Love vs Fear, Which Path will you take? Part 1

October 16, 2012 · By ·

I have had many moments in my life where I made a single choice and it profoundly affected the course of my life. In these moments, the choice was between Love or simply to go with Fear. The times I chose not to crumble and to go with fear, I have been rewarded with open doors.

The path leading to my dream started with moments, moments that appear to be fearful. And each time I had to make the choice, between love and fear, I went with the decision to go with strength and love.

Each time I am face to face with those moments, these words will be brought to mind;

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Motherhood is my defining moment that presented a path of the yellow brick road towards my dream. Very much like what Dorothy experienced when she followed the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz. It has, and still is, a journey of self-discovery, change and growth.

The 1st 6 months of being a new mom was difficult, K and I stayed apart from hb after a melodrama of accusations, frenzied tears and threatened suicide from my MIL, who was emotionally unstable at that time. When the dust settled, hb got her another place to stay, while K and I moved back home. Hb and I knew that we needed to make up for lost time in our marriage, and I struggled with the choice to stay in my full time job in regional marketing or be a SAHM.

The fear that confronted me was the loss of financial independence, which kept me in limbo for another 4 months. Until I finally convinced myself that financial well being is relative. I asked myself, suppose I did reach the financial goal sometime in the future, what would I have for the time in between?

A Companion to Walk Alongside

Having my little boy made me listen to my heart, his presence made me confront some difficult issues and make tough decisions. So I chose to go with love, quitted my full time job to be a SAHM and pursued further education in Early Childhood. I wanted to be a better mother, to learn how to raise my son well in his formative years.

My dream, at that point, was to be a curriculum specialist in a preschool. Or if I had some capital to start a business, to open a preschool of my own.

A year and a half later, the dream to work in a preschool industry included a companion who will walk alongside with me. I met up with Pauline. 4 months later, we founded an Early Childhood Education website and conducted home-learning workshops to train moms to coach their children at home. The first prayer we made together before the first workshop in 2010 included these words, “God, please use us to help other moms.”

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We are no saints for sure but that prayer came from purest of our intentions. We hope to use our knowledge in Early Childhood to help moms coach and bond with their kids at home through home-learning. But a year later, the business slowed down as we were bored conducting the same workshop repeatedly.

Crafty Interests

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I spent the last 6 months in 2011 to pursue artistic interests. I toyed with the idea of setting up an Etsy shop with my interest in crafting. Myplayschool.net started a new feature on crafting moms, Pauline and I created a video, and wrote posts on the website in the hope that hand-mades will have more awareness with the mom community online. We started up a ZAKKA Mom’s Facebook group to bring together the mom crafting community and organized a private fund raising activity for Children’s Hunger Fund.

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The path leading to my crafty dream derailed when hb closed down his business and had to go into employment. The next defining moment came when we sold our home, and I had to look for full time work in the last quarter of 2011 to supplement household income.

I went for many job interviews and believed that getting a full time job was the solution. The interviews proceeded to final stages, but there were no news from any of the jobs after that.

I struggled to cope with the situation and it felt like a total eclipse of my world…

 

Read on to Part 2 of this post.

 

 

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Categorized: Hope ·

Photo *Heart* Fridays – The Big Picture

October 12, 2012 · By ·

LandscapefinalK’s landscape creation after 10 weeks of art classes

 

I have always loved capturing landscapes with my camera. My only limitation is this, I don’t get to travel often or far enough to capture this sort of landscape through my lens.

Looking at this picture that K has completed this week showed me how we view landscapes is parallel to how we view our lives. Many times I find myself so occupied with the here and now, that I lose sight of the big picture of things.

‘Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.’ ~ Charles Linbergh

Despite the challenges of the daily grind, and of certain days that make me feel a lot less hopeful than others. I always need to remind myself to look up and out of the place that I have been, into a place where hope lives. A place where I have learnt to be content to be where I am and be energized again to move forward.

 



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Common Sense and Common Courtesy are not too Common

October 11, 2012 · By ·

Taking public transportation can provide some fodder for observation into human behavior.

A couple of weeks back, I took the public bus and sat in the middle of the last row of seats. Teenage guy from NJC pressed bell, I stood up and let him step out of the seat. He refused to get out of the seat, craned his neck to look out for his bus-stop, waiting for the perfect moment to leave his seat, like a second before the bus stopped.

While I was stood there, hanging on to the pole for dear life as the maniacal bus driver drove frantically towards the next bus stop. I desperately clung on, waiting for the youth to leave his seat. As he walked passed me, I had to restrain myself from whacking his head with my handbag.

What’s wrong with some of these youths? Are they so overwhelmed by the academic demands in their scholarly life that they don’t know how to be embarrassed or show some consideration for the people around them? Have some parent’s obsessions with their academic performance caused them to neglect teaching their children basic courtesy and be sensitive to their surroundings?

My other pet peeves with youths, include those who walk right into little kids. I have reminded K each time when we are a mall, to look out for those ‘young people’ around Uncle Nick’s age (my brother’s age, the 16 – 21 year olds. I apologised for the stereotype, if you are in this age group and reading this!). To always be alert and make sure he does not walk into their path. Or move away from their path if he sees them walking towards him, if not risk getting knocked over.

 

Do the ‘Hide and Seek’

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How am I training my son to be alert and aware of his surroundings? Hb and I do the ‘Hide and Seek’ very often in public places. When K is occupied looking at toys and things that interest him, Hb and I duck and hide behind a wall, or deliberately walk away from him. SOP for him is to come looking for us calmly and then asking nicely that he wants us to stand next to him while he looks at his stuff.

The first ‘Hide and Seek’ was attempted was he was 4, quite a painful one for the boy to learn. We were at a Toy shop and hb and I did our ‘running away’. When the boy looked up, he could not see us in his usual line of sight, and he ended up frantically looking for us, while we were watching him from behind toy shelves. He was upset by this incident, but he has since learnt that he needs to be alert each time he is in a public place.

We still do the ‘Hide and Seek’ when we are out in malls and the boy makes the point to look up for us while looking at his things, and is quick to catch up with us when he sees us walking away. So we have trained him to be quite alert for a 5 year old.

Crazy cruel parents, maybe. Stressful being my kid, very likely. But I think this is so necessary for a child to know, albeit learning the hard way.

 

Courtesy is for You and Me

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What other common courtesies I have taught him to practice often?

Make eye contact with people when they talk to you, respond when you are spoken to, and for goodness sake, always spare a thought for others, and not just yourself. Be considerate. And most of all don’t forget the magic words, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’. And you really don’t need to be reminded to greet elders, or your friends’ parents.

He hasn’t quite mastered all these common courtesies and will need reminders from time to time, but these things rank really high on my important-things-to-teach-my-child list.

As for those who need a crash course in learning common courtesies, I think we desperately need to bring back SINGA the Lion for the young ones (but please do something about his outfit!).

Singa

And how about a Korean-eques looking male/female dreamboat with doe eyes, who sings and dances fabulously and will always mind her ‘P’s and Q’s’ for the youths? Could be useful as a reminder for the parents who have forgotten about teaching these courtesies to their kids. Whatever works.

 

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