There’s a saying, ‘keeping mum’. It means not saying anything, staying silent. I thought it was apt as I have been keeping mum on this blog lately. What was once a several times a week posting schedule has been slowly getting longer between updates, and I haven’t had the headspace to be able to communicate why. Let’s just say that ‘life has taken over’.
When I started blogging, I loved the creative outlet that blogging afforded me. I loved being able to create, have a place to untangle my thoughts, try new things, make new friends. I still love all that. I enjoy writing and sharing blog posts about our family holiday or my latest new recipe that I have discovered. Then I love to be able to look back on them all in the future and enjoy the photos of the kids and how young they looked in my blog post! However I don’t share everything online. I have a private life as everyone does, and it stays private. I wonder sometimes if readers of a blog like mine see the posts I choose to share and think that everything is rosy in that person’s life. They don’t seem to struggle with (insert problem here!) But I can assure you I do – I can only speak for myself but I don’t catalogue every little negative detail of my life because let’s face it – I don’t want to be reminded of it. I’d rather celebrate the happy moments, the smiles, the victories, the learnings. But for every victory there has been stumbles and failures behind it – teaching me and making me strong so the victory could happen. For all the smiley photos there have been lots of tears – I just don’t photograph those!
I know that I will come through this current tough patch and my blogging will pick up again. I could say that I know ‘life will return to normal’ but in fact it is this – that is normal. Life can be hard sometimes but that is life – we get the happy bits but we have to take the sad bits too, it’s part of the deal. So right now I’m keeping mum, getting on with it, being mum and living each hour by hour. I can’t even think day by day at the moment.
My happy memories of this week are plaiting my daughter’s hair before school on the hottest day of the year. She’s a cool teenager but she still needs her mum, and I like that. We also had cuddles on the bed yesterday and the tweenager also joined in. Cue raspberries on his naked belly like I used to do when he was a toddler, lots of laughs, lots of hugs. And this photo which I adore. I captured it on Father’s Day when my husband was playing that slapping game with his kids – the one where you have your hands together as if in prayer then you have to try to slap the hand of your opponent but they have to try to remove their hands before you can? A pointless childhood game but as you can see from the photo – the laughter and togetherness is the point. It is a beautiful photo that tells a story about the people in it and the closeness they share. I was in the background, holding the space to get that shot. Holding the space for them to occupy with their fun – keeping things running smoothly in the background. That’s my job as mum…. and I love my job.
Thanks for reading, did you do anything nice on Father’s Day this week? Let me know in the comments!