We are moms.

We tell ourselves we don’t have time to stumble.

We believe we have to hold on tight and run that ball into the end zone because there are little people counting on us to score that touchdown over and over again.

BUT……

Sometimes we fall, there is just no way around it.

As moms, we are juggling so many balls (I mean, seriously, the amount of things I have organized in my own head blows my own mind) that one or two are bound to hit the floor.

Sure, we have all missed appointments or forgotten it was gym day and sent our kids to school in the wrong shoes (Carmella might have actually worn sneakers on gym day a total of 12 times this past school year🙈) but when one of those REALLY big balls fall it cracks the door for that negative self talk, allows panic to creep in and and ever so slowly that air around you dissipates.

Sometimes I can bounce it back up a time or two, but the pattern tends to be that they ultimately end up shattering across the floor.

My mom guilt strikes because I feel like I’m failing them and the flood rushes in knocking me right off my feet.

This past year, I had so many balls slam down and shatter at once that I began to duck and cover. I felt as though I was walking on glass. With each step I took another chard would pierce the bottom of my foot. I became paralyzed, not wanting to move, not wanting to feeI. I held my breath until I turned blue and almost let it all go.

I need to be honest with you, I have a REALLY difficult time asking for help. It’s not because I want to maintain a certain image but because I feel guilty for dishing out the magnitude of my baggage. My baggage certainly doesn’t come light … it will collapse at your feet like an abandoned brick wall and my entourage of 6 littles trailing behind me is a force to be reckoned with all on its own.

I get hurt so easily. I will pour everything I have and then some into you. I carry your pain and joy as if it’s my own. If I let you in and you walk away because it become too much I crumble. I am a “circle,” my heart runs on those around me. I am fueled by the passion, drive and energy of my tribe. When I lose even just one person it tears my heart apart, all I want to do it fix it but I struggle so much with confrontation that I let it stay bottled up instead. So lately I have been keeping the people around me at a safe-ish distance for the protection of my heart.

I am also notorious for not seeing things until they are slammed in my face and this time around was surly no different. HE literally had to send someone I barely even knew to break down the door that I had barricaded myself behind. She saw me when I couldn’t even see my own reflection.The grace that this beautiful soul poured into me was able to fill me up enough to get back on my own feet. I was reminded that I needed to get uncomfortable and absolutely had to let people back into my life and heart. I need to be raw and unapologetically me for the very simplest fact that I AM (created in HIS image and likeness).

So I cracked the door,  just slightly,  and I was literally ambushed with love and support from so many unlikely directions. My gratitude runs so, so deep for all of you (you know who you are❤️).

I WANT YOU TO KNOW……

If you too are fighting a fight mama, no matter know big or how small it may be, that I SEE YOU.

I WILL NOT leave your side.

I have walked that plank too- more than once, in fact.

I am here to fill your soul back up with truth and grace.

My tribe will attest to the fact that I will keep knocking until I have to bust that door down.

I SEE YOU, Mama.

I SEE YOU.

Yours Through The Insanity,

xoxoxoxo

Colleen