Lisa Canning - The Possibility Mom: How to be a Great Mom and Pursue Your Dreams at the Same Time

LISA CANNING

How to be a Great Mom and Pursue
Your Dreams at the Same Time

NEW YORK

LONDONNASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

THE Possibility MOM

How to be a Great Mom and Pursue Your Dreams at the Same Time

2019 Lisa Canning

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

ISBN 9781642792645 paperback

ISBN 9781642792652 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910677

Cover Design by:

Megan Dillon

Interior Design by:

Christopher Kirk

www.GFSstudio.com

Morgan James is a proud partner of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg. Partners in building since 2006.

Get involved today! Visit
MorganJamesPublishing.com/giving-back

I ll never forget the day I told myself there must be another way. It was a crisp November morning. The sun was shining. Birds were chirping. A thin blanket of snow had just covered my hometown of Toronto, Canada.

I sat in the front seat of my grey minivan, taking in all this beautywhich was in clear juxtaposition to the visual clutter inside my van. When youre a working mom with a bunch of small kids, your van is your rolling office. My purse was bursting with paperwork; tile and fabric samples for my interior design clients bulged out of various bags of all shapes and sizes; a McDonalds bag held the remnants of yesterdays lunch; an interesting mix of goldfish crackers, empty juice boxes, water bottles, and sippy cups littered the floorboard; and multiple car seats of all sizes filled the back of the vanone of which held my seven-day-old daughter, our fourth child in five years.

I had just been released from hospital postpartum and was sore all over. I still had on the bandage where my epidural was inserted, and I was wearing a pad the size of Mount Rushmore in underwear with enough fabric to cover a small city. I was feeling like a sleep-deprived, malnourished, torn-in-all-directions zombie mom.

And I was going into work.

As a small business owner with a demanding interior design business, a regular part of my job at the time was juggling multiple large-scale, top-dollar renovation projects. While I had staff to whom I could delegate, I was a bit of a control freak and refused to let go of many details.

This particular day, I insisted on going to check on a job site where an expensive tile was scheduled to be installed. I knew that if I did not go, it would likely be installed incorrectly, despite having plans and drawings on site. It would be a costly mistake to correct, and I told myself my presence on site really was the best thing for the client. And, I convinced myself, it would only be this one time. I would only choose work over my health, husband, baby, kids, and sanity just this once.

That day, I took my brand-new bundle of love into a dusty, messy, noisy, chaotic construction site because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Deep down, I knew it was wrong. My clients, my staff, my husband, my parents, and maybe even my kids also knew it was wrong. No one was forcing me to be there. In fact, the look on the faces of my clients, the trades, and my family confirmed their displeasure with my decision. I was the one who told myself I had no other choice.

That day, I realized my priorities were as chaotic and messy as my minivan. I sat with my head on the steering wheel and asked myself how I had gotten to this place. How could trade workers see I was out of control while I had missed it until this moment? I realized I was off course and out of balance. And that moment was the beginning of the endthe end of jeopardizing happiness and peace for the sake of perfection and control. The end of putting work first and sacrificing the good of my family. I was ready to launch a new phase, a healthier phase, and it was something the old Lisa could never have imagined in her wildest dreams.

Being a mother today is challenging. In no other period of history has there been as many ways for a mother to fail. From whether your childs lunch box is BPA-free, to how long you breastfeed, to whether you work outside of the home, moms experience no shortage of ways to feel like a failure. Sometimes it feels as if you can fail at literally everything, all day. Should you doubt this, please check Instagram or Pinterest to confirm that motherhood has become a competitive sport. Are your cupcakes cute enough? Are your meals organic enough? Did your children begin taking Mandarin or Suzuki violin lessons by age three?

And that kind of comparison is exhausting.

As a mom who runs a business while nurturing our seven kids, I have often felt defeated by the demands of both twenty-first-century motherhood and career. I cant tell you the number of times I have thrown my hands in the air and waved the white flag of surrender.

The image of a juggler, tossing and catching countless balls, captures the mood of modern motherhood. So many moms today are tired, stressed, and pulled in a million directions. They are exhausted from handling endless tasks and responsibilities. When they invest more time at work, they feel guilty for neglecting their family. And when they invest more time with family, they worry about letting the office down or missing out on career advancement.

And, worse, in addition to feeling like a juggler, some moms also feel trapped, held captive by the demands they place on themselves and the lies they believe about what having it all must look like. Life moves so quickly, how can they possibly keep up? More laundry, more meals, more pressure, and more demands are always waiting, which means they are falling short in every direction. Having a moment of pleasure or repose seems impossible. These moms are trapped in an endless cycle of guilt, pressure, and performancejust as I felt during my minivan meltdown. And it needs to stop.

Hope is possible. Mothering, following your dreams, and living your best life is possibleall at the same time. You, my friend, can be the Possibility Mom.

Because the reality is we have choices in how we respond to everything in our lives. It might not seem like it all the time, but the truth is we always have a choiceand its always ours. We choose how to respond when a child is whining. We choose how to respond when our spouse says something irritating or we read a nasty Facebook comment. We can set the number of hours we will devote to work and the number we will give to Netflix.

For the last ten years, I have run my interior design business while raising an increasing number of kids, each born approximately eighteen months apart. Every time a baby arrives, I redesign, reshift, and refigure unique ways to approach self-care, childcare, and work. As a result, I have talked to countless women about balancing it all.

The most common question I get is, How do you do it? How is it possible to be a present mother to so many children, a supportive wife to your husband, and a successful businesswoman? How can you do it all?