October Guest Blogger – The Incomparable Mom-Blogger Alicia Higgison

Ladies and Gentlemen readers of the internet blogging world – please allow me to introduce to you (as I bow before her!), the one and only, award-winning (One of Canada’s Top 10 Mom-Bloggers, AMW‘s Hottest Moms Winner 2012, writer for Liberating Working Moms) mom-blogger Alicia Higgison of www.lifewithladies.com.

I first started reading Life With Ladies when I saw it on a list of Canada’s Top Mom-Bloggers. I was doing research about blogging, and when I read her posts, I immediately fell in love with her writing voice, her amazing family, her hilarious and talented parenting skills, and most importantly, her pure honesty. I felt a deep sense of connection with her – so imagine how thrilled I was to find out that SHE’S FROM WINDSOR TOO! I think I peed myself I was so excited!

I had the opportunity to do a panel with her with the Life With A Baby crew on the topic of returning to work post maternity leave. And after that, we had a date. At Walkermole. And we drank margaritas and talked about writing and family and blogging…I felt like I was on a date with someone famous! When I told her this she blushed and the colour of her cheeks matched the colour of her hair! We had a good laugh!

We’ve remained friends and internet buds, and so when I asked Alicia if she’d be interested in writing a guest blog for me I was really hoping she’d say ‘yes’. And she did! Double fist-pump!

Please find her guest post below. Make sure you visit her spectacular blog, www.lifewithladies.com and make sure you subscribe!

Here she is…the one…the only…the lovely…Alicia Higgison! Thank you so much, Alicia!! You’re the best!!

Hi readers! Alicia here, blogger extraordinaire (or actually just pretty ordinary, really!) from Life With Ladies. I write fairly regularly over there, for myself, for my daughters and for my fleeting sanity. My uber-patriot husband and I are raising an army of estrogen with three young daughters under the age of 8. So it only seems logical to do so with the whole of the internet watching, right? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?! (Spoiler alert: a lot.)

Vanessa asked me a little while ago to guest post on her lovely space here, which I was more than happy to do! Vanessa has such an encouraging energy about her. The voice she writes with is the voice she lives in, it’s refreshing. And then she laid out this bombshell for me to mull over:

How has writing your blog affected your mothering life?

And the truth is? Blogging has affected my mothering life.

I’m no big-time-blogger-lady so I basically just write for me, for the girls if they ever choose to read it, and for the mom looking for a little “me too!” company on her worst & best days. That can leave a space wide open for a memory to turn into a bloggable moment. I struggle against that a lot. I want to maintain my family life, I want to build a relationship with my daughters…not just write about how hard I’m trying to do that. And who’s to say my daughters won’t ask me one day to just…stop? It’s easy to lose sight of the point that I am, in fact, writing about their lives. Their childhood is a fleeting time in my life, one I hope I’m capturing in some small way. But it’s something I retain control over (most of the time) and these particular memories I’m publishing are my version. I try to remember that I am raising girls, not subjects.

It’s given me a few tools to actually live that life though. As pathetic as it sounds, I attempt every day to do the nearly impossible: live in the moment. Not every moment, mind you. That shit’s exhausting. But if I can stop at least once every day and shut it all out to focus on my kids, I can rest assured I’m doing that one thing right. I’m writing about how much I adore mothering these girls…it’s a necessity to actually do that.

One major plus I think blogging has added to my mothering life is how I see my children. I notice more about them, I’m paying attention to their uniqueness, to their similarities, even to their faults. Everything is particular to each child. Though my youngest, Maelle, looks strikingly similar to my oldest, Isabella- their approach to life could not be more different. And my middle one? Is just like her dad. I’m raising Annika with at least 50% utter-shot-in-the-dark. When I write it all down? When I read it back? It’s eye-opening. It doesn’t so much change how I parent them (though that is sometimes the case, when I need it most) as it reflects back to me that these are People I’m raising. They’re my daughters, yes. Always. But blogging has helped me see their potential, to keep sight of the bigger picture. Because I’m writing about it, I’m training my brain to see it.

I am a happier mom through blogging. It’s an emotional release for me, a free wall to throw my problems at and see what sticks as a common thread. It’s let me explore my feelings about a lot of things, it’s let me connect with some incredible mothers, it’s given me an outlet that is always there…well, inside my internet. If it proves to be a time capsule of some of my greatest years, then it’s exceeded its worth to my brain. I want it to continue, I don’t intend for it to be temporary, I hope it grows as I grow, as my daughters grow. But if it disappeared tomorrow, after I cried the ugly cry into my third coffee of the day, I would still have gotten so much more from blogging through my motherhood so far than it feels I have given. If my legacy to my daughters is to be the voice in their heads, then I hope blogging has given them a glimpse into mine. And into the absolute joy of my life it has been to stumble gracefully through raising them.