Why All Victories, Part I

Since I launched the blog, a few people have asked me why I chose the title “All Victories.” There are a few reasons, so I’ll start with the first and hopefully get to the others at another time.

Since I moved to Nachlaot and started running into Jenny in the course of my days, she has occasionally urged me to start writing a blog. I think her main point was that more women parenting young children need to share their voices. And I really wanted to listen to Jenny because I think she is wise and I like to listen to wise people. But I really really did not want to start a blog. Not at all.

I like to write, but at this point in my life I often feel like all I have to contribute is funny renderings of things my kids say, and complaints about how hard it is to care for young kids.

And the thing is, I waited for these children. I prayed for these children. I spent thousands of dollars and many hours of time doing my hishtadlut to bring these children into the world. And yet sometimes they make me so angry that my eyeballs burn. Sometimes I want to march back to Cornell, hand them to Dr. Rosenwaks and say, “Never mind. You raise them.”

But no matter how challenging any day or phase is, I am not interested in using the internet as a sounding board for my frustrations. There are plenty of blogs already doing that, and ultimately I don’t feel it helps the situation much. Commiserating can only take us so far.

And more than that, how can I engage in extended complaining about these much-desired children, especially when so many people are still suffering with infertility, still waiting for their families to be made complete? How can I kvetch about a sacred responsibility? I can’t bring myself to do it.

And I don’t know that I have much to say at this point. How do you know how things stand when you are still in the trenches? I feel like my husband and I are just bumbling along most of the time. But one thing I do know how to recognize is a victory. Staying calm when I feel like screaming? That’s a victory. Developing a creative solution to a childrearing conundrum is a victory. Distracting my tantruming kids with humor is a victory.

And I realized that creating a space to share those victories and focus on what is working in my life can only be a good thing. So this blog will be all victories. Maybe sometimes victories in the making, but never airing problems for the sake of describing problems, and never despair. I feel like it’s helping me already, and I hope it will help you, too.