The photo for this post is my mom’s handwriting. It is a recipe she gave my sister when she got married. My mom was one of a kind. She impacted the lives of everyone she met. Those lucky enough to have known her will not be surprised by her recipe for a happy day. She taught me so much. She taught me unconditional love and to always do what I can to support others. She taught me more than she will ever know. She taught me to be a mom.

We are constantly learning. It never ends. Learning is a process, an opportunity. My job provides me with so many opportunities to learn.  I learn from both my successes and failures.  I learn from every interaction I have with the people in my life.  My family has taught me so much. My family consists of myself, my husband and our four children.  Marriage is hard, nothing like on television and kids are complicated. They do not come with instructions.  I remember vividly sitting in the living room with a newborn, thinking, “What have we done? We cannot even care for ourselves”. Then we brought three more kids into this world. But we survived, they survived, and everyone is all right. They have grown into incredible people.

Life throws us curveballs. Some weeks at work are crazier than others; this week has been a crazy one.  In weeks like this, I talk to my mom often, and she does not answer, but that’s ok. I know she is probably; laughing at me, though, so scrambled that I wished my sister “Happy Birthday” a month early, the right day, wrong month. She responded, “I do not think this is for me,” I said I guess I should take the social media post down then.  Birthdays were always monumental for my mom, she used to call, and before you could get a word in, she would sing Happy Birthday. 

We take things for granted throughout life; we sleep expecting to wake up the next day. We say things like you could get hit by a bus. We do not know what that bus will look like or how we will respond. My family has been hit by various buses, yet we persevere. Today was strange, but two things I heard stood out for me.

1. One million and one
2. One day at a time.

In One Million and One, it is the one that is most important.  We do things, and we fail or try a million times, but we get up and try one more time.  This cycle is healthy and productive if we continue to get up and try again.   Failure is learning, we fear failure, but if reframed, it is an opportunity. It feels like we no longer let kids fail, this frightens me. Letting our kids fail and helping them view them not as a failure but as an opportunity to learn and grow is important. It is essential to take hold of those opportunities and make the most of them. This leads me to one day at a time.  The fact that we cannot do anything about yesterday and the choices we made, we cannot do anything about tomorrow, but the current day needs to be our focus.  If we wake up focused on the day and not the past or the present, then the day is ours to make the best of.  It is so important to focus on the day because who knows when that bus will show up and change everything. This sounds so easy, but it feels impossible. I really need to start taking my own advice.