A little over a year ago was the beginning of a transition in how I see myself as a mom, a writer, and a creative person. Prior to that point I had been seriously struggling with the darker aspects of myself and my life. Starting this blog came out of that place.

I only really believed in the negative things about me and my life up to that point. I didn’t like much about myself, and it showed through in a lot of areas, especially in how desperately detached I was as a mom.

I loved all my kids with all my heart that wasn’t consumed with guilt, shame, and self-blame. I knew how that had impacted my relationships with my two adult children, Marco and LaLa. I was terrified of losing Luna’s childhood the way I’d lost theirs and was determined to do better by her.

As my healing progressed due to the blogging and other things I was doing, I began doing more things with her and taking her out to the local parks. I also began connecting to and reading what other bloggers were doing and writing about. I discovered Six Word Fridays – a weekly, single word prompt where writing is done six words at a time.

I had completed my first blog challenge of 31 posts in 31 days. During that process I encountered a lot of different blogs on a variety of subjects, many of which were folks blogging as part of building online businesses. I saw a lot of styles, formats, and elements and learned how to do more visually creative things and incorporating them here.

Practicing being present, mindfulness, and to treasure moments in time coincided with these new things I was learning in the technical realm.

One beautiful and warm Summer day, I took Luna to the park and took a lot of pictures of her playing to send to her daddy. The Six Word Friday prompt that week was, “fun.” I wrote “Princess Tomboy: Six Word Friday – August Fun” and posted a few pictures.

Princess Tomboy
Climbs up
Slides down

Yesterday was a marathon cleaning day in preparation for Keith coming home last night. He’s only home until about 3am Tuesday morning and I wanted to have things clean for him. However, little Luna got restless and needed a break from the apartment, so, despite the multitude of work needing to be done, we went to the park.

I remembered Princess Tomboy from last year and while I watched her play I took a few shots, opened up my Heyku, Mixel, and Pic Collage apps and revisited Princess Tomboy.

I was happy that I had remembered how she’d looked last year and that I had given her the aptly descriptive title of Princess Tomboy. I realized that I was now doing something in a brief time which had taken much time and concentrated effort to do a year ago.

It’s sometimes hard for me to look at the circumstances in my life and go through things that are just as difficult and stressful as any I’ve experienced in the past and not think negatively about myself.

However, in this one brief and sunny afternoon, I was able to recognize that I have grown and changes have been made. Just as Luna has grown and changed this year, I have too.

I am a good mom. I am a good writer. I am a creative person. I like who I’m becoming. I realize there are things that may not change or maybe only change just a little bit, but that doesn’t mean I’m not growing.