Learn More About Katie Oberton
1) What are you currently learning? I am learning how to be a mom to an almost 4 year old. I am learning how to work on self-care, and what self-care looks like for me. I learning to let go, and to focus on the present moment.
2. How do you play? I enjoy weaving and being creative. I recently started sewing my own clothes, and have taken up knitting again. I also enjoy going to yoga and moving and stretching and breathing.
3. If you could tell your pre mama self one thing what would it be? The hard days are only temporary
Katie Oberton
January Artist
Motherhood: The New Normal
Motherhood. It's joyful, it's painful, it's loving, it's annoying, it's the best I have ever been, and it's very much the worst I have ever been. Hi, I'm Katie. I am a mother to a 3 year old boy who has changed my life in so many ways. I love being a mom, but sometimes I really miss my old life too. Let me tell you a little bit about that.
First. let me say how much I love my son, Hendrix. Not to sound too cliche, but he is pure joy to me and my husband. The light of our lives, and quite frankly the coolest person in our little family. He has changed me in so many ways. I am stronger, more confident, happier, and honestly, just a better version of myself. Yes, these are all amazing, but what about the things I lost when I became a mother. The hardest thing for me to lose has been my independence.
Before Hendrix came along, I was free to do whatever I wanted. I could go to yoga when I wanted, I could hang out with friends when I wanted, I could travel when I wanted. Then I got pregnant, and things started to change. I wasn't feeling well, so I wasn't able to do as much. I couldn't go to regular yoga classes, and soon there was a restriction on travel too. Then when Hendrix was born, so much changed. I felt like I lost a lot of my identity, and a lot of my free (me) time. I was an anxious new mother, and didn't have a lot of other mom friends. Who even was I anymore? I didn't know. I took it one day at a time, and things started to fall into place.
Months went by, I started therapy (highly recommend!), I started back at work, Hendrix started daycare, and things transitioned into the new normal. I wouldn't say they were better because for me, every age and stage brings it own set of challenges. However, I did slowly start to get my independence back. I was able to go to yoga more (can you tell I like yoga?), I spent more time with friends, and, as a family, we started to get a routine and schedule down. I felt like I could breathe again.
Motherhood has not been easy for me, nor do I think it will ever be. In the early months I kept waiting for things to get back to "normal", but what has taken me almost 4 years to realize is that it will never get back to normal. Motherhood is the new normal. Sure I still really miss my independence and having more me time, but now I get to spend my days with a 3 year who makes me laugh, and whom I love so so much. And that's really wonderful too.
February 2019 Resident Artist
Faith Worley
Mothers Be Good To Your Daughters
"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that! But we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our heartsthrough the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:1-5
This year my husband and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary. Whoop whoop! We had our 4 kids in about 5 1/2 years, and holy buckets was that a hard stretch in lots of different ways. I will say to any mom of itty-bitties: my life was harder with two babies under three than it is with four kids eight and under. Keep going. It's going to be ok. It's so hard, but you can do it- you *have* been doing it- and it can't last forever.
I have a lot of things to say about the hard things that life as a parent has taught me about myself, but I'm going to focus on one thing today. If the story that I tell resonates with you, then I hope that it will give *you* hope, and that you'll recognize what I've learned to be a useful tool for your toolbox.
When our first-born was about 7 months old, Ben and I moved from the Twin Cities in MN to the-middle-of-a-cornfield, IA. I had been hopeful and expectant about our new life; however, it soon became clear that our reality absolutely did not jive with my expectations. I became very depressed. We had been in IA only a few months when our second child was conceived. I was depressed through my whole pregnancy and up until she was about a year old. Her birth was traumatic and isolating, and when she came out she screamed at me for a good long time. This was the inauspicious beginning of life with Abby.
Depression has been a frequent visitor to my life, but that period was the most prolonged that I have had to deal with. It had its roots in various perspectives and ideas of mine, and my circumstances caused it to thrive. Thank God, He freed me from it, but it tainted my relationship with daughter that was born in the midst of it. As in infant, every morning she would wake up and scream at me until I got her latched to nurse, and I didn't know how to relate to her. I was a stay-at-home mom, and when she was nine months old it dawned on me that I didn't know my child. She grew, and so did her emotional expression. She was not particularly resilient; she got bigger, she got louder, she got clingier, and I still hadn't figured out how to connect with and relate to her in the way we both needed. I was exasperated, resentful, and short with her. Mostly we were just angry at each other.
When she was four years old she told me any time that she was mad at me that she was going to run away. I was mad at her too, and wouldn't have minded, though when I became calm, I realized that she wasn't lying. If our relationship stayed on the same trajectory, she *would* leave me in search of someone who could give her acceptance, who could acknowledge what she was feeling, who could show her kindness- especially when she was upset. Since I didn't really know how to deal with her outbursts, my habit was to try to just stop them- to shut her up. But the last straw came the day that she, still four years old, told me she hated herself.
Wherever could she have gotten the idea that she was hateful? The lightbulb went on, and my heart broke. Boy, it needed to. My attitude- my own fear, hurt, and lack of understanding- created a habit of relating to my child that had showed her that she was unlovable.
I needed to change immediately. I didn't know how.
Thankfully me friend Bre (also here on GetReadyWithMeMamma) had introduced me to the blog of a woman named Janet Lansbury who espoused a method of respectful parenting that was almost completely foreign to me. I read what she had to say- I cringed- and I read more out of morbid fascination. Tiny children as whole people? I mean, it sounds obvious when you say it that way, but I had never thought of it like that before. Worthy of respect from me? Respect, instead of slight disdain for all the time, energy, and peace they suck from me?
New realizations grew with time, and I did my best to practice them. I know they work, because I started learning these thing just before my fourth child- our second daughter- was born, and I was able to start our life together with this perspective, and better knowing how to connect. Hoo doggies, it's so much easier to begin a relationship with this habit than to try to change the habits of an established relationship.
Abby and I have made a great deal of progress, and there are some things that have helped us immensely:
1. for me just to spend some time with her in whatever she might be doing, or invite her to spend time with me;
2. to be kind of I'm correcting her;
3. to be very honest, especially if we're angry at each other;
4. to ask forgiveness when we’ve hurt each orher
What does that third one look like? If I'm angry, I tell her. If I know why, I tell her that, too. I invite her to do the same. And most importantly, I tell her that even though my anger seems to be the biggest thing that I can feel at a given moment, my love for her is underneath it, and is much, MUCH bigger than my anger can ever be. We have talked about how sometimes we need to reach down through our anger to find our love, but when we do, the anger is diffused. Anger is something we can connect through, and our life together is becoming more peaceful, crazily enough. Not perfect, but peaceful.
Why would I tell such a heart-wrenching, self-incriminating story to complete strangers? Because I know I'm not the only one. Because this is the human condition. Because life is hard. Because there is hope for relationships of all kinds. Because I am an over-sharer by nature.
Abby is the reason why I started a group on FB called Chill Mom, where I'm learning how to have relationships with all my kids (and with my husband, and with myself) that are healthy, respectful, and chill. If you want to join the conversation or lean into the support of friends you don't know yet, I invite you to join us. We're better together.
MARCH Artist
Desert
Bre Strobel
After 40 years of wandering the desert, Israel marched around Jericho for seven days.
They must have wondered how marching would conquer anything. They must have doubted. They must have planned attack over and over between one another.
But God said remain silent and march, and their leader was confident in the Lord and his plan. So they walked.
And I am the girl who, knowing the way must be prepared, anxiously looks for another way. I want answers. Tell me what I need to do next. Please, tell me how this will ever work out.
On the seventh day, the people of Israel marched around the walls of Jericho seven times. The last time, they gave a loud shout, believing in their victory, and the walls fell down.
I imagine now relief when these walls fall flat. There is a future me who is not worried about what happens next, who is not anxiously waiting but at peace, finally at home. Who looks on the promised land and prospers there.
God is already there. I'm trusting that today. That in my silent, prayerful waiting, the Lord is at work. He has the best plan possible, and he is doing it.
All I can do here and now is get ready. All I can do is be prepared when he says "go." So that is the work I put my hands to today. Packing, cleaning, and not planning but believing in the fulfillment of promises I can't yet even comprehend.
April's Artist
Emily T. Miller
On Raising Babies
When I was pregnant with my twins I scoured the internet for resources. I wanted to learn everything I possibly could to help us (hubby too!) prepare for their arrival. What did I find…not much. Apparently after you have twins you don’t have a lot of time to write about having twins (I get it now!)
What I did find were other twin mommas who so graciously shared the real and the raw about raising two babies at one time. I struggled with things like how to cook dinner during the witching hour, how to consume 2500+ calories while pregnant, and how to manage going out in public when they started walking (in two different directions!). These mommas formed my tribe, and I thank Jesus for them and their quiet encouragement they gave, especially during the first year.
When you learn you are expecting, a million questions go through your mind. When you find out you are expecting twins, your legs shake and you smile (you also hold your husbands hand and squeeze it till he’s lost circulation) while you digest the big news! You are thrilled, and wowed all at once. You ask yourself, how did this happen…and you trust God has a lot more confidence then you have in yourself.
I knew having twins would be one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my life. I wouldn’t change a thing about our journey, and in fact we loved this part of our journey so much that we went on to have another baby. Child rearing has made the relationship between my sweet husband and I that much stronger. When you get up together during the middle of the night, when the rest of the world is asleep, and each feed a small (4.5 lbs.) baby, something magical happens. All the world is silent in that moment, you make eye contact (because you don’t dare say anything to wake those babies up even more) and you realize your family is your world.
So to all the mommas and daddies out there wondering if they are doing it right, waking up in the middle of the night, gathering your tribe around the table with a homemade meal, and looking for the answers…keep going! As my dear friend Dr. Seuss says, “to the world you may be one person; but to one person you may by the world.”
Sent from my iPhone
