I have had to calm the hell down before writing this and man will it be long, but I am not going to sugar coat this. But as a girl, a mother of girls… I just had enough. And honestly enough is enough. And while I usually don’t like to give parental advice because I am just a mom trying to do my best… this is NOT your best.1

In the last week I cannot tell you how many women I have heard complain about their daughters, complain about how hard it is to raise daughters, or how difficult daughters can be. I want to snap.

I don’t have any sons, so I cannot speak to ease that “sons” might bring to the table, but I watch the news, tell me what makes life easier to being a mom of sons. In light of stories that show up, boys are more likely to perform mass shootings in North American, men are having a hard time in sexual relationships because they have spent hours on hours watching porn as teens that they are suffering from erectile dysfunction in college, they spend hours playing War like video games and suffer from anger or onset PTSD behaviours. Also girls have a higher rate of graduating with a post second degree… but I digress.

But I am sitting in the hair salon and you paint having a daughter a problem because she wants to get her nails done or her hair done. You hypocrite you are sitting in the chair at the hair salon doing exactly what you are complaining about your daughter wants to do. How does that make her difficult? They are moody… no really!?!?!? Do you have a menstrual cycle, are you a peach during that time?

Let’s get honest about this. My daughters are varied in ages, I have 2 in the throws of puberty, I have a shy yet loud 7 year old and I have a socially awkward 4 year old who hates meeting new adults… like completely hates it. Do they take work? Of course they do. Do I think they are more work than boys? — hell NAW! Why; because what I think is women want their daughters to be easier than they were. And you don’t worry about your sons because he isn’t making much noise, so that to you, is a sigh of relief. Where your daughter is a chatty Cathy and you find it exhausting. But let’s be honest the only person who is off in this situation is you.

My father did this thing to me when I was 13, that plagued our relationship for years, he trusted someone who was family to believe I was not a good girl. And let me tell you I was a good girl with a ton of confidence and personal opinion. It took me over a year to shake the affect this opinion had my sense of myself and personally I hated my father for that whole year.

Your daughters know if you call them difficult, they don’t like to hear that. They don’t. And you are women, what is wrong with you, you are raising a woman, who needs to feel good about her personality, her characteristics, her qualms and her moods.

Do you know how many times I have heard “Ohhh I feel sorry for your husband during the teenage years.” I want to jump across the table and throat punch people who utter those words. Because Why? My daughters might have sex? My daughters will like clothing? My daughters will have opinions that vary from my own? My daughters will learn boundaries by trying to push them? — So tell me what your sons will do that will be different? Will your sons have sex? Will your sons want to own the things they think are cool that the other boys have like new game consoles or new Jordans? Will your son learn boundaries outside the home by pushing envelopes they don’t bring home for you to see?

By all means, my girls are open books, I know every detail of their day, they come home excited to talk my ear off. 4 girls so that is a ton of talking may I add. But they tell me about boys, kids in their grade watching Pornhub, Grade 6s have sex pacts, Grade 5 girls who have come out as lesbians, grade 1 boys are loud and crazy obnoxious or the silly thing the little girl or boy did at the table during Junior Kindergarten class (I think this might only be an Ontario, Canada thing; Pre-K in the US). How is this hard? It’s not hard it just happens to be the reality to raising kids in this generation.

It has nothing to do with their gender either, they are not spared by the realities out in the world… my favorite is the non parents telling me what they feel it’s like raising a daughter. I will tell you something it is no better or worse that raising a son. I don’t believe my daughters are hard, and mothers who tell you they are is because they don’t want to deal. And maybe that statement will get me a ton of flack, but ladies if you think raising your daughter is hard it’s either because you don’t want to try or you ignorantly fashioned your own childhood into a figment of your imagination.

But I can promise you this, when you tell other women girls are hard they start to believe it. If your daughters hear you say they are hard to deal with, they hear you aren’t willing to try and trust me when you start acting like your daughter is hard work, she knows it. These are future women, they are their own futures and yours, and when you don’t give your relationship a fighting chance because you superimposed a belief system that your daughter was a doll you propped into position and there was no emotional work required it is you who came to this relationship blindly. (Also you better be feeding your sons emotional needs to, emotionally drained sons show signs of aggression or join new shit like Incels… please google it.) But most of all… don’t teach your daughters that women are against them, raise them up. Show them that you have their backs, no matter how frustrating their opinions are on certain subjects, you aren’t going to get along about everything, hey you may not get along about anything at all. But it’s your job to make her feel comfortable in her skin, make her not feel insecure or wonder if she is always wrong. She needs to come to you with decisions you may not agree on and know that at the end of the day she won’t be too hard to handle, because she won’t be coming to you if she feels that you feel that way.

So ladies do me a favour, stop calling daughters hard. Kids are hardwork, being a parent is hard work. Trying to do right by our kids is hard work. But the gender your child miraculously came out of the womb with IS NOT HARD WORK.

Happy New Year!

Where does one start, 2018 was a mental excursion of pushing thoughts I may have ignored or didn’t want to come to terms with. I say this as a place of taking onus of all the things that occurred to me last year.

While my girls, grew and changed as well, all my girls are currently at school, which is new and different. We have no kids at home anymore… Woohoo! And they had birthdays and a bunch of firsts and tried new things, and so on. Watching them expand was not enough to push me out of the emotional state I was in.

Perhaps I was depressed, I wasn’t in the mind frame to call it that and never seeked any external help for it. I started the new year last year freshly healed from a huge surgery that changed my physicality in ways I could never imagine. I was optimistic. But it was a bad year for me, where I wanted to look at the positive the noise kept drowning all positivity out of me. The people I kept close ties with drowned me, I felt not good enough, I felt like I needed to be more, I felt judged, I allowed myself to feel judged. I gave all of my power away.

I was weak from things that happened, and I knew it. But I allowed the noise that others brought into my life to cloud my judgment, I wanted to be saved to the point I allowed others opinions and comments destroy me.

It has been 4 or so months now, that I have been grappling with my noise. I call it my own because there has been a ton of isolation on my end. And the noise is how I feel affected by other people’s actions. It’s noise that I allow to play in my head, I let it feed my soul in negativity. And I have talked at nauseum with it with various people. I have had people tell me to just let it go… which let’s be honest I am not a let it go person, I am a fix it person. I am here to fix it all, fix the problems, rationalize them to death, leading with a compass that good is better than evil. But this GOOD did me no good.

And then my birthday came, which it always does before Christmas, I didn’t want to do anything or want anyone around. I wanted to just be me and my thoughts and my girls. And my thoughts spoke to me.

Who am I but not a person of get back up and try again? Who am I but the girl who sees change as natural and human? Why do I not let myself be me? I like doing the unknown, I like testing myself, I am the girl most people say you have balls. You are brave. I watch you do things I would never have the courage to do the stuff you do. And the truth is I do it not because of some courage syndrome but because I have always been taught you make do with change, it’s not scary, it’s just change.

So 2019, bring it. I already have so much happening already that might be insane to people, or might make others ponder for years to come. But I have done this.

• I ran for City Council.
• I started a business while pregnant with baby #3
• I flipped a whole house pregnant, then with a newborn in tow.
• I took my 4 babes across North America, lived the California dream for a short time

I have done stuff, lots of stuff. I was not scared. I am no longer scared. I am unafraid. I am unabashed. I see 2019. I see it with all it’s might. I see that it could make or break me and I say bring it. There is a light and if it is not in that tunnel… I will be the light I need to light my own path.

Happy 2019!

I recently went through a huge break up… oh wait not with my husband.

It appears I had a break up with a friend who I had known for over 30+ years. It may not make sense that I call it a break up but it reminded me of the dating scene my single friends explain as of late.

I have many friends come and go and without naming names, the friend who stopped talking to me after she admitted to my husband that her new boyfriend was a married man, all while I was putting baby to sleep one night. She said it so nonchalantly… and never called or walked back into my home since. I never got to comment, she had no idea how I felt about the whole thing.

We’ve all lost the friend who started dating a new person who everyone hates, only for them to think the dating partner is so fantastic. I don’t fault the person for following their hearts. People do that, it’s normal.

I stopped talking to a school friend who had her own PR firm because when I wanted to launch my own jewelry line she looked at me like I was the biggest loser going and so undeserving, I didn’t even realize she was putting my down until someone asked why I let her speak to me in the manner she did. Not friends now, Jewelry line was a PR dream.

But I digress, I had a break up with one of my closest most confidante friend. I couldn’t tell you why. I mourned our relationship really, really bad. At first the text messages weren’t being returned. Then she didn’t RSVP or come to my kid’s birthday party. Then it was radio silent and I left a message that said something like: WTF? What did I do? Do you not want to be friends, I know your busy we all are busy but this feels more personal… silence. I chalked it up to she is going through something and she doesn’t need me now to help cope. Another month went by… nothing. And then I realized she blocked me from social media and all my bells went off.

Maybe I see social media as this foreign identity, but my Facebook was a place where I kept everyone who was ever connected to me, connected to me. It was like the Rolodex of my life. To delete someone off my Facebook would mean I wanted nothing to ever do with that person, that they caused me or my family some imminent harm.

So to me… this felt really deep and personal. She blocked me and my husband from her Instagram. I was no longer privy to her life. I was cut off. Not only had she ghosted me, she totally deleted me from her life. 30 years of friendship gone because of no clue. There was no fight, no tantrum, no bad words exchanged, our children loved each other, our husbands were friends. We had been there for one and other in ways most friends don’t ever get a chance to share their lives with friends. Just wiped away like garbage.

I knew if I called nothing much would come from my avoided texts or messages. I spent sleepless nights, anxiety filled afternoons talking to other people… asking for advice. How could I fix it. I went into attack mode to find answers, spoke to mutual friends who had no interest in helping heal the divide. Who said “we never mention you”… like somehow that was supposed to heal the pain of being avoided.

And then I called… from a daughter’s phone, I called and she picked up. I said a lot. She said I was too much, too big of a personality. I said is this how our friendship ends, she said I would get an email explaining what she was feeling. 3 months later… nothing. So I mourned for the first 2 months. Many people telling me the letter wasn’t coming; I refused to believe it. I refused to believe what was the greatest friendships the world had seen could just disappear. But it did and I was at a loss.

No longer at a loss, I have to learn that I value friendships very differently than most. I don’t hold much expectation of my friends because I also don’t like expectations put on me. I just expect you to care about me enough to say Hey, to curiously ask how I am doing and when you know, feel happy that I am happy or caring that I am hurting.

Maybe it’s my grandiose personality, maybe my stoic demeanour on expectations that people just be good people to one and other. Maybe she said it when she said my personality is to big, she didn’t want me involved.—- I want to apologize for that, I want to apologize for my personality… but I am not sure I should. I don’t want to apologize for being me. I don’t want to hold on to relationships where I am too much for a person. Where my dreams are too big, my goals too crazy, my reality too colourful…. I like me. I don’t want to change me to keep relationships with people who I no longer like the person I always was. My high school friend I reconnected with said she saw my old spunk from High school come… I liked that girl. She isn’t going anywhere. And not sure which of my many beautiful friends who posted you don’t have to dim your light for others to feel bright.

I guess I just wanted people to know this oversharer has feelings, and maybe it’s in not hiding those feelings that I overshare. But I plan of sharing them with people who don’t think I am too much. I am taking a deep dive look into the people I surround myself and doing a clean sweep of relationships that are not mutually beneficial and being ok with them falling to the waste side. But ladies, do yourself a favour, if you don’t enjoy being ghosted by a guy, don’t ever do it to a girlfriend.

Today, is an especially intricate day for our family; clearly we are a Canadian family… so we celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in October with the rest of our country men.

When in L.A. we even found a diner 65 minutes away from our home doing Canadian Thanksgiving with Tim Horton’s coffee, Nanaimo bars and maple syrup pie (which makes more sense because they were from Montreal). But for the first time we got to spend an American Thanksgiving in the USA.

Now, I did Black Friday shopping once when a family member was doing college in Buffalo. But Turkey, decor and trimming was new and I was excited. Now it was more—- even more exciting because when my sis and I were old enough we started declaring American Thanksgiving as a celebration we would dedicate to ourselves. We would not go into work or school, stay in front of the TV watching the Macy’s Day Parade and eat something sinful.

My daughter’s got a 4 day weekend and we got to experience it like real Americans. Though we did it alone and far from family it was so wonderful. My mom arrived the week later.

Tomorrow will be the first American Thanksgiving my girls will miss, they will all be at school. I will record the Parade and Dog show to watch with them over the weekend. But it’s feeling a little bittersweet this year. This might be the last time I let my girls miss another Thanksgiving.

I know Thanksgiving is a hot topic as of late, but to our family it has always been more about being Thankful for what the earth, the Universe and God allowed us to experience… and our first official thanksgiving in the US was full of gratitude, grateful to new friends, new neighbours, trees full of fresh produce, views we could only see in magazines and memories we could fill books up for a lifetime.

So today on American Thanksgiving… we just wanted to say Thank you. For the memories we made, the ones we are going to make and love to our friends south of the border who daily feed our souls even from afar.

 

So, you must live under a rock if you didn’t realize there was a midterm election in the US. It was all over social media, Twitter is all abuzz, Instagram is full of different types of “I voted” stickers and best part is I live in Canada. (insert silly, possibly sinister laugh here.)

Why does where I live have anything to do with it all?— well because I have no vested interest perse to what happens in the US election. I cannot vote, I have no say and I have no financial gains in the outcomes.

But does that eliminate my interest. Hell, NO!!! Just the other day my mom who lives on her Greek news station was asking me questions about the election. And here is a little secret… ask my American girlfriend Crystal about it, I am well versed in my American politics enough that on occasions she asks me to explain it. So I am definitely the go-to person in my circle to ask about it. I won’t give you the media version of it either… I have read most of the amendments to the constitution, I have read the Constitution and understand the constitutional rights, I also see it coming from a big city in Canada with parents who come from a technically socialist country. And depends who you ask worst of all I am a product of my history junkie father who has a big soft spot in his heart for the US which he engrained into both my sis and I.

But 2 years ago when Donald Trump became the President of the United States on this day, our lives completely changed, our daughters were attending private school in the Valley of LA. My oldest voting for Jill Stein in her class election and my second daughter voting for other, maybe it was because I kept saying if I could vote for Ron Paul, not Rand Paul—- please whatever you do don’t confuse the 2. But, so man have these American elections changed our lives. My children probably unfortunately know way more about the American political process which is odd, but politics is not heavily taught in Toronto and so my daughters had no understanding of much how the system works here but they are well versed in it a bit more to the south of them that has no affect on them.

I was raised by a Conservative father and a Pierre Trudeau liberal mom… elections were not a subject in our house. My parents didn’t try and convince us of a direction to take. But man do I talk to my own like crazy about it… I talk to them about their rights and laws that affect them. I talk to them about party lines and how this mommy who ran for city council over 8 years ago thinks politics is the dirtiest industry in the world.

So, the presidential election changed our trajectory, which I don’t blame but I understand that it sucks in ways I cannot fix at this point… but we definitely are paying attention!!!