Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A New Direction: Secrets to Share

Since the release of my book in 2010, I have been wondering what to do with this blog. Even though the book was about my mother and her mental illness, I did not want to focus on mental illness because it isn't really something I know a lot about. I know what life was like living with my mother and how I felt as a child, but professionally, there are things I still don't understand. The other thing I don't have experience with is what it is like living with a mental illness, so I can't really help people in that respect either. So the question for me has been, what can I contribute that I am passionate and knowledgeable about that would benefit the lives of others.

After much soul-searching and prayer, I have found my answer, and ironically, the name of the blog still fits. I am a home-schooling mother of five amazing children. I have had the opportunity to teach them daily and see them as they grow. I have taught them how to read, how to write, how to love learning, how to make good choices, and how to be honest and respectful. So many times I take them places and I receive comments like, "What is your secret? How do you get your children to behave so well?" or "I don't know what you are doing, but your children are the best behaved children we have ever seen." When I get these comments, I usually laugh and explain that it's just because we were blessed with really good children, which may be true, but then I started writing articles for a website called FamilyShare about how we raise our children, and I started getting thousands of likes and shares on Facebook. People actually liked what I had to say so much that they were sharing it with their friends. This made me think that maybe it's not just our children. Maybe the things that we do have been making a difference in their lives.

So, after the long explanation, here is the new direction I am taking. This blog is called, "Mother Had a Secret" and I was thinking that I am that mother and I have secrets to share, lots of secrets, on how we raise our children, how I love my husband, and how I treat myself. The things that I learned were not learned from my own mother, they were learned from a loving God who knew I needed a hand, and who has been guiding me every step of the way. So welcome to my blog, welcome to my life, and welcome to my world of secrets. I hope they make a difference in your life, just as they have mine. :)