The Sustenance of Love

Life is hard. Not just for working moms, but for everybody.

Being a parent is hard, too.

But God bless those kids of ours. As challenging, annoying and needy as children are, they just ooze love. Don’t they?

Sometimes, when life gets hard and I feel like I’m sucking at just about everything, I realize how much love I get from my kids each day. And damn if I’m not the luckiest person in the world.

I urge you to stop beating yourself up right now for your messy house. Your expanding waistline. Your bills piling up.

Recognize that love staring you right in the face, and rejoice in it. For a moment or two, let the sustenance of love relieve all your worries and lift you up when the world brings you down.

More on the sustenance of love

• Love Is All Around: No matter how busy your day gets, you can look for the little signs of love and you’ll find them everywhere.
• I Love My Quality Kid Time: Savor the weekends when you can really enjoy those extended moments of joy with your kids.
• Marriage After Baby: How to Keep the Love Alive: Is there anything like a new baby to put a marriage to the test? Here are 6 things that work for our marriage after baby, and maybe they can help you, too.
• An Experiment in Mothering Myself: As an overwhelmed, exhausted mother, Kristi decided to spend a week mothering herself. Here’s what she learned—and how you can adopt your own self-care routine.
• Teaching Self Esteem to Kids: How to Love Yourself: If you grow up learning how to love yourself, you’ll grow to be a happy, healthy, kind adult. Check out these 5 tips to encourage self esteem in your kids.
• It’s Okay (Read This If You’re Feeling Overwhelmed): When you realize you’re in overwhelmed at work, at home, everywhere…here’s a message of hope that begins with acknowledging where you are right now.