Breaking up is hard to do I have 3 children, 2 girls, 28 and 21 and one boy who is 17. I remember both my girls were running from me as soon as they could walk. Both Dad's girls, they would argue with me and run to him with tears and cries of how mean I was, because I was enforcing a curfew or simply asking for clothes to be picked up off the bathroom floor. The drama only made me think of my poor Mother and how this independent streak in both of them would one day suit them well, and it did. I also knew they would return to me and I was right about that as well. I have a wonderful relationship with both my girls. My son was born via C section and my first drug addled memory was him crying and me shushing. He calmed down right away, my Husband later said, and thus the love affair began. He was a full on Mama's Boy until he was 5 and went to school. When I say full on, I mean he would tell his Dad he was gonna marry me someday💖. He was all me all the time. He wanted me to tie his skates, read his books, practice soccer and play Ninja Turtles. He loved his Dad but I was his Sun. And the curls he had! When he went to school and between the ages of 5 and 12 I was still most important but I could feel something changing, there was a distance settling in I couldn't ignore. He was having more in common with Hubby who was now coaching both hockey and baseball, he could tie his own skates and no longer wanted to play Ninja Turtles. We were growing apart. Now you say, he's growing up! And intellectually yes , I know that. Any boy mom will tell you it hurts to go from being the center of their world to being Pluto. Emotionally it's tough ok? Cut us some slack ! Now he is 17 and I'm just praying that when he has kids of his own he won't always go to Christmas at his wife's family's house. My husband thinks I'm crazy, but honestly , I stole him from his Mom, and she never forgot it. 25 years later and she still hasn't forgotten. 🙄 Sometimes I look at him and remember that sweet boy who loved his Mama so much. Then he catches me and says “bruh” and I remember he is not mine anymore, he belongs to the world!

There's five key ingredients that help me remain both driven and parent. They're my own five P's (how convenient!): Purpose - Patience - Presence - Productivity - Persistence PURPOSE: Not only find what you're here on earth to do, but realize that by pursuing it you become a purposeful role model for your kids. PATIENCE: Any great thing takes time to build. The same goes for a great family. So as parents we need to double the patience. PRESENCE: Whatever our parenting style, from authoritarian to permissive, nothing is more enriching for our relationships than to be fully present with our loved ones. PRODUCTIVITY: Because a parent's time is scarce, and we still have work to do, we need to make the most of the few free hours we have left. PERSISTENCE: There will always be hardships along the way, and grit and mental toughness are great tools to help us push through. Those are my top five. Can you relate to any of them? Any other come to mind?

Do you ever feel like you'd be better off without kids? Man, this feeling is B.R.U.T.A.L. But if you're a driven parent with big goals, that nasty thought might creep in your head a little too often for comfort. Would you like to fight back and kill that thought once and for all? As a budding filmmaker, I quickly felt like parenthood was a major hindrance to my career development. And for almost ten years, my biggest fear was to never be able to move past my regrets about becoming a father. Fortunately, I'm an avid learner. And even though my filmmaking goals were becoming more and more blurry, I still kept on trying to better myself. One day something clicked: fatherhood suddenly stopped feeling like an obstacle and started to fuel my drive. Looking back I figured out a simple system that turns parenthood into fuel for our goals. And the happiness I've been feeling ever since is so powerful that I just have to share it with as many struggling parents as possible. That's what this community is all about! So hurry up and join us, because your kids won't remain so for very long!