Okay, so in this episode of Confessions, you’ll learn a little bit more about me and why I do what I do. Again, I’m Mags. I’m a trained actress, turned photographer, turned blogger, turned podcaster. In 2001, after many years of dating, I got married to the first person I could actually put up with for more than three months, also known as the biggest miracle of my life, but more on that in future episodes. He and I went and had four children, two girls and two boys.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Team, even though I’d spent years daydreaming about having a big family, when G Man and I first started having babies, this mothering gig felt like a load of crap to me. I was exhausted and angry all the time. It was as if parenting took all the things I didn’t love about myself and magnified them 50 times. I found that I was criticizing my husband, our children, and myself constantly, and that negative attitude was seeping into everything I did. But then something happened. A day came when I was scared straight.

Okay, so here’s the scene: At this point in our lives, I was a stay-at-home parent. I think at the time we had like two or three kids. And you know, like kids, they were asking for stuff from me all day. “Feed me,” “Play with me,” “Do this, do that.” But on the weekends when my husband was home, I noticed something. They’d call for me when they needed a snack or a drink, but it was my husband they called for when they fell down or bumped their knee. I was the parent there all day, every day, but they called out for their father when they just needed to be nurtured and loved.

This was my wake-up call. If I didn’t get a handle on my behavior, my kids were never going to want to be around me as they got older, and that wasn’t okay with me. I had to take an honest look at those tricky traits and broken beliefs that were preventing me from speaking kindly to my family and appreciating the blessings in my life.

Keeping our environment safe, having pride in what I do, and caring for others is lovely. But when those old survival techniques get taken too far; my micromanaging annoys the crap out of people, my perfectionism paralyzes me, and my continuous caring for others over myself leads to my resenting everyone, and them having no flipping clue why I’m pissed off all the time.

Something had to change. So one by one, I made changes so that my strengths could work for me, not against me. And through that process of recovery, I was able to dispel that load of crap I was told, “People don’t change.” I now know that’s absolutely not true.

Team, I would love for you to join me as I try to navigate being a structure-loving gal in an absolutely chaotic household. Let’s git ‘er done!