Me, Myself & I

Well, hello there! Welcome to Monday Motivational!….where I share motivational tidbits to get your week going.

Let’s chat about Me, Myself & I, shall we! It’s a little thing I started doing for myself many years ago to separate my top 3 roles; Me (Kristin), Wifehood and Motherhood. We wear many ‘hats’ and way more than 3, but for my sanity I chose the top three.

Let me explain a little more, I’ve defined each role as it is to me, you can define them as you want and what works for you.

Me – Self’hood. Me, who I was before everything else. I love being Kristin, she’s my favorite person!

Myself – Wifehood. I give myself to my husband and our marriage and that’s why I’m a Trophy Wife!

I – Motherhood. I am a Mom and a pretty stellar one at that!

If we don’t separate these roles and create boundaries for them, we can get lost in a single role that leaves the others out completely. And let me tell you as a mom of 7 it was easy to get lost a little. How often do we deep-dive into our Motherhood role to take care of our kids, make sure we’re doing everything we can for them just to lose precious time with ourselves and our spouse. How many times did I tell my husband I was ‘too tired’ because the 5 hrs I spent in carpool that day just had me wanting my pillow and blessed rest….too many. Or the times that a shower was a luxury I gifted myself when I ‘had time’. 

Those times have taught me so many lessons about ‘time’. Time is a gift that is gone in a literal second and I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to miss out on time with myself, time with my husband, and time with our kids, so I created boundaries. Our kids will survive us taking care of ourselves, taking care of our marriage, and taking a shower! So, please, go take a shower.

Here’s a breakdown of my three roles and how I separate them. I challenge you to create a list of 5-10 things for each role so you can see who you are as a Person, Wife & Mom. 

Here we go….

Let me introduce you to ME: 

I’m Kristin, a fun-loving care free Goal Getter & Creative who loves to inspire, motivate, and make people laugh…especially myself. I can laugh at myself more than I care to admit. I find myself so funny that I need to share it with others. I also live for glitter and confetti.

I love Chocolate! The good stuff. See’s Candies are my favorites!

I love a good Goal Board and Vision Board because I’m an awesome manifest’er.

I’m passionate about Watercolors, Digital Illustration, and making stickers for my Etsy Shop. I dabble in Photography too. 

I’m an Apple enthusiast and have almost all their fun toys. 

I love cars and look forward to the day that I have my 1973 Mercedes 450SL Convertible in cream to drive just for fun! 

I’m a planner addict, my planners look more like little scrapbooks and I love it! I look forward to my weekly planner session.

Going to the salon gets me all giddy; nails, wax, hair, pedicures, you name it, I love it! I currently do my own lashes with WinkClique but I’m definitely looking into Microblading soon!

I love Personal Style, like really love it! My wardrobe is a curated candy store of cute and fun clothing and accessories that just make my heart happy. I also love Kate Spade handbags, and some other brands, and collect some fun pieces. Next on the list is a LV Mono Neverfull MM bag. 

I plan Personal Days for myself every month, just for me. I do whatever I want. I try to schedule some salon appts on that day if possible. 

I loooove road trips and I’m working on loving flying so we can go further than a road trip can take us. One of my fav things about travel is what to pack. I work hard to have a travel capsule wardrobe so I have several outfits with just a few pieces. I think I love it because it’s like a little game or something.

I love the outdoors but I don’t like camping. I love a good walk and I want to learn how to stand up paddle board. 

There’s so much more but you get the idea. I take time everyday, week, month, year, to enjoy me.

Let me introduce you to Myself:

I’m Kristin, Trophy Wife who is lovingly referred to as girlfriend instead of wife. Girlfriends have more fun anyway and the word wife is just a little boring to me, so I’m his girlfriend. 

We’ve been going on a date every week for almost 20 years. It’s my fav day of the week! It’s so fun to prioritize our marriage and him, away from anyone else, just the two of us, in a crowed restaurant with lots of people but still it’s all about us.

Our, almost, daily walks together are another favorite thing we do, talking about goals, dreams, or not taking at all just enjoying the time we have together. We walk all year long and have for over 10yrs….coldest temp was 28 degrees, it’s ok tho because I bought a cute bright pink coat and insulated legging just to go walking in the freezing cold with him.

The daily love ‘notes’ (texts) we send back and forth would nauseate anyone I’m sure but it’s fun to send and receive a text because we’re thinking of each other.

The Bedroom. This has become my most treasured thing between us over the last couple decades and especially in the last couple years as our kids started leaving the house. It’s just between us and we have a lot of fun! Make time for this, your body and your spouse with thank you! 

We have goals to travel more now that we’re almost Empty Nesters. One of our goals is to have sex in every state, you know…to kick off pre-Empty Nester’hood. Haha

I love the compliments we give each other everyday. It’s easy to find flaws if that’s what we’re looking for but we choose to focus on the good parts instead.

About once or twice a year we go through a self-discovery phase and need to talk out a lot of things that come up for us. We try to let go of any resentment, guilt, etc., that might be coming between us. It’s actually an amazing experience. The first time was accidental a few years ago and brutal! We were both more vulnerable that expected and let it all out. Since then we kinda just do it when it comes up and it’s cleared so many things for us. We talk way more daily about what might come up so things don’t become an issue. I truly love this because our marriage is precious to me!

I love how special he makes me feel all the time, it makes me think about ways to make him feel special. He’s seriously always on my mind and I’m always trying to think of ways to show him how much I love him (refer to The Bedroom above).

Ok, enough of that….moving on…..

Let me introduce you to I:

I am a Mom, a stellar one at that! I have 7 kids in a blended family and I love it! I’ve been a Stay Home Mom for almost 20yrs and it’s the best career I could’ve asked for!

Now that we just have one kid left at home my role as a mom is very different but in the past it went a little like this, not in correct order:

Wake up, carpool, clean house, meals, clean house, carpool, possible shower, groceries, laundry, carpool, sleep, wakeup, sleep, clean house, nurse, possible sex, nope no sex, clean up, carpool, laundry, carpool, carpool, date night, wake up, sleep, maybe shower (dry shampoo was designed for moms), therapist to teens, sex haha jk, groceries, meals, meals, carpool, groceries, finally sex, sleep, carpool, etc. 

You get the idea! It’s sometimes a mess, who am I kidding, it’s a chaotic mess with a cherry on top. Moms deserve a medal! From childbirth on, we are literally ON CALL 24/7! Give yourself a medal! This alone is worth 5 items toward your 5-10 things list. 

When I do something awesome, or even not awesome, as a mom I will literally pat the back of my shoulder for a job well done. I’ve even patted my ‘back’ after taking a shower. We moms need the extra positive motivation.

Honesty here, it’ll come as no surprise to my family, but I really suck at laundry, I dislike unloading the dishwasher and will load dirty dishes in a half loaded clean dishwasher just so I don’t have to unload, I don’t have a cleaning schedule but it gets done anyway, I’m not always consistent with things – truthfully I’m a random, spontaneous person who likes change, dinner is my nemesis – grocery shopping too!, you know, all the House Manager things that need to be done to run a house are not done according to the House Manager Handbook…..

And that’s why House Manager is not one of the roles I chose to include in my Top 3!

But the good parts far out weigh the challenging stuff…I love the long talks my kids let me have with them, about anything and everything….nothing was sacred, we talked about it all. Late night runs to In N Out just to spend time with them and see them in the wild. Spontaneous weekend getaway just for fun! Cabin vacations with a disgustingly awesome gum log. Family Activities that sometimes ended up at Applebees for dinner….so many times!

Motherhood is a treasured gift and one that I love! Now that my kids are adult humans, I can see what a great job I did even tho the above mentioned House Manager stuff wasn’t done on a schedule.

So, there you have it! Me, Myself & I. What does your list look like?