The Journey to a Better Me (she: Candace)

My husband and I will be married 13 years this September. We have three adorable kids, ages 7, 5, and 8 months. I enjoy reading, exercising, playing with my kids and spending time with my friends. Although I am far from being a photographer, I love taking pictures of everything my kids and I do together. I also enjoy keeping our family blog (jimandcanmarks.blogspot.com), which is also our family journal and scrapbook, up-to-date. I love traveling and seeing new places! 

When I received the request to do a guest post on this blog I was extremely honored and very, very overwhelmed. I do not consider myself very good at any one thing but I guess I am pretty good at many things. We’ll see how I do at this.

I know it is way late for resolutions but what can I say, I’m a procrastinator. All right, I’m not really just making my resolutions, (even I’m not that big of a procrastinator), but writing this post has helped me evaluate my New Year goals to see where I’m at with each of them. Plus, I believe you should never give up on bettering yourself.

Two years ago I quit working after 20 years to stay home full-time with my 3 kids. I have really struggled after quitting. My job was my identity; it made me who I was. I really enjoy being ‘just a mom’ but have really struggled with me and who I am. So, this year I decided to start a journey to not only find “me” but to better myself as well. I know this makes me sound selfish but I figure better me= better wife and mom. Okay, that’s my justification but it makes me feel better so it works. Here are some of the things I decided to do to find myself and make me a better me.

Face your fears, do something that scares you, like write a guest post for a blog that is a very popular blog 😉 or take a pole dancing aerobic class when you are extremely uncoordinated (yes I did this and laughed at myself the entire time). I’m also doing a mommy models contest this summer even though I absolutely hate having my picture taken.

Set a goal to do something you’ve never done before and possibly thought you’d never do. I decided to run a ½ marathon before I turn 35. I don’t absolutely love to run but figured this would be a two-fold goal. First, I’d do something I have never really wanted to do and second, it would help motivate me to work at losing my baby weight.

Take a leap of faith. After 20 years of working I quit my job to be ‘just a mom’. I really didn’t know how I was going to do this, both financially and mentally. Luckily the financial stuff has kind of worked out on its own and I’m continuing to work on the mental stuff each and every day, even after two years.

Learn new things. Some things I am learning are to plant a garden, bottle the food from my garden, make homemade bread and rolls, and get food storage for my family. Some of these have been pretty easy to do and others have been quite overwhelming, but I continue to work at mastering each one.

Take time do something for yourself every day. Even if it’s just ten minutes a day to file and paint my nails, anything that’s just for me and makes me feel good about myself.

Exercise every day. Come on, when you feel good about yourself physically it makes it easier to feel better about yourself in all other aspects of your life.

Keep in mind I am not a professional at making myself a better person, far from it. And when I look at these goals that I set for myself, I realize I have quite a ways to go on many of them but I am a work in progress and as long as I’m working, I’m growing. 

Good luck to all of you on your journey as wives, mothers, employees, etc.