Eureka moments started flooding into my brain like a dam had just broke. Trying to be Supermom was an attempt to be the best, but that meaning, in motherhood, constantly changes. I started to have moments in which I sat with my feet propped up and ice packs on my knees, laughing with my daughter about a crazy story her friend told her. Or making fried dough with powdered sugar on top of the stove for my ever sweet-toothed son because I could not get him to the ice cream social. I was still able to comfort and laugh with my children and to be a mom to them.

As I neared the end of my two-week medical leave, my daughter surprised me. If she and her brother cut back on things like camps, new clothes, and eating out, she asked, would I be able to quit my job? They enjoyed me being home with them just doing nothing. Then she revealed the hugest eureka moment for me. Since my illness, she said, I had become a better mom. She told me with the honesty only children can possess that since I’d been ill, I hadn’t been as crabby. Schedules, commitments, and participation in activities meant less to her than me just being there in the moment.

Leah and Matthew still have commitments that my husband or I have to get them to. I still have to push myself through the day. I still have to juggle all those balls that are tossed at moms and more than likely, because of my fibromyalgia, I will drop some. However, my life has changed so dramatically. I wasted so much of my time concentrating on the negativism of those changes instead of embracing the good. I am a changed person. Parenting has a different meaning.

I still hold some guilt for relying on my children to be my legs. I still cringe when I ask for simple favors because fibromyalgia has taken its toll on me. I can only pray and put faith in God, Mary, and their guardian angels that it makes my children stronger persons. I still pray for the physical life I once knew and will continue to pray for the return of my old physical self. Mostly, I will pray for God’s will to be done, whatever He deems that to be, and I will do so with renewed faith. CD

Betsy Dudak is a writer living in Warrenville, Illinois, with her husband Peter, and children, Leah and Matthew.

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