You are not alone.

Aren't those the most reassuring words in the universe?

I was reading a blog post the other day, this one, and had that very epiphany.

I am not alone.

I often fight the very same battle my friend Johanna describes in her post. I have a bad set of days where I just can't shake the pessimism and feel like I'm just not keeping up, not measuring up, not doing enough, not mothering well enough, can't seem to see the cup half full. And the worst part of the whole mood is that I keep thinking no one else does this, everyone else seems to keep it together, why can't you also pull yourself together Victoria?

But the key word there is 'seems'. Everyone else seems to have it together.

Johanna also wrote me on Mother's Day to say "Happy Mother's Day to one beautiful and amazing mom. Victoria you always amaze me with how you have it all together!". While the compliment was so nice and appreciated in itself, what really made that comment so special to me (after I stopped choking on my coffee from laughing that someone thought I seemed to have it all together) was that if she thinks I have it all together when I feel like a chaotic crazy person, a juggler with a thousand balls in the air, maybe the people I admire for having it all together also really feel just as nutso as I do. Which sounds mean, to savor the chaos of others, but you get this? In which case, I might just really actually have it all together! Maybe it's just possible that having it all together in motherhood just happens to feel only one step left of chaos. That this is as together as it can get and that I'm doing just fine. This train of thought is quickly derailing into a whole pile of having it together's, but in any case it makes you feel so much better to realize you're not alone!

I think that's why blogs have become so popular for mothers, and facebook too, that this sentiment is how the 'mommy blogger' was born. Logging in to some social contact in the spare minute you have, reading the thoughts of other mothers as they journal their days makes you realize you're not alone in your trials and tribulations. And if everyone else goes through these bumps and days, then you're not some failing oddity who just can't figure it out. Motherhood is very hard on the self-esteem (and I haven't even arrived on the other side, where we see what kind of people we've turned out). It's so important to have feedback confirming at the very least that you're not alone in your uncertainty. That whatever difficulty you're facing has confronted many others, there have been women in this place before you and there will be others follow.

It calms me to think of how my grandmother would have solved a busyness dilemma, how she would have got the laundry on the line with so many little ones running around and not even the luxury of a heavy duty washer to rely on. It gives me strength to corral my one toddler again. It reminds me everyone needs help sometimes. It calms me to hear a friend, a mother of six, say she also gets tripped up on agenda items that should be so small. I can forgive myself for my son being the only child whose mother couldn't manage to scrounge up a white dress shirt for his first communion day. He still looked very nice in plaid.

David Suzuki talks of life energy. That when people die their particles don't disappear. Their energy impermeates the air, and we breathe them in, they become part of us, soak into the earth and become part of it, which nourishes our food and nourishes us. We are all one. The Secret proclaims that our  thoughts and emotions emanate from us and attract like, negative or positive, affecting the state of the world. In Catholicism it's called the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, that God is in us, within and throughout all of us, present in all living beings. Sarah Napthali writes, "In Buddhism, there is no God but rather the opportunity to realise our oneness with all that exists."

I think it's all the same. It's oneness.

It's comfort in knowing that we are not alone.

I should be sleeping.

I should be. Because I know beginning to write a post right now, at quarter to twelve, will bite me in the morning. When I don't want to get up and I'm trying to convince Troy that I got up with Claire yesterday (hehe, the boys are now on their own in the am!). To be fair he's more than generous with letting me sleep in. But I feel guilty when my exhaustion is self-induced. I've said it before, being a creative-type nightowl does not mesh well with motherhood.

But I've had a thought that just has to be blogged, or it will go the way of so many blog topics of mine. Right out the window. I've been meaning to sit and write on a couple things for over a week, and now I can't remember where I was going with those ideas.

What I was thinking, is that I'm wondering how you all feel about a real life tangible journal? I have this beautiful momma journal I've kept for quite a few years now, I started it when Thane was a year and a half. It's a very specific journal. I realized at one point that I would eventually forget the things that seemed huge to me once. The tiny, seemingly trivial daily challenges and delights of raising my babies that encompassed my life at one stage. I wrote in the front, "I want to keep a mother's diary just to remember all the things my life revolves around so much, that I might forget someday. I want to remember all these special new things and the sweet little way of looking at the world."

I'm not a daily journaler, as you probably could have guessed from my random blog post frequency. I would journal sometimes a month apart, sometimes six months. But lately, it's been a VERY long time since I've wrote in my momma journal. Whenever I notice the journal out of the corner of my eye, sitting by it's lonesome on the bookshelf, I feel a twang of guilt. And then it hit me tonight when I was updating my blog profile, I haven't written for as long as I've been blogging! My blog has replaced my journal!

Is this okay? Do I only have enough creative writing juice in me to sustain one outlet? Or is it that I only have enough time to squeeze in that one writing outlet? Either way, I'm not sure I like this idea. It resolves my guilt about Claire being the stereotypical third child who is completely unrecorded. She is very much recorded here, in my post archives. But is this the same? No one will ever stumble upon my blog decades after my death and cuddle up with it and discover the life of their grandmother when she was their age, meeting me and my children through it's pages, or will I reread my own blogs when I am old and my kids are having my grandbabies? Am I completely just romanticizing the qualities of a book?