Let Truth Bloom

Do you get angry or resentful if you see your husband relaxing on the couch when there’s so much to do? Do you begrudge him having time outside the home, away from the kids? Do you sometimes feel like he has it so much easier than you do? Four years ago I found myself seething while vacuuming under my husband’s feet. It was 8.45pm and I was seven months pregnant with our third child.  There he was, the man I fell head-over-heels in love with seven years before, resting on the couch…and I was still going. Still working. Still trying to get everything done.  ‘ How could he rest?! Doesn’t he see me? ’ I thought. ‘ How can he think that it is okay to just sit there when he knows I find walking painful at this stage of pregnancy, never-mind vacuuming? Clearly he doesn’t love me or care about me ’, I confirmed.  I dreamed of my husband saying ‘ let me do that…sit down, love. You deserve to rest…you’ve done enough ’. But the permission to rest never came. USING RESENTMENT AS A S...

Are you responsible for taking care of others? Do you usually put other people’s needs ahead of your own? Do you feel selfish when you have needs or desires of your own? Do you feel like taking time for YOU is wrong? Have you learned that the right thing to do, the Catholic thing to do, is to deny your needs in favour of the desires of others? Are you wondering why continuously doing so is leaving you feeling drained, unfulfilled and resentful? As mothers, we see very quickly how the neglect of a need in our children develops swiftly into meltdown: an emotional outburst, overwhelm, anger, drama, tears. Yet we expect that, because we are adults, the consistent suppression of our own needs will have no such consequence.  Why is it that we consider the presence of our  own  needs as wrong or bothersome? And the taking care of those needs as unnecessary or redundant? Do we think we are exempt from being human? Are we expecting ourselves to be super-human? I don’t know about y...