Author: Jill

I believe my first two children were two and four when I got hit with a truth bomb that began to rearrange my thinking on parenting.  I was upset as to how the day went and admitted to a pool of anger I didn’t know how to deal with. Someone I respected greatly interjected, “Jill, did you think it would be easy?” I was taken aback but also realized I hadn’t thought about it one way or another. My Moms took care of three kids, I figured I could as well. Ipso facto, I must have thought it would be...

              I reached the fuck it factor. It’s a period of time where you can’t see a clear path and sort of give up and say, “Fuck it, I’m tired of trying.” Huh, it’s not the first time I’ve been there and I imagine won’t be the last either. This time, I watched my old favorite The Matrix and Morpheus reached out of the TV and reminded me… “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” (Morpheus to Neo) It may sound like what we’ve all heard before, that we...

Before President Wilson declared Mother’s Day an official U.S. holiday in 1914, there had been many previous incarnations of “Mom’s Events” before the turn of the century. “As early as the 1850s, West Virginia women’s organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis held Mother’s Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College.” (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/110511-mothers-day-dark-history-jarvis-nation-gifts-facts/) Groups of Mom’s gathered to help each other in caring for children. Other guilds were activists who aided in rehabilitation for injured soldiers from the Civil War and...