Last week we asked some notable Austin moms to share their New Year’s resolutions/hopes/wishes/dreams. We’d love to hear from you as well?
Email nvillalpando@statesman.com and I’ll post them on a future blog.
Here’s what our moms said to inspire you:
Nicole Villalpando, Statesman Raising Austin columnist
Dear family,
Last year was another year of Mom shuttling between sick kids, sick parents and even the once sick, now dead dog. I wish you all improved mental and physical health, but can you do me a favor? This year, let’s all vow to be as healthy in attitude as we possibly can even when our bodies have other ideas. And let’s vow to laugh a whole lot more. Also, will someone please walk the new puppy?
Thank you,
Mom
Renee Peterson Trudeau, life balance coach/speaker and author of “The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life”
I believe community is medicine. I hope that more people will begin to understand that heartfelt connection and community is essential to our emotional, mental, spiritual — and research is now showing — physical well-being.
When we ask for help and call on a tribe — especially when we’re going through a challenging life, career or parenting stage — everything shifts. We gain perspective, tap new ideas, don’t make mountains out of molehills, access our innate wisdom and we feel better; our stress levels go down.
We need each other. We’re all in this together. When we open up to this realization, the world and our problems feel much more manageable; we know that everything is going to be OK.
Laura Beck, owner of the former stripedshirt.com apparel company
My honest New Year’s resolution for 2016 is to be in the moment more. With two daughters now 11 and 7, their years as “kids” are slipping by fast, and I watch myself, and my husband, be on our laptops or phones far too often.
It’s time to embrace playing with my girls while they still want to play, or reading together, or even watching some mindless dribble on Disney Channel with them.
MUST WALK AWAY FROM LAPTOP. MUST PUT AWAY CELLPHONE!
Wish me luck!
Caron Farrell, children’s psychiatrist and pediatrician with the Seton Mind Institute
My prayers for the new year (and beyond):
I pray for all children, that they may have someone in their lives who makes them feel safe and secure.
I pray for all parents, that we may have the necessary guidance and support to carry out this hardest job in the world, so that we may raise the ones that will make the world a better place.
And I pray for all of us called to help and serve children and their parents, that we may be miraculously blessed with the guidance, energy and resources to fill the need.
Kelli Kelley, founder of Hand to Hold, which supports parents of premature babies
I am what is referred to as a “late adapter” when it comes to technology, but I am finding it harder and harder to stay organized with a growing company and two teenagers. So this is the year for a new phone, new computer, new apps and Instacart.
But I plan to hold onto my trusty paper calendar and reusable bags — just in case!
Julia S. Aziz, licensed social worker and author of “Lessons of Labor: One Woman’s Self-Discovery through Birth & Motherhood”
To forgive, let go, exhale any anxiety or fear, giving way to clear space.
To allow in nature, creativity, sensory experience, more love and the awesomeness of this crazy human life.
Wendi Aarons, humorist and founder of the Listen to Your Mother Austin show
My wish for 2016 is for peace, love and understanding. And for painful blisters on the fingers of all Internet commenters.
Bernadette Noll, author of “Slow Family Living”
This year will start out with a two-month visit with my 90-year-old mom. Actually, she will turn 91 while she’s here. My wish, or my intention, is that she feels happy to be here. And that she feels my happiness with her being here.
In addition, I hope the overall feeling of our time together is that she feels that her being here is value added for all of us.
This year it is my wish and my intention to fill my days with thoughtful, loving collaboration. No matter whom I am with, it is my hope that I will treat each interaction as an act of co-creation.
Whether I am working on a giant project with a colleague or interacting with the teller at the pharmacy, I will strive to be fully present for each exchange. For each exchange it will be my desire that we each walk away feeling the power of human interaction.
My other wish for the year ahead is that in all I do I can lead with love. It’s a lucky life I live, and I look forward to watching it unfold in 2016.
Jen Hatmaker, author of “For the Love”
My wish for 2016 is to see a safer, kinder, fair community for our minority brothers and sisters. I would love to see the end of “The Talk” mothers have to give their black sons on how to not appear threatening, menacing, terrifying or aggressive while, say, walking down the street or playing in the park or driving to the mall. I wish to see the outrageous statistics on black stops, searches, arrests, indictments, convictions and sentencing acknowledged, addressed and reformed. I pray that 2016 is a year for lament and confession, courage and steadfastness, and commitment and community toward racial equality. As for me and my family? We are in for the work.
Trish Morrison, founder of MomCom Life
I want 2016 to be the year of the mother — not in a do-it-all, have-it-all way, but in a claiming-our-power way. Mothers are the most powerful force in the Western economy, and we hold the key to a more peaceful, prosperous future for everyone. If we honor motherhood, we honor all of humanity.
I want us to step up, claim this power and use it to make change in the way we work, in the way businesses are run and in who we put in power. We must disrupt our current systems.
When we come together, mothers will change the world. Let’s make 2016 our year!
