The greatest advice from this list -- THANKS!

[Lisa M. Cottrell Bentley]

I've had a personally stressful few weeks (months, actually). The
stress is unrelated to my children, in fact they are the joy of my life
and make everything worthwhile. I bring this up as related to
Unschooling as I could have (and would have without Unschooling in my
life) allowed this stress to interfere with my children's happiness and
joy in life. It would have been unfair to them and quite selfish and
unsatisfying to me.

The greatest advice that I've read on this list over the years has
really helped me a lot the last couple of days in particular (I'm
paraphrasing):

*In the normal course of events,
There should be no such thing as a bad day.*

I started out three days ago with a string of three bad things happening
before I even made it to the bathroom. I started to become surly (to
DH), but stopped -- TOOK A BREATH -- and declared (out loud): "That was
just a bad event - just a bad moment, it didn't ruin the whole day. The
rest of the day will be great." The rest of the day was great, despite
the fact that every time I turned around something new bad event
occurred (weird day that I don't want to happen again). In fact, about
a dozen more bad things happened, yet I let them each be individual
events that didn't ruin the day for my kids or me. I still don't know
how it will all pan out, but my kids are happy and so am I (through the
stress). I am proud of how they are seeing their parents deal with life
being so unpredictable. I pushed through the bad parts and embraced the
good parts. My children instinctively see the good parts, I've had to
force myself to see them (it is worth it!).

This list, more than any other that I have ever been on, continues to
inspire me to be a better mother every day. Being a better mother is
the most important aspect of my life.

Thank you, LIST!
-Lisa in AZ