My focus outward has been brewing for about six months or so, but it became more pressing about a month or so ago after I took Little Girl to a Mommy and me class. It was a class that my mother usually handles since it takes place on a day that I work. That week, however, my mom couldn’t sit for me. She’s been dealing with a very close friend’s serious health issues, so I was without a sitter.

Okay, so it’s not like it was my first trip to this Mommy and me. I had been there before, obviously, and knew some of the women on a, “Oh, hi, the kids got so big,” level. On that day, as always, I spent the class running around after Little Girl. She’s like a whirling dervish. Afterward, however, when we stopped into Panera for a pumpkin muffin top I had a chance to socialize with some of the moms. (Little Girl, seeing her “friends” loudly expressed an interest in sitting with them, and their mommies were kind enough to extend an invitation.)

The next three hours flew by. Little Girl sitting with the kids laughing and having a ball. Me sitting with the moms feeling relaxed and included. I have no trouble admitting that I really enjoyed myself. (I’ll digress a moment here and explain that, unlike my time with Big Girl, I haven’t really had a chance to do a lot of baby/mommy playdates, something I really, really regret and miss. Besides the fact that I have been feeling a little lonely lately. Okay, digression over.)

The women were really nice. The kids were really nice. It was a lovely time. Then, when the women asked if maybe I wanted to get together again, I felt really warm inside. I was actually looking forward to the next week knowing that my mom would be at a doctor visit with her friend.

That week flew by, and it was time for Mommy and me class before I knew it. I spent that class thoroughly enjoying my little girl and her exuberance and love, all the while looking forward to lunch. Afterward, I went back to Panera taking a place at the table with those same moms again. Then something happened. About five minutes into lunch one of the women told me that she Googled me. Something to the effect that my mom had bragged about me and my work so much that she had to look me up. And oh, she read this blog. The other people at the table nodded in unison. Seemed like they all read my blog, too.

Immediately, I felt like I was standing naked in front of them. Quite honestly, I wanted to cry. (And I did once I got into the car.) I smiled my way through the rest of the lunch, but I was pretty miserable the whole time. Especially when they started talking about some of my more personal posts. No, she didn’t just look at my impressive clips. (Yeah, I’ll own that — not too many people write for Time, Woman’s Day, Parents, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other pubs). She looked at this blog, too and in effect took a peek into my soul since it is, for the most part, me. Warts, crazy and all, it’s me. My failings, my fears, my shortcomings. They all had a front row view into my brain.

Now some might say, hey, you put it out there. What do you expect? People read what you write. To that I say yes and no. When I started this blog more than 300-plus posts ago I never thought about new-to-my-life people reading it. I assumed friends, who already know me and like me enough to tolerate my foibles, would read it. I assumed editors would read it. (I hoped they would, actually, because I think it shows people what my unedited work looks like, and that I know how to tell a story.) I assumed other parents or people who don’t know me would read it and find comfort, inspiration, and knowledge in it. But no, I didn’t imagine that, for example, people from my beach club would read it. Or people from Mommy and me. People who I view as potential new friends.

The neighborhood thing, well, that’s my fault. I put it out there on my Facebook page. I truly didn’t think that anyone from around here would be interested in what I had to say. I have a very specific slant, and didn’t figure anyone would bother to click through. Stupid, shortsighted, and obtuse of me, I guess. The Mommy and me people? Well, I use a different last name in those circles. Problem is, I didn’t count on my mother bragging about me. My mother, who shares my maiden name. But whatever.

The problem is that people who don’t know me as a friend assume things from reading this blog. Hard to explain, but it’s almost like they look at me the way someone would look at another public figure. The intimacy is there without the hours of work and mutual sharing that a friendship usually goes through. Hence, the reason I often feel uncomfortable and uneasy when someone who is not my friend talks about something private I have written about. And again, yes, I know if I have written about something in a very public way in a very public forum, it’s not private. But in my mind it is. And now I am going in circles, aren’t I?

Back to the Mommy and me incident: That afternoon I sat in my car, called my husband, and bawled. It was ruined, I said. I couldn’t be friends with those women. It was too PERSONAL, I wailed. They seemed so nice, but how could I grow a friendship when they already had all the dirt on me? My ever-patient husband tried to calm me down telling me that it was okay, and that they obviously liked me even after reading the blog. Little Girl told me she loved me and that I shouldn’t cry. Still, I drove home brushing tears from my cheeks.

And that brings us to today. I’ve been thinking about this and thinking about this. I absolutely love this blog. I love disseminating information. I love the catharsis that comes from spilling my soul onto the page. I love getting emails saying that I helped someone feel better, or that I helped them on a greener (or saner) path. I don’t love knowing that people I meet think they know me after reading what is only a small part of who I am. And I hate it when good friends of mine — people I truly love and respect — apologize for bringing a plastic bag to our house, for instance, or reference something I’ve written about as absolute. In writing, there is absolute. Either you write it or you don’t. In life there are shades of gray, and I like that and live that way.

So what’s a girl to do? Well, I’ll be launching a new blog in a few weeks as well as giving this one an overhaul. This one will have more reviews, more news, more ways to make positive, healthy green changes. The name of the blog is changing slightly, too. It will become AsNaturalAsPossible.com, although this URL will remain up. In addition, another new, soon-to-be-launched blog will join it, capturing a year of my life in a way that’s more conducive to my social life. Yes, I will still be spilling who I am, but in a different way. (You’ll get it when you see it, I promise!) I’ll wait on announcing the URL until the site goes live, but it should bow soon. I can’t wait…

And yet every so often I find myself thinking about it. What happened nearly ten years ago in downtown New York City. Oh, it might only be once a month when I realize where my husband works (it was an especially tough day when he and my girls were downtown last week), or when I am contemplating getting on a plane, but then I remember and my blood turns cold. How can a seven-year-old process that? Should she have to? I didn’t think so, and my husband didn’t, either, which is why I drove her to school today and picked her up. I wanted to minimize bus time. She still found out, though.

She was only home a few minutes when she was standing right next to me as I wiped the counter. “Mommy,” she said, “people at school told me that bad man blew up some buildings with a plane. Did he really do that.” Crap. I was trapped. Yes, I told her. Yes, he did. And then I started babbling. About how safe it is to fly these days. And did she remember how, when we went to Disney, we all had to go through x-ray machines and take off our shoes? Oh, and remember how you, Big Girl, got pulled aside for a special search because the TSA guy didn’t like what he saw on the machine? (It was a paint-your-own-t-shirt kit, BTW.) And how they took away our water bottles and the bins and bins of suntan lotion and cosmetics and tiny bottles we saw under the x-ray conveyor belt? And how, when the pilots had to go to the bathroom, they blocked the aisle with a really big cart. (Digression: Really, pilot? Really? You can’t hold your bladder for the two hour and 35 minute flight from Orlando to JFK???) All that careful attention, I told her, all that security keeps us safe and makes it really, really, REALLY hard for anything like that to ever happen again. She seemed satisfied with my answer, I think. I hope, anyway.

When my husband came home I told him what Big Girl said when she got home. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew someone was going to say something to her. That’s why I prepped her.” That’s why he prepped her. I hope and pray that my girls never have to “prep” their kids about another incidence of terrorism. That September 11, 2001 becomes a single, terrible moment in our history. Something that never repeats. In the meantime, though, I hope my daughter isn’t going to have trouble sleeping tonight. After all, what she learned about today is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Do you have kids? If so, did you explain September 11th to them? How did they react? If not, how old will they be when you tell them? I’d like to know.

I do hug my kids, though. As much and as often as they will let me. Little Girl makes it easy for me. She is the hugging-est kid I have ever met. She greets me with hugs and kisses when she wakes up. If I leave the house for more than five minutes, she runs into my arms when I return, wrapping herself around me. If I am sad or angry, she rushes in to console me. It’s like living with a human sunlamp. The kid has so much warmth and love I get a tan — and a perpetual smile — whenever I am around her, and I’m not the only one. Big Girl gets about a million hugs every day from her sister. Her daddy, her grandma, her teachers, the stupid stuffed bear at her school are all recipients of Little Girl squeezes.

Big Girl takes after her Mommy to some extent. She’s not a natural hugger like the little one. She is much better at it than I am, but I still see her avoid hugs with other kids, and she’s doesn’t initiate hugs like the little one. It worries me. I don’t want her to be like me, and at the same time I wonder if I’m the cause of her hugging stinginess. Maybe she sees my hopefully imperceptible recoiling after being touched, and subconsciously follows suit? It can’t be because of a lack of affection. We certainly didn’t withhold hugs from Big Girl. From the time she was a few minutes old that kid was constantly in my arms or on my lap or her Daddy’s. And I can’t even explain how much love and hugging she got from the rest of her family including my mother.

Okay, so digressing again. Why don’t I hug? Good question. Could be the whole abuse thing. Or maybe I have sensory issues. Or maybe it’s because I went for about seven or eight years of my life — from five until 12 or 13 — without saying I loved anyone or wanting to be hugged or loved, so I lost some of the natural urge to hug. I know that losing my father completely messed me up. Because of that, I just stopped making emotional connections. For years I wouldn’t even tell someone I loved them much less show them I loved them.

It was so pronounced I can vividly remember the first time I said I loved someone after my dad died. My mom was standing in the kitchen making a salad. I walked up behind her, my heart beating really fast. She’s pretty tall — about six feet. I can see myself putting my arms around her, resting my head on the middle of her back, and saying I loved her. Those words unleashed years of tears. My mom turned around and asked me why I was crying. “Because I haven’t said that for so long,” I told her. And then she started crying, too.

Anyway, I’m not a hugger or a kisser, and it really bothers me and affects my life, too. Today, for example, I went to a client meeting. All the participants — at least four vice presidents, an editor-in-chief, a program director, a creative director — embraced each other when they met, giving kisses and pats on the back. Me, I only kissed the two people who leaned in first. I felt awkward and uncomfortable the rest of the day. Not because of the ones I kissed, but because of the ones I didn’t. I felt like a failure. A weirdo. A freak. And this plays out all the time. I have trouble giving kisses and hugs, and my anxiety and discomfort makes other people uncomfortable, I think. The ultimate cluster F. One of my worst self-fulfilling prophesies.

Natural as possible, right? How natural is a simple hug? A sweet kiss? Pretty natural. And yet I have trouble pulling either off with anyone except the two kids I grew inside myself, and my husband, who has helped me heal so much already. And even he gets the short end of the Karen kisses and hugs stick. I could go on and on about this topic but instead I’ll go kiss my sleeping girls and my sleeping husband…

I noticed it earlier in the month, and it’s a trend that just hasn’t waned. The first sneaky salutation happened at A.C. Moore. Granted, I was buying ornaments for my Brownie troop, but still. The cashier at a large retail chain handed me my receipt and said it: “Merry Christmas! Enjoy!” I was so shocked I paused for a moment before saying it back to her. I walked out feeling very weird. After all, Merry Christmas, like Happy Hanukkah and Happy Kwanzaa, has been off-limits for a while.

It happened again in the liquor store. I was buying a bottle to bring to a holiday party. The nice, gray-haired woman in the Santa hat handed me my purchase (Patrón XO Café), and wished me a very Merry Christmas. Whoa. I glanced around. Wasn’t she afraid of the holiday police? After all, she could have offended someone. And since then it’s happened again and again and again. It even happened today at the end of an interview! The executive and his PR guy were on the phone. We’re wrapping up our call, and the exec goes there: “I’d like to wish you both a very Merry Christmas!” An exact quote since I record my interviews!

As someone who is an honorary Jew (three of my best friends are Jewish), I couldn’t believe it the first time or the last — and I’m Catholic! Sure, I expect it at church or from my religion students, but wow, to hear such a religious-sounding phrase uttered in public. Well, it was weird.

But you know what? Emboldened, last week I started wishing my friends who are Christian Merry Christmas and saying a belated Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends. I felt so naughty! It was an almost perverse pleasure to put it out there: We’re all different. We all celebrate different holidays, and we can acknowledge it, darn it! I even started looking for my Muslim friend at yoga so I could wish him a blessed Al-Hijira. (Take that, holiday police!)

Before anyone gets offended, I hope you realize that this was written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. Yes, the facts are all real and accurate, but I wasn’t as offended as I was flabbergasted. Was it the seemingly bipartisan legislation that’s inspiring everyone to take down those “holiday” blinders? (After all, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is unprecedented.) Or maybe everyone is just shellshocked after watching E! Online’s Bridalplasty. (I know I feel numb and dazed after watching two episodes.) Who knows. Either way, I am actually really happy that Merry Christmas is making a comeback. I hope for the sake of my Jewish friends that more people feel so comfortable with our differences that they aren’t afraid to say L’shanah tovah next September 28. After all, it’s sort of silly to replace specific holiday greetings with the generic (and very annoying) Happy Holidays. If you KNOW I celebrate a specific holiday you should NOT be afraid to wish me a merry or happy or joyous one. Got it? Good.

How about you? Are you offended if someone says Happy Holidays? Or do you prefer it to the more exact tidings? I’d like to know.

Usually, they shuffle around until the bus comes. Today, as we were sitting there watching, it looked like the kids were feeling very rambunctious. The six or seven kids at the bus stop started an impromptu game of chase. Everyone except for my kid, who just stood there. A stranger seeing it unfold might assume my kid is lazy or uninterested in such games. But me and Little Girl, well, we knew better. Little Girl called it before I did, actually. Watching her sister’s body language she said, “Mommy, why my sister sad? Look, Mommy. She’s so sad. Awww. I love you, sister, I love you!” And in my head I agreed. I could see the shyness and uncertainty taking over Big Girl’s body. She desperately wanted to be running and laughing and playing chase, but she was too afraid. No one had asked her to play. She didn’t feel confident that she would be accepted, (as I know she would have been) so she stood there feeling bad about herself. Thankfully, the bus came a minute or so after the game began, and Big Girl boarded the bus along with everyone else.

As much as that moment squeezed my heart, I didn’t say anything to her when she got home. Not sure what I could say. Gee, Big Girl, I get it. I feel exactly like that sometimes when I’m in social situations. Paralyzed. Terrified. Shy. Afraid to do or say the wrong thing. Afraid that the other “kids” won’t like me. Even though I know that I’m being silly, all those thoughts go through my head. It’s so funny because in a work situation I know I kick a lot of ass. I can (and feel like I just about have) talked to everyone and anyone. I interview people for a living, and the majority of people just spill their guts. I make people comfortable. It’s one of the reasons I am a really great reporter. In fact, I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has told me I’m a great listener; that they felt like they had known me forever. I’m great with strangers in the store, the bowling alley, on the train, on the phone.

I’m going to be talking about New Year’s resolutions these next two weeks. And so I will state my first resolution: To get over my fear, and be able to live the line that Tom Cruise (playing Joel Goodson in Risky Business) immortalized. “Sometimes, you just have to say…”

Um. Uggg. Sheesh. Thankfully, I notice that my cell phone has a missed call, and I grab the handset to dial my husband back. “Hold on, Daddy just tried to call me like ten times and it’s probably important.” She gets indignant. “I always ask you and you never answer. Why won’t you answer me? Is he real?” I get caught up on the phone with my husband, who has Little Girl in his arms crying for me. Why are you crying, I ask her. “Because I need you, Mommy,” she says. By the time I calm the little one down the big one has forgotten her question. Or maybe she just senses that I don’t want to answer.

And yet now, after thinking about it I realize that I was wrong. Completely wrong. I should have told her that Santa is real. That every time someone does something kind for someone else, every time someone is selfless, Santa is there. That Santa makes Christmas sweeter. As Francis Pharcellus Church explained in the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun, Santa “exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.”

And so now I wait until the next time she asks (And she will. She’s my daughter, cut from the same cloth as I am) so I can redeem myself.

Last week we were running late. I had to drop my father-in-law off at the airport, so we didn’t hit the nursery school until 9:40. The halls were empty. It was quiet and calm. We stepped inside and, for whatever reason, Little Girl went right into her classroom. No whimpering. No pulling her off of me. No tears. Hmmm. Could it be? Could she be overwhelmed by the crowds? I don’t know where I got the idea, but I decided to try an experiment. That Friday I got to the school late on purpose. Again, no one in the hallways, no one in the parking lot. And again, she went right in. It happened on Monday, too, the same day one of the teachers proclaimed Little Girl to have had an, “excellent, day! She had so much fun today,” she told me. It had to be: She was overwhelmed by the crowds of people. Makes sense. She’s a tiny little girl, a minnow in a sea of grownups and siblings and teachers all milling around in those hallways.

Today, five minutes late, Little Girl almost ran into the school. She didn’t even look back at me. She marched into the classroom like she owned the place, showing one of the teachers her little backpack that contained Elmo, a stuffed dog, and her favorite haiku book. My lesson: Sometimes it just takes a small change to reap big rewards.

This week I will be looking for my small change with Big Girl. I need to find whatever it is that is making her so upset and angry. I am actually wondering if it’s the new school. It’s a very challenging place for someone who is shy and hesitant. I wonder if it’s just too scary and tiring and frustrating for her to be a minnow in a giant sea of kids, some of whom write threatening letters on the bus.

I put my little one down for a nap around 2 p.m. Ten minutes later I heard a loud thud come from her room. I knew before I opened the door what had happened. She jumped out of the crib. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, though.

She was still upside down; she had fallen on her head, shoulder and neck. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t crying. I picked her up and held her up. She still didn’t cry. Her eyes were wide open. I brought her into my bedroom and laid her down. I started screaming. Tell Mommy what hurts, please. Are you okay?!? And then she started crying.

She wouldn’t move her neck. She wouldn’t talk to me. She was sobbing. I grabbed my purse and my keys and, without thinking of anything but getting her to the hospital, I ran to the car carrying her crying and begging the whole way. I put her in the car seat. She kept her head turned to the right, chin down the whole time. I kept trying to get her to talk to me. She couldn’t talk. She just kept crying. I was losing my mind. That’s when I saw a police officer doing a registration sting stopping cars in front of me. I opened my car window and started screaming for help. The officer came over, took one look at me, asked me what happened and — once he heard — called for an ambulance.

We got to the hospital pretty quickly. They examined her and sent her right in for an x-ray. I suspected she broke her clavicle. She wasn’t moving her arm and she winced in pain any time I moved her. My suspicion was confirmed. Now the doctor wanted to rule out a head trauma. There was no bump, no bruise. We tried to get her to stay in the CT scan machine, but she was beyond beyond. It wasn’t happening. We took her back to triage. The doctor said she didn’t want to sedate her. We could take her home and watch her. Let her sleep, but check her and make sure we could rouse her. Make sure she wasn’t acting loopy and wasn’t vomiting or having seizures.

When we got home she refused to leave my arms; refused to move. She was — and is — in so much pain. She finally fell asleep. I’ve gone in four times in three hours waking her up, getting her to talk and checking to make sure her pupils dilate.

I am numb and sick and scared. At one point, when we were waiting for the ambulance I put my hands together in prayer and prayed out loud that she would be okay, that it would be nothing. The last time I felt that much emotion was on September 11, 2001 as I  stood in the den clutching my mother, both of us crying for what was happening only 35 miles from our homes. My soul ached that day and it ached again today. And even now, as I sit here trying to digest this afternoon I question whether we should be allowed to love so much or feel so deeply. I’ve never had such a raw, gaping wound in my body as when I thought that something horrible was happening to my precious child. It’s something I never want to feel again, and yet I know that it is inevitable. Kids get sick. They get hurt. They get in trouble. I have to suck it up and deal.

I’m going to lie down now. I don’t think I will be sleeping tonight. I will probably be up for a long time if I sleep at all…

Little girl loves, loves, loves (sorry, Chris) being with Mommy more often. Loves it. She’s like a different child. Where she was wild and crazy with Chris, she’s quiet and thoughtful with me. This morning we woke up, ate a leisurely breakfast and then did “school.” We talked about our colors. For once, she identified them all — no joking around. (She’s been pretending not to know them telling us purple for everything. We were actually worried she was colorblind.) Then she started with her letters. She wanted to write them. I’ll be darned if she didn’t actually write some of them. We got dressed. We went to Gymboree. We came home and had lunch. She went right down for her nap. When she woke up (the sitter was downstairs with Big Girl) I realized she had stripped naked. She was shivering, poor thing. I picked her up, cradled her in my arms wrapped in a blanket and we rocked in the chair. She snuggled deeper in my lap and sighed. She actually sighed.

Meanwhile, Big Girl got up with me this morning. She got dressed. She ate a good breakfast. There was minimal screaming when I finger-combed her hair and put her sunscreen on. We were waiting for the bus when it came. The day passed quickly — what with me squeezing six hours of work into four hours. I was putting recycling to the curb when she got home. We chatted as she ate her strawberries, cheese and crackers. She showed me the big scrape she got in gym class. She started doing her homework.

After the sitter left I put them both into a tub while dinner was cooking. That’s where my husband found us: the girls seated in the tub; me seated on the tub with my capris rolled up and my feet in the water. He couldn’t wait to see them and talk to them. My big girl was amenable. The baby started losing her mind. “Mommy, hug you, Mommy,” she said. (Her shorthand for “pick me up NOW.”) And after I left to go to the gym it got so bad that Chris had to put her to bed. My big girl is acting out in other ways. She freaked out in the afternoon as we practiced starting her bike from a standing position. I’d say it wasn’t unexpected, but the fact that she got so upset that she threw herself on the curb facedown crying is definitely not like her. And she’s started saying things like the babysitter likes her sister more and how unfair it is that the baby got to spend time with my mother-in-law on Tuesday.

I spoke to someone today who told me that both girls are acting out right now because of the change. They need to make sure their needs will still be met. They’re not sure how Daddy working in the city will affect our family unit. Heck, I’m not sure, either, so I am going to be really careful to reassure them both that they are loved and that they can count on us — work or not.

My father died on a Wednesday. I was sitting under the bed when a business associate confirmed he was dead. The adults in my life decided to keep that fact from me for a few days. They didn’t know how to tell me, I guess. I kept the fact that I knew the truth to myself. I was two months shy of six. I didn’t know what to think. When they told me, I was also told I wasn’t allowed to the funeral and say goodbye. My mother thought she was protecting me. She thought she was doing the right thing. But I never got closure, and learned a valuable lesson: People lie.

Around the same time I had a distant family member do something to me that further crushed any trust I may have had left in my heart. I told no one. As far as I was concerned, adults lied. All people lied. I stopped saying that I loved people. Love was too scary. I stopped being friendly and fun. I was weird. Ask any of the kids I went to school with.

I’ve lived my life dealing with those early experiences. I’ve done pretty well for myself. Therapy, a loving husband, good friends. These things have been the glue that brought the pieces of my heart back together. But just like a precious figurine, once you break something so fragile it’s never truly whole again. Sure, it might look the same on the outside but the cracks and glue and repairs can be seen when you hold it up to a light.

My kids, specifically, my older daughter, act as that light. And in my haste to protect my daughter from the same pain, the same fate, I’ve made some mistakes. I don’t lie to her. Ever. But that also means she’s probably been privy to too much too soon. I’m terrified that someone is going to touch her, to hurt her. So I don’t leave her alone very often with anyone. I warn her to be careful. I tell her what negative consequences she might face in specific situations. And Big Girl, with a brain that’s wired for anxiety by DNA to begin with, is now an anxious child.

I read a book for my book club this weekend. Tore through it in a few hours. (Thanks, Wantagh Elementary School for providing your Horizon program kids like me with speed reading lessons!) As I dug into the last chapter I became despondent, hysterical, even. The book is Come Back: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back. It’s about a teenager who acts out, cuts herself, runs away, gets hooked on drugs. She was abused as a child. Her mother never dealt with it. The book looks at the psychological reasons behind both mother’s and daughter’s issues. The mother, not surprisingly, is almost as much at fault for her daughter’s problems as the father who abused her. (Of course, the daughter, who didn’t love herself enough to avoid all that B.S. is culpable, too.)

I identified a lot with the mother in the book. I realized that unless I make some changes, I risk making Big Girl a permanently mistrustful, anxious, angry, and sad human being. I have to realize that just because she looks like me and has a lot of my personality traits, she IS NOT ME. She is Big Girl. She did not come into this world with the same negative experiences I had. Will she get hurt? Yes, but it’s up to me to let her get hurt and be there to support her when she does. There is no reason for her to see the world as a scary, negative place. Her life up until now has been a charmed one. She should be reveling in that. I need to let her feel the joy that she should rightfully feel.

Anyway, this was not an easy post to write. To admit that, although I’ve done lots of things right when it comes to my kids, I’ve done plenty of things that fall into a different area entirely. I said in another post that it was time to love myself the way others around me love me. No easy task, but I am willing to try, for the sake of my girls. Yes, I am willing to try.