom. Come out of the bathroom to find a pile of wildflowers he picked for you on the floor.
‪#‎momguilt‬

My kids think corndogs are called Slushiedogs.
‪#‎PhineasAndFerb‬

(came around the corner and saw three kids sitting in a circle)
Josh (8):. . . He was an adult, but he had REALLY SMALL FEET.
Me: What are you guys doing?
Josh: Just telling scary stories.
‪#‎whydoIask‬

Let’s do this. ‪#‎awkwardquestiontime‬

A Musing Maralee's photo.

There are cupcakes in the oven. The 21 month-old is sitting in front of it crying, “Me! Cuh-cake! Want SOME!” I may not have birthed her, but she is definitely my daughter.

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November 12, 2015
by Maralee
0 comments

Foster Parenting with Compassionate Curiosity

The first children who depended on me to care for them were teenage boys. As a housemom to 6 boys ages 12-18 at a group home when I was in my early twenties, I started this whole parenting thing in an odd position. I was barely older than the kids we were working with and I can only imagine how those parents felt entrusting me with their care. But I came to love those boys, to feel motherly feelings of protection for them, and I became passionate about their families. Over the next decade I watched them grow and become independent men. Some of the choices they made were amazing illustrations of how resilient kids can be as they struggled to break the cycles of abuse and addiction they were born into. Some of the choices they made were heartbreaking as they fathered children they couldn’t care for and did time in prison for crimes that continued the patterns they experienced as little children. But whatever choices they have made, I have loved them. I remember what they were like in their younger years. How they rested their heads on my shoulder when I read to them. How they’d laugh at the dinner table. How they’d sing and dance while doing chores in the kitchen. To me, they are not their mugshots or rap sheets. They are people I love.

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Rebecca Tredway Photography

After five years of working with those teens, we adopted our first child and transitioned to fostering infants. Many infants in the foster care system don’t have an identified father involved, but we had one that did. When I met him for the first time, he had just gotten out of prison and was the same age as many of the boys we had worked with during our years at the group home. Looking into his eyes felt very familiar to me and my heart broke for what he had been through up to this point in his life and what he was currently going through with the removal of his child. Instead of just feeling sadness for the ways this baby had been mistreated, I felt that sadness for this young man, too.

I find it’s easy for people to have compassion for the infant born exposed to drugs. As that infant ages they may become the toddler in the church nursery with sensory issues who bites other kids, or has trouble with impulse control so he throws things when he’s upset. It may be harder to have compassion on the child that seems aggressive. That toddler may become the school-aged child who curses at the teacher when things aren’t going his way because these are normal parts of speech he’s heard at home. He may be the kid who picks on other children at school because he’s learned that being in control, being the biggest and strongest is the only way to stay safe. It’s tough to have compassion on that child when he’s making conscious choices to be disrespectful to authority and makes other kids feel unsafe. And what about the teenager who starts stealing because in his home that’s no big deal? As long as you can get away with it, it may even earn you respect. We are all outraged at that out of control teen and see his prison sentence as justice being served. And then one day that man fathers a child who ends up in foster care. We are heartbroken all over again at the innocent baby who is suffering for the sins of his father, but we’ve lost the ability to extend our compassion to the father who was once a wounded child himself.

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