• Home
  • New? Start Here
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Real Mom Life

  • Purpose and Passion
    • Planners
    • Purpose and passion
    • Reinvention
    • Retirement
    • Starting a business
    • Volunteering
    • Working
    • Trying new things
    • Ageism
    • Giving back
    • Confidence
    • Encore careers
    • Encouragement
    • Gratitude
    • Happiness
    • Inspiration
    • Lifelong Learning
  • Adventure
    • Travel
    • Technology
    • Trying new things
    • Books and movies
    • Embracing change
    • Fun
    • Holidays
    • Pets
  • Relationships
    • Marriage
    • Friendships
    • Parenting
    • Painful parenting
    • Mothering
    • Grandparenting
    • Aging parents
    • Empty nest
    • Cancer caregiving
    • Child adoption
    • Homeschooling
    • Special needs kids
    • Life skills for kids
    • Activities for kids
  • Health and Beauty
    • Alternative health practices
    • Fashion
    • Hair care
    • Health insurance
    • Healthy aging
    • Healthy brain
    • Makeup
    • Medical issues
    • Mental health
    • Sexuality
    • Skin care
    • Sleep
    • Stress
    • Nutrition
    • Physical fitness
    • Self-care
  • Creativity and Spirituality
    • Faith
    • Crafts
    • Hobbies
    • Art journaling
    • Blogging
    • Journaling
    • Jewelry making
    • Writing
  • Home and Finances
    • Cleaning
    • Cooking and food
    • Declutter
    • Decor
    • DIY Home
    • Downsize
    • Gardening
    • Holidays
    • Organizing
    • Saving money
    • Simplify
  • Coffee Love
  • Rants, Raves and Reviews
  • Bucket List
  • Store

Searching for my new normal

August 11, 2016 By Christine Field

This post may contain affiliate links.

Do you ever look around and say to yourself, “Things have got to change”?

You’re fortunate if the change is a choice. Like when you decide to try something new or change jobs or read a different kind of book.

Sometimes the change is forced upon you. Relationships shift, kids grow up, serious illness visits your family.

Other times, change is what is called for in a season of life. I wanted to have a normal midlife crisis. But that was not to be. Like anything in my life has been particularly normal. Not.

new normal

I wanted to do typical midlife things, like dying my hair pink and taking art classes. My sister and I even talked about getting small tattoos – just little shamrocks on our sleeves in homage to younger, wilder days perhaps, playing and singing Irish music until the wee hours.

My midlife came late. That’s what happens when you adopt your last kid (the 4th) at age 42. When that kid finishes high school, you realize that life will forever be different. And you wonder what comes next.

I made a big change when I started my family. In a second marriage and nearing 30, I discovered I had fertility issues. It was concerning but not devastating. I have always been open to adoption. I prayed that the Lord would send me children, any way that he saw fit.

And the children came, along with miscarriages and misadventures in adoption. And later various short-termers who graced my home in the form of foster kids.

But there were the core four: the first adopted on very short notice, the second biological child born a mere 17 months later, then two more adopted internationally for good measure. In between were the babies I loved and rocked for interim infant care. They would be in our home temporarily until they went to their forever families. If I had started this adventure earlier, I would have had many, many more children as I wanted to keep every foster baby I had the opportunity to love.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, “He settles the barren woman in her home as a joyful mother of children” (Psalm 113:9)

That’s what happened to me.

I was an ambitious, selfish, arrogant, empty and seeking professional woman (an attorney) when my life took another path. If the Lord saw fit to bless me with children, I was going to dedicate myself to raising them.

And so I did. When I left practicing law, friends and colleagues said I was throwing away my education and I would go crazy being home with kids.

As for the education, life has briefly intersected with the law here and there (and may do so again in the future) and I have always made myself available to friends who needed legal help. I don’t regret law school, but the law was never my passion. It’s more of a rarely used tool I keep tucked in my life tool box. I don’t use it much and if I had to use it all the time I would hate it.

As for the “going crazy” premonition, it’s probably been accurate. Raising small souls is definitely a crazy-making season. The stress and the noise and the worry and the watchfulness can lead to difficult days.

Kids get older, and challenges ramp up too. Add in cancer, a murder in the family, aging and dying relatives, financial worries and your own health issues and life can seem pretty grim.

At my deepest point, I spend three weeks in an outpatient program at Meier Clinics. Everything that had blessed me so abundantly evolved into stress and depression that sought to destroy me.

It didn’t. It grew me and strengthened me. It expanded me and loosed me. It pained me and blessed me. I am forever grateful that I did not turn into a bitter old woman. Indeed, I feel younger that my years and expect I am on the verge of many great adventures to come.

So what is my new normal? I hardly know. I suspect I will have to grow into it.

One thing I know for sure. I will squeeze the joy out of each day and will find more occasions to laugh than not.

 

r68

Resources that might bless you:

Carol Kent is a Christian author and speaker I admire. She wrote some books about her journey to find her new normal after her son was convicted of murder. Here are my favorites.

AARP (yes, I am a member) has a program called Disrupt Aging to discuss new ways of living and aging. Check them out at DISRUPT AGING

Dr. Bill Thomas is a physician and expert on aging. I am in the middle of his book and I am loving it. Check out Second Wind: Navigating the passage to a slower, deeper, and more connected life.

r68

PS – Here are some other projects I’m working on. They are very much in the embryonic stage. Any feedback?

Homeschooling Life Coach

Need to Write

Filed Under: Health and Beauty, Mental health, Painful parenting, Parenting, Relationships, Self-care Tagged With: finding new normal, life transitions, midlife

Previous Post: « All you need is love
Next Post: Making Wine and Making a Life »

Reader Interactions

Primary Sidebar

FacebookInstagrammailPinterestYouTubeTwitter

Hi, I’m Christine

Have you been a wholehearted mother, but time, toddlers and teenagers have moved on? If you are wondering what comes next for you, you’ll feel right at home here.

Or, are you a mom for whom family life has been non-Pinworthy and parenting has been downright painful? I hear ya. There are many of us around.

Are you looking for a life full of exploration and adventure after the nest empties, but maybe you have no idea how to go about doing that? Stick around! We’ll explore adventures together to help you gain more clarity for your own path.

After a couple decades of writing books and articles about parenting, homeschooling and adoption, speaking to homeschoolers and other parent groups, and reaching out to the mom in the trenches who was trying to make the best of it - my kids grew up. Some grew up and grew away. I was determined to find a way out of the pain, emptiness and lack of direction.

For many of us, the journey starts with something we moms are not accustomed to. After years of caring for and serving others, sometimes we forget the beauty and wonder of US. We need to spend some time getting to know the parts of ourselves that have lain dormant, and take the time to explore interests and passions that we set aside.

I’d like to invite you to get the “What’s Next for Mom” workbook and jump into this growing tribe of Moms who are emptying the nest and filling the life! Let’s reignite your Mojo after Mothering!
Read More…

Visit my Amazon Influencer Storefront

www.amazon.com/shop/christine.field.7505

Search the Blog

Want to Search For Something?

Disclosure and Privacy Policy

Real Mom Life is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

 

Cookie policy

This website will store some information about your preferences on your own computer inside a tiny file called a cookie.  A cookie is a small piece of data that a website asks your browser to store on your computer or mobile device. The cookie allows the website to remember your actions or preferences over time.

You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer, and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. However, if you do this, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site, and some services and functionalities may not work.

Most browsers support cookies, but you can set your browser to decline them and can delete them whenever you like. You can find instructions here for how you can do that on various browsers.

This website uses cookies to

1) Identify you as a returning user and to count your visits in traffic statistics analysis

2) Remember your custom display preferences (such as whether you prefer comments to display all-collapsed or not)

3) Suggest any recent searches you’ve made on our site

4) Provide other usability features, including tracking whether you’ve already given your consent to cookies

Enabling cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally and is not used for any purpose other than those described here.

There may also be other types of cookies created after you’ve visited this website. This site uses Google Analytics, a popular web analytics service that uses cookies to help to analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of this website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of another website, compiling reports on website activity, and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google undertakes not to associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

Third Party Advertising

This site has third-party advertising companies serving ads to you when you visit. These companies may store information about your visits here and to other websites in order to provide you with relevant advertisements about goods and services. For example, if they know what ads you are shown while visiting this site, they can be careful not to show you the same ones repeatedly.

These companies may employ cookies and other identifiers to gather information which measures advertising effectiveness. The information is generally not personally identifiable unless, for example, you provide personally identifiable information to them through an ad or an email message.

They do not associate your interaction with unaffiliated sites with your identity in providing you with interest-based ads.

This site does not provide any personal information to advertisers or to third party sites. Advertisers and other third-parties (including the ad networks, ad-serving companies, and other service providers they may use) may assume that users who interact with or click on a personalized ad or content are part of the group that the ad or content is directed towards (for example, readers in the Pacific Northwest who read certain types of articles). Also, some third-party cookies may provide them with information about you (such as the sites where you have been shown ads or demographic information) from offline and online sources that they may use to provide you more relevant and useful advertising.

To learn more about what options you have about limiting the gathering of information by third-party ad networks, you can consult the website of the Network Advertising Initiative.

You can opt out of participating in interest-based advertising networks, but opting out does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the companies from which you opted out will no longer customize ads based on your interests and web usage patterns using cookie-based technology.

Sharing Information

This site does not sell, rent, or disclose to outside parties the information collected here, except as follows:

(a) Affiliated Service Providers: This site has agreements with various affiliated service providers to facilitate the functioning of the site. For example, the site may share your credit card information with the credit card service provider to process your purchase. All administrative service providers that this site uses are required to have the same level of privacy protection as this site does, and therefore your information will be handled with the same level of care. Additionally, for example, this site may use analytic or marketing services such as Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Taboola, or RevContent, to which collection you hereby unconditionally consent.

(b) Where required by law: This site may share the collected information where required by law, specifically in response to a demand from government authorities where such demand meets the legal requirements.

(c) Statistical Analysis: This site may share Non-Personal Information and aggregated information with third parties, including but not limited to for advertising or marketing purposes. No Personal Information will be shared in this manner.

(d) Transactions: In connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing or acquisition, or in any other situation where Personal Information may be disclosed or transferred as a business asset.

How To Opt Out Of Interest-Based Advertising


Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertising Services: This website is a member of the Network Advertising Initiative(NAI) and adheres to the NAI Codes of Conduct as described on the NAI website. This website also adheres to the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Self-Regulatory Principles. For a description of the DAA Program, please visit the DAA website.

Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertising by Third Parties: To find out more about interest-based advertising on the internet and how to opt out of information collection for this purpose by companies that participate in the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising Alliance, visit NAI’s opt-out page or DAA’s Consumer Choice Page.

 

Footer

About Christine

FacebookInstagrammailPinterestYouTubeTwitter

At Real Mom Life, my passion is to provide resources and reassurances for moms facing the surprising challenges of family life. In my writing and speaking, I explore solutions to unexpected issues in adoption, homeschooling, special needs, and more while encouraging moms to extract the maximum joy out of each day. Read More…

Real Mom Life

Real Mom Life

10339 S. Kostner Ave.

                              Oak Lawn, IL 60453

 

Copyright © 2023 Real Mom Life on the Foodie Pro Theme