About Me
If you were to go back four generations, you could meet my great, great-grandmother. She had my great grandmother mid-life. Back in 1914 a change of life baby was an embarrassment. So here comes my great-grandmother into a home where her older siblings were married, or near married. Her parents thought they were through parenting. The only story I heard of my great-grandmother’s mother, was that she wasn’t very kind and motherly. She had my great-grandma get out of bed and make black coffee and cornbread for breakfast and stoke the fire before school. She was eight. That’s how old she was when her dad died of tuberculosis. He was a great dad, kind, generous, loving. I wonder if my great, great-grandmother would have known that her training and example would affect the lives of my great-grandmother’s five children, fourteen grand children, and many, many great-grandchildren, if she would have been a little less embarrassed, and a little more compassionate and motherly,
I guess you can imagine that my great-grandmother’s toolbox was quite empty.
My grandmother and her siblings were handed a toolbox very similar to the one that was handed to their mother. When my grandmother became a mom, she was ill equipped to handle the struggles of parenting. If you consider the additional pressures of being an army wife, a teenage mom, and becoming pregnant again less than a year after giving birth, forget it. No tools to deal with the minor things, much major issues.
What do you think my mother’s toolbox looked like? What handy-dandy tools of the trade do you imagine waited for her? Love for sure, that tool was handed down from the very beginning. Love is necessary, but love doesn’t help much when you are struggling with a teething baby that has suddenly developed a rash. Love doesn’t quite cut it when you are a young mom and your husband is working late, again, your family lives 600 miles away and you have postpartum depression and anxiety.
Why am I sharing this? I would hate to think you believe I have all the answers, that my family for generations have equipped me to do this monumental task that is motherhood. God has supplied all my needs and still is as I look and seek and pray. He has put so many helpful persons and books and other resources before me. I owe everything to Him. Children are his to begin with. They are ours for a while to shape, mold, and build up. Training children to be a contributor to our society and not a drain, to be a helper and encourager of others is the best thing we can do for them, ourselves and really, the world.
My college professor said that people do the best they can with the knowledge and support they have. This website and toolbox can give you some of the knowledge, and even some of the support, but you will definitely need more. A tribe, a sisterhood, a self-made or born-into family of cheerleaders, supporters, and extra hands.
If you have reached any milestone, any at all, teething, breastfeeding, tantrums, whatever you have had to figure out, share. Share, share, share. Even if you have only figured out one thing, Help someone else. Keep sharing and helping and supporting, We need each other. Keep reading, looking, searching and praying. Don’t give up. It’s hard and it seems to last forever!
The days are long but the years are short.
Let’s stock our toolboxes together. Let’s encourage and support each other along the way.
~Amber