Dream [dreem] verb – to see or imagine in sleep or in a vision
 
Over the last couple days, I’ve witnessed my friends bringing their dreams to life. One sold out the biggest event of her solo speaking career and received rave reviews. Another left what was comfortable, followed her passion and now makes her own schedule doing what she truly loves.
 
And yet another started taking classes that will enable her to shift her career in an entirely new direction. If you had asked her a few years ago, she would have told you she had too many things on her plate and not enough time to take classes. But her dream was persistent, it would show up in small ways reminding her it was waiting for her. Now, a few years later, everything has aligned for her to continue to do what she needs to do while taking classes towards a new career she was born to do. There is a joy in her voice I haven’t heard in years.
 
All three of these women are also mothers, with families, mortgages and multiple people relying on them to do things from the mundane to the complex. Despite all these responsibilities, all these demands on their time, and I’m sure all the free advice everyone has given them, they found the strength to stay true to their dream, their vision. Instead of ignoring, dismissing or rationalizing it away like so many do, they chose to listen to that little voice in their head. And not only did they listen, but they took the next step and put it into action.
 
Another woman who is acting towards her dreams is Graeme Seabrook. We were connected through a mutual friend; however, I’ve been following Graeme’s work for a little while now. She calls herself the “Mom for Moms” and her most recent contribution to her audience is The Mom Journal. For those of you who have followed me for a while, you know that I love to journal and believe it is a powerful tool. When I heard about Graeme’s journal, I, of course, had to check it out! In its most basic description, The Mom Journal is designed for moms to answer four questions each day, but it’s so much more. In her words, Graeme describes:

“The journal is also a way for you to let beauty into your life. It's a way for you to connect to yourself every day. It's a way for you to take stock of what truly matters to you on a weekly basis. It's a way for you to clear your head of all the lists, the worries, the fears, the motherload that you carry every day.”
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How many of us would love to lighten our “motherload” we carry every day? She is so right in that moms constantly walk around with lists in their head, with no outlet. Having a place to write it all down, getting it out of your head is relief in and of itself.  Graeme currently has a Kickstarter campaign to bring her dream of The Mom Journal into reality. The Kickstarter funded after only eight days and now is offering bonus content for everyone who buys a copy. If this sounds like something that might help you, or a fellow Mom, I hope you’ll check it out with this link and consider getting a copy. I can’t wait to check it out.
 
We all have dreams based on what lights us up, but life is busy and demands a lot of us. As a result, many of those dreams end up on a shelf waiting for the “right” time. Those little voices in your head deserve to be listened to. You can start today and find a small way to move toward your dream. Let the stories of my friends motivate and inspire you. They did it, you can do it too. There is no reason to wait. Set aside ten minutes a day to do what you love. You deserve it. It’s why you are here at this time and in this place. Honor yourself, there’s no time to waste.
 
Heart-FULLy yours, 
Kacey

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 Where does time go? As a mom it feels like time either flies or crawls. Our last six weeks have flown by – the birth of a baby, a long week in Flagstaff, the loss of a friend, countless baseball games, school, homework and a trip to California have packed our days. There was little time for anything extra, this blog included.
 
Today was the perfect day to get back to it because it is my blog-o-versary! Six years ago this weekend, I took a leap and posted my first blog. Here’s how I summarized my intention in my original “about me” section:   
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Picture your heart. It’s your core. The center of your being, not only physically, but emotionally. Picture your emotions as ribbons or waves of energy. Like an object thrown into a still pond, the waves ripple from your heart and keep going. The size of the object determines the size and strength of the waves. The bigger the object, or emotion, the bigger the waves and the bigger the impact of the waves. Relating this back to your heart, we all know there is never just one emotion inside us creating waves. We always have multiple waves of multiple emotions swelling from our heart. And unlike the ripples that stay within the pond, our emotional waves extend beyond our physical body and crash into those around us whether we realize it or not. These are simple concepts that often take a lifetime to master. My hope with this blog is to start a dialogue on how to best introduce these concepts to children. If we can introduce these concepts to them early in life, we can help them to see the power they have within themselves.

In the almost three hundred blogs posted since, this original intention has remained a guiding light for the topics and ideas shared. I’ve written about many conversations with my kids, often using music or video games to get them talking. One of my favorites will always be The Drama Scale, which forever changed the way we talk about the actions of our friends.
 
While interacting with my kids was always a focal point, I also began to talk more about the challenges we have as parents. I’ve written a lot about time; managing, balancing and finding more of it. For a long time, I felt like if I could just find the perfect meal planning system or multi-use calendar, it would be the answer we were all looking for.
 
But the answers continued to allude me, and the topic of time led to the topic of mom guilt. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? We spend our days feeling guilty for what happened yesterday or what could happen tomorrow, next week, or when my child moves out on their own. Why is it that we are always so worried our child’s messiness at age five is foreshadowing for their future apartment? Mom guilt is ruthless, unrelenting and difficult to overcome.
 
Our reactive answer is to do more. We do more for our kids, spouse, parents, work, family, school, activities. We embody the mantra of “leave it all out on the field”, every day giving everything we have to everyone. We may be tired, but it’s worth it. We spend our days doing, striving for what’s next. We reach out to those who need us, filling their needs, doing for them what they cannot do for themselves. We are moms, that’s what we do, take care of everyone.    
 
As we juggle time, guilt and doing, we forget to take care of ourselves. Self-care gets a bad rap for only being about mani/pedis and rose’ all day. No matter how many times I write self-care is not selfish, it’s still so hard when there is laundry to be done, lunches to be made and diapers to be changed. It is easier to put our own needs at the bottom of the list and think, someday I’ll get to it.
 
These are the topics that keep coming up. The topics that have no easy answers. The topics that I may spend a lifetime writing about. But the benefit of doing something for six years, is that it forces you to observe similar situations through different lenses. And as I was preparing to write this blog, the following question came to me:
 
What if we are working so hard to do for everyone in our lives, that we are disconnecting from our self?
 
We work so hard in our roles as moms, wives, daughters, coworkers and friends, that naturally, what we want falls to the bottom of the list. As a result, we neglect our most important relationship with the one person who will be with you every day of your life. Nurturing your relationship with your self is just as important, if not more, than all the rest.
 
But where do we start, when time, guilt and roles demand our constant attention? The answer is the same today as it was six years ago, it starts in your heart.  
 
Heart-FULLy yours, 
Kacey

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Photo by Guillaume LORAIN on Unsplash