The Pioneer Woman - my Shero!

Ree Drummond may very well be my favorite #girlboss ever! I have to say, finally visiting Pawhuska after a decade of reading her blog and of watching her cooking show on Food Network these past several years, I was dubious as to whether or not all the hype would live up to my enormous expectations.

Well, um...it did.

Her show’s catch phrase is “Welcome to my frontier!”

We definitely felt the welcome!

Now, more than ever, I am in awe of what this seemingly simple Oklahoma-living, kid-raising, Marlboro Man- loving cook, wife, mom, and business owner has accomplished with such grace, poise, and low-key fanfare. You walk into The Mercantile (known fondly as “The Merc”) and instantly feel as though you’ve stepped into the home of a very close friend. From the gift wrap counter, to the colorfully displayed shelves of dishes, novelties, and linens, to the friendly sales clerks dressed in sharp, black-button down shirts with the now-famous strands of PW’s signature turquoise beads - it all bathes you in a warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging, of truly being a part of her frontier.

Mom and I both picked up this first issue of her new magazine. Y’all. You NEED to stop by your local Walmart and pick up your very own copy! It has been a very long time since I have read a magazine from cover to cover, but that is exactly what I did with this one. The articles are relevant, the editorials are heartfelt, and the pictures are just pure Americana. And in today’s climate - who doesn’t need a bit of THIS in their life?

Just this weekend my niece referred to me as a “fan girl,” and I guess - even though I am a full grown, soon-to-be 50 year old, I am indeed a fan girl. There is something to be respected about a person with a dream that is totally centered around her family, her principles, and her desire to leave a positive imprint on the world around her that completely inspires me.

Maybe - from one transplanted gal to another - there is something about her that further encourages me to press further on my passion here at the B&B. To take heart that great things take great time to create, to nourish, and then to flourish.

When C H A N G E is good, but not always fun.

Change is never easy for me. It never has been. That dreaded feeling that collects in the pit of your tummy, rolling and tumbling in such a way that you're not sure if you are excited or just plain terrified.

One thing I've learned, though, is to trust the little nudge in the depths of your soul; when it urges change, I know I'd be wise to listen and consider my next steps very carefully.

In a way, this is quite funny that I still go through this myriad of emotions, considering that the B&B is continually going through changes, especially with this huge expansion we're in the big middle of right now. I think it must be because Mike and I are so focused on the end goal that the changes we endure during the process feel more like "the next step" rather than true changes.

When I signed my contract with my last district, I thought it would be where I would spend the remainder of my teaching career. There were no doubts in my mind; instead, there was such a sweet serenity in knowing I'd be teaching in the very community where I live, that the commute was a mere 9 minutes - door to door, and that I had found my forever school home.

I seriously never thought that would change.

I am so in love with where we live - the actual land, but also the neighbors, the community, the familiarity that has become our home over the past six years. My students here are at the heart of what I have done for 10 months out of the year, for these years. The thing is, they will always be mine. If a student has sat in my class, it is my hope and prayer that they know that NOTHING will change my feelings for them. Not their graduation. Not them moving on to the next grade. Not them moving away.

Not me leaving this district for another.

I have moved to a new district. Coming to this decision had nothing to do with my current students, nothing to do with the community, and nothing to do with the fierce love I have for all I have experienced here. Instead, it has everything to do with that little nudge in my soul that prompted me to move to a new challenge, a new opportunity.

To many my decision probably makes no sense. I now have a bit of a commute. I know only a handful of people at the new district. I'm leaving my comfort zone for a place where I am sure it will take me a while to find my footing, my place. I'm also leaving students who mean the world to me. Students that I would cross the country for if they needed me to. I'm letting a huge piece of my heart stay with them, even as I move on to my next chapter in my teaching journey.

The decision making process itself was too personal to even try to put into words here, if I wanted to. The truth is, when I have these whispers in my soul - God whispers, I like to call them - it is personal and not something I'm inclined to share publicly. If you know me at all, you will know that this decision was made after lots of prayer, lots of thinking, and many, many talks with Mike.

It's been several weeks now, and the rumbling and tumbling in my tummy is still there, but now it is pure excitement. I look forward to the new students who will be in my life, the opportunities I will have to make an impact on them and their families, and especially the open door which was swung wide for me after my time in prayer. My heart is ready to encompass all the new even as it holds so close and so dear all of the old.

To all of my former students, you have my heart for always! I will still be front row and center for all of your accomplishments in life, I will still laugh at all of the fun we had, and still want to hug you tight when I know you need it most. Nothing will change that.

To all of my soon-to-be students, very soon this heart of mine will encompass you as well. Even though I don't know you yet, my heart is with you - planning, preparing - for that moment when we meet and begin our time together.

Once again, I am a transplanted gal. Trusting the process. Cherishing the past. Embracing the NOW. Anticipating the future.

Don't miss the bliss.

“This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.”

Is this not the best thing ever?

That wherever I go I have the assurance that God has gone before me, paving the way for my time there. Way too often I get caught up in the busyness that is life - work,marriage, kids, mortgages, students, the B&B...The reality is that - if I chose to - I could stay busy every single second and miss the bliss that comes from being in this very moment.

I’m a planner by heart. If you don’t believe it, just take a look at my plannerS (yes, multiple planners because just one doesn’t cover my life. One for the business, one for school, and then my personal one where I attempt to reconcile all the facets of my life into one place.) I just can’t NOT plan. Menus, to-do lists, lessons, steps or phases to take our business to the next level. While planning is important in life, the very act of planning everything so precisely is that sometimes my thoughts are more future focused, on things and places and people that have not yet been manifested in my life.

It’s in these rare moments of clarity in the midst of chaos that I realize I am in “over-planning” mode, and need to do my best to stop, breathe, and take in this spot where I am right now. It may be a spot of joy, maybe a little bit of a hard place, or maybe even just a place of silence where there is not a lot of activity going on. In each of these times, I need to embrace the now, the blessings and the lessons that are in THIS space. They are for me, from my Father.

I don’t want to miss the bliss.

Let them eat cake.

"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."

---Joyce Maynard

Cake is usually symbolic of a celebratory time.

It is almost always the foundation of a birthday party, an anniversary celebration, and the decadent addition of a dinner for the record books.

But for me, and for my boys, cake is symbolic of something entirely different. A time of struggle. Of pain. Of loss.

Maybe that’s why I always request cherry pie when my mom asks each year what kind of cake I’d like for my birthday.

And maybe that is precisely why each of my boys enjoy pie over cake.

Just the thought of that makes my heart hurt.

Many years ago - in what I now refer to as my "other life," - when the boys were very young and times were very tough, there were days, and sometimes many days, when there was no food left in the pantry. I learned to scrimp and save and improvise but it seemed like each month – without fail – there would be a series of days when we had next to nothing.

Except…cake mixes.

My grandmother was the queen of coupon clipping. And if you’ve ever clipped coupons you know that cake coupons are a dime a dozen. So each time she and my grandfather would make the drive from East Texas to my place, she would always bring me a sack full of cake and cornbread mixes.

What is almost (but not quite) humorous today, was not at all funny back then. There were many mornings when I’d open the pantry door, looking for something of sustenance for my two young sons, and only an endless row of cake mixes and cornbread batter mixes lined the shelves.

I did what any mother in that situation would do. I scrounged up the eggs and made the batter. I wish I could say that we have sweet memories of those times of eating plain yellow cake for breakfast and for lunch. But the truth is that those memories are more of the bittersweet quality.

Bitter because I am painfully aware that my kids share these memories with me.

But still sweet, because I can look back now and see just how blessed our lives have become since those days.

So it is with such mixed emotion that, all these years later, I've found myself saying about our children - our blended family, let them eat cake. I could never, ever voice this aloud because, quite frankly, I fear no one would understand. This all began to come to me a few days ago as I worked out.

Instead of the usual music in my ear, I used this time for prayer, feeling a special need to lay my heart bare before God. It was one of those moments that come to a mom when she has relinquished all physical control, and yet the mothering "urge" is stronger than ever. I concentrated on lunges, squats, and planks, but in my heart I was crying. “Oh, God. Please let our children experience the same relationship with you that we've found. Be real to them. Very real.”

There was but a moment of silence, both around me and inside me, before His still, small voice spoke to me. Stopped me in my tracks. “Remember what it took to bring you to this place with me?” His voice ushered me back to those stark years, to that one moment when I had no place to turn but to my knees. “Are you sure you’re ready for them to experience that?”

I grew so still inside my soul. I didn’t know how to answer that question. Still don't. I'm fairly certain that I don't WANT to answer that question. Never, ever, ever do I want my children to have to endure the heartache and the pain that I did at their ages, and just beyond. I want to pave the way for them, make life as easy to navigate as possible.

But I also want them to become great men of God.

Men that instinctively know that true strength is found in weakness and that their weaknesses are merely open invitations for God to come in and perform the mighty in their lives.

But the truth is that you can’t teach that to your children.

You can model it.

You can explain it.

You can pray for it.

But, in the end, it is up to them to seek this path for themselves.

And now, as our children are having (and raising) their own children, and the last few strands of my apron strings have been ripped from my waist, I find my heart both bleeding and rejoicing. 

I ache because that's what a Mom does - she feels for that child, long after they are grown and out of her home, and her prayer is that they will learn – much as she did – that God is indeed the sanctuary. 

But...also rejoicing because she trusts their journeys will be as rewarding and as fruitful as hers has been.

Let them eat cake.

My Journey

We all have our own journey, and each one is unique and equally compelling and relevant. Some share their stories - their journey - easily and freely. Others of us are a little hesitant, maybe too concerned with what others may or may not think after they know a little more about our inner struggles and victories.

Our journeys encompass so much: our relationships and our ability to nurture healthy ones, our jobs and careers and how to balance those with the relationships, our hopes, our dreams, and...our health.

This post is about the leg of the journey that is health.

Let's start off by saying that I was never an athlete. I never played a sport in school, I very seldom participated in sports-like activities outside of school. I did take up running several years ago and did that for a while. And I did do a summer boot camp a couple of years ago. But - by and large - I have never been what you could consider an athlete.

As a kid, though, I was active in playing outside and I maintained a healthy weight all through childhood and my teen years. I never remember really thinking twice about what I ate and I had a fairly good sense of who I was and was comfortable with that.

All that changed when I was a young mom. Those years were filled with days that were tough, that were hard, and that - in the end - were heartbreaking. In spite of all the hardships and the other things going on in my life at the time, I loved being a mother to my two boys. It was - and still is - the single most rewarding thing in life. I would have been a bigger mess had it not been for those two little souls who depended on me and needed me.

Somewhere in the big middle of trying to balance all that life was throwing my way, I forgot how to take care of me. I gained weight - lots of it - but even more destructive were the changes going on inside of me. 

Even though I wouldn't realize it or learn from it for many, many years, I became an emotional eater. That in itself is a post for another time, another day, but you can read between the lines. I didn't take care of my body and as a result began to suffer health issues, some of which still haunt me today.

One of my dearest and most well-loved friends would tell me, "Feed your body well and then just let your weight fall where it will." I would listen and think how in the world do you even begin to do that? Something that should be so easy and so natural - putting good things in your body and trusting it to do good work for you was just so far beyond my ability to comprehend in those dark days.

Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones. Through the love and grace of a great God, the love of a good and caring man, and a slow, reluctant love for myself, I became healthy. Instead of turning to donut therapy, I learned to reach for things that would feed my soul and not things that would harm my body. I learned the difference between eating and feeding. 

I wish I could say that once the light bulb came on, the changes began immediately. The truth in my journey is that it took me years to heal my body from the inside out and just as long to heal my mind of destructive behaviors that served to only stunt my growth in all other areas of my life. 

My story is not unlike the stories of many of you. There is a silent community of us - in all stages of the healing process - that need the confirmation that not only can we live a life that is healthy and full, but we can do so without guilt, without self-doubt, and without worry about what others may or may not think.

I'm thankful for a whole host of things these days. For family. For friends. For health. For a support group of women who are working to make their lives and the ones of those they love full and happy. 

And I'm so proud to be a part of this. 

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We are...FABULOUS!

We all have days when we feel like fabulous teachers.  We walk into our organized classrooms, greet our students with a smile and then proceed to teach several hours of kick butt lessons in which all students are engaged and make progress as learners.

There are no major behavioral issues.  There are no complaints about not having a pencil.  There are no interruptions over the intercom.  The dreaded copier stands free, without a line, and works flawlessly.  Not a paper jam for miles.

It is a good day.  You lean back in your chair in your classroom at the end of the day, smiling to yourself and wishing you had your own theme music because the day was Just. That. Good.

If you enjoy nerding out as much as I do, there are wonderful research based best practices out there for us to hang our hat on and I believe that teachers can, should, and do keep up with those.   It is critical that we share our fabulous.

However, there are also all sorts of studies and papers and articles pontificating about what it means to be a good teacher; who is effective, who is not effective and why the so-called demise of the public education system is all our fault.  It is a lot of fire and brimstone and most of it is largely not helpful.

Listen, we know how to be fabulous.  We need to harness that fabulousness for those days that don't go as planned. You know the ones I'm talking about. They generally come one day after the PURELY FABULOUS day. It's some kind of Murphy's Law of Teaching: for each really great day that lifts you as high as your little teacher heart can stand, there is an equally NOT great day that plummets you right back to reality.

Some days are filled with way too many interruptions, a copier that won't spit out a decent copy no matter how much you cajole or curse it, and there are those days that leave you wondering how - or if  - you will ever reach that one struggling student.

Those days exist too.  And while I try my best to not allow myself believe those are defining moments, they often do bring me down and make my fabulous feel further away, like it's locked up in a box in a room full of mandates, state expectations, and endless streams of data that is just. so. hard. to. keep. up. with.

Teaching is a roller coaster for sure. It's easy to see why it's as much a calling as anything else. It used to be that teaching was considered a noble profession, one where the teacher was to be respected, revered, and  - considered a professional. 

What I want to say to all my dear teacher friends is this: teaching still is the most noble thing a person can do in life. Whether we touch one life, or many, in our career, imparting tools and strategies that feed growing minds will never, EVER be anything less than the most fabulous thing one can do with their life. It doesn't matter what is happening in The Powers That Be (no matter how miserable they can make our job seem) that dole out their definition of what makes a good teacher and how that teacher should be compensated (or NOT.)

At the end of each day, the main ingredient is still the main ingredient. Our students still need us. Our students still depend on us. Our students still love us. And the best thing of all? We still love them.

I think it's time we define what makes us fabulous for ourselves. Don't let anyone else do it for us. Just do it. Think about how fabulous you can make another teacher feel and the importance of contributing to the conversation about what makes teachers...there really isn't another word for it...fabulous!

Confidence: the good kind.

I’ve been thinking some lately about self confidence. Where does mine come from? What about everyone else’s? How can I better teach and foster it in my students? How can I encourage it in my friends, or my coworkers? Is it a skill that can be taught and practiced, or is it some inherent gift?

I believe confidence, forged from self-love, is a skill. I think self-compassion and self-kindness are skills that can be honed. Since there is an insane epidemic in our society of body-hating, I think loving yourself (the way you are right now, not 15 pounds from now or a college degree from now, or a healthy relationship from now) is one of the first steps on the journey to a successful (and fulfilling) life.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

It's not just happenstance that the Bible admonishes, in more than one place, that our first commandment in living for God is to love Him; following on the heels of that verse is the second, the one that many times is misinterpreted. "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

We intrinsically know we are to treat others kindly and with compassion for their circumstances, understanding for their shortcomings, and forgiveness for their mistakes. Yet most of us fail to grant these same concessions to ourselves. Instead, we are our own worst critic, constantly second-guessing, seeing the glass as half-empty, and finding it difficult to embrace our flaws as willingly as we embrace our strengths.

It’s hard to love all of myself, all of the time. But when I’m spending time alone with my reflection, I’m consciously seeing myself through the eyes of someone who loves and accepts me fully and completely… my imaginary “biggest fan,” if you will. But it’s not just physical. To me, external beauty is such a reflection of internal beauty. So while I’m loving my body and my face, I’m also loving my heart and my spirit and my whole history as a person.

I don’t compare myself to anyone. That would rob the experience of joy. I even try not to compare myself to myself, although there are certainly some thoughts, some memories. I remember how my body looked and felt in high school, how it felt after losing 50 pounds all those years ago... But it’s always done through this filter, this point of view of an imaginary fan who loves me the most right now, as I am in this moment. I don’t say mean things or think about stuff I want to change. I just admire. I just love. And for that time, through the imaginary eyes of my biggest fan, I am my biggest fan. I am the one who loves me the most. And you guys… I think people need this.

Because the thing is, you walk around making up what people think of you anyway. You can never really know. I mean, you hope your parents are proud of you, and you suspect that mean girl might just be jealous of you. But you can never KNOW. Your interpretation of what people think of you is essentially made up. And for some reason most people, most of the time, make up mean and negative things. They see themselves from the POV of an imaginary enemy. They imagine how they must come across to someone who doesn’t like them, who doubts them, who think they’re ugly, fat, dumb, or just not good enough. They spend their entire day hanging out with this judgey imaginary person who makes them feel insecure, and their entire life suffers for it. When you constantly see yourself from the POV of someone who judges you unkindly, the world feels like a harsh and dangerous place, so you shut down, take less risks, and find ways to live smaller.

The complete opposite, in fact, is true. We all deserve to be seen, loved, and admired for exactly who we are.