Excerpt from the book: When Mothers Cry Written by Nicholl McGuire

"When mothers cry the first thing people want to know is why? Why would a woman bother to shed tears in front of an audience that would judge, berate, belittle, accuse, lie, or abuse her. Why would any mother allow her tears to fall in the presence of critical, negative, judgmental people who can’t see outside their ignorant boxes they call, “self?” I’ll tell you why because sometimes the only way you can tell a story is to cry. Sometimes the only way you can make your point be known is to raise your arms up in the air and scream! When mothers cry people had better listen! When they take to the streets with picket signs and expressions on their faces that look as if they are ready to kill, people had better worry. The worse thing that any man, childless woman, or rebellious child can do is to add fuel to the fire of a mother who is already enraged about her partner, children, boss, relatives, finances, and more by telling her, “You should…” Listening to someone tell me this while I am in the heat of anger is like nails scratching on chalkboard! "So what should I do?" I feel like telling this know-it-all! Then I brace myself hoping they will not say anything more.

A woman, man, or child who hasn’t walked two steps in someone else’s shoes ought to be quiet! Why open yourself up to a mother telling you off wherever you may stand? Why act as if you know how she feels when the truth of the matter is you don’t. Who has ever felt that rush of heated anger creep from the bottom of your stomach to the top of your head while someone tries to tell you how to raise your children? I know some of you put a critic back in their place without hesitation! They most likely responded with, “I’m sorry!”

We mothers cry for many reasons far too many to get into detail at this moment, but our concerns are valid. We need to vent we have to vent, because if we don’t we will blow up inside or outside and God have mercy on the one that has to hear our stories! He or she may be listening to us for hours ranting and raving about everything that everyone ever did to us and why we will not sit back and allow our children to go through what we did as a child!

I admit I am a mother with a cry and that is why I even bothered to write a book for anyone who can relate to my pain. Notice I said relate not feel because you can’t feel what I feel and most likely if you had the opportunity to live through some of the things I have gone through as a mother you probably wouldn’t have reacted the same way. You see we can say what we would do if a situation arises, but the truth is we don’t know how we would react.

I have witnessed mothers scream and yell at their children in the public hoping that somehow their scolding will shame the children enough that they would do what they are told, but oftentimes it only makes them act worse. Then they wonder why the child attempts to yell back at the mother in frustration. A child will only behave in the way that the parent treats them. Yell at them and watch what you will get --a child with an attitude waiting for an opportunity to tell you about yourself. Call them names and later, if you listen real close, you will hear them call you the same names under their breath. Who was the foolish mother who thought that if she acted mean toward her children she would get loving and kind adult children who would honor her in old age?

There was a time in my life that I had never wanted to be a mother. I didn’t want to have to deal with the responsibilities of caring for a child. I had witnessed too many mothers around me lose their cool with children, including me, so I reasoned that having a child makes you mean and I didn’t want to be a part of anything that was going to make me act like what I had observed mothers do. I saw them scream, push, spank, and cuss their children. I knew that if my mother said she was going to knock my sister and my head off, after upsetting her with our toys and stomping around the house, we had better take heed to what she said. At the time I didn’t know that she couldn’t literally knock our heads off and I didn’t want to find out either."

Nicholl McGuire

Be Encouraged!

When you feel like giving up on everything
When the pain seems too much to bear
When people scandalize your name
When no one seems to care.

When the man you love says goodbye
When your child cries and cries
Don't lose your mind!
Don't hate your life!
Don't kill what you have built!

Stand strong in the face of those who have hurt you
Stand strong when man threatens you
Stand strong when the woman you love lies
Stand strong!

Know that you weren't created to be any one's
physical or verbal punching bag!

You are special!
Your talents exceptional!
Live each day better than the next
and know that it is inevitable that we all will die one day.

Let no one move you to take your own life
through smoking, drinking, drugs and the like.

Let no one move you to take your own life
through starvation, manipulation, and lack of creation.

For there is someone greater than you!
The flowers weren't planted by the man who abuses
the sky wasn't created by the woman who misuses
their minds, bodies and souls!

Don't lose your mind!
Find your heart
know that you have
purpose from the very start!

Written by: Nicholl McGuire

When Mothers Cry About Past Issues of Abuse

Some mothers may not only be crying over issues in the present, but also from the past too. Their tears may have never dried up from the various abuses they have encountered from trusted individuals. It is because of these past issues that they may not be able to get free from their present conditions. So here is a blog that I have personally created based on dating and domestic violence issues, I had experienced from the past. Please take a look and I pray you will be blessed by it. You can also purchase my first book on the site, Laboring to Love an Abusive Mate, as well.

http://laboringtoloveanabusivemate.blogspot.com/

Nicholl McGuire
http://www.associatedcontent.com/nichollmcguire

Yelling, Spankings, Cursing, & Fighting? What to do About It!

How many times do we have to agree to disagree with our partner about the very simplest of issues? Oh, we tell him that we understand even act like we are okay with what he told us, but are we? You see, he may have noticed you are become increasingly more irritated with him and the children. You probably have spanked them when you would have ordinarily put them in time out. You may have been caught yelling at the dog or cat for no good reason. He may have walked in on you bad mouthing someone on the phone. And yes even for some mothers who would like to consider themselves mature, they have been scolded for acting inappropriately at the workplace, store, a group meeting, and even a church! "She's lucky we are not in highschool because I would...She better be glad I'm in church...He doesn't know who he is messing with..." Get my point?

Anyway, when so many things are coming at you all at once, it's time to put your hands up and take that much needed walk, bathroom break, nap, or long vacation. Let's face it, we are mothers not God and if you have no faith then attempt to believe in something that will help you achieve the peace you need before you explode!

It has been almost four months since I stepped away from my family to recover from my episodes I described in previous blog postings and I can tell you I feel wonderful! The book I am writing looks like it may be completed before September and I have done just about everything I said I wanted to do since visiting with parents on the east coast (the children are on the west coast with dad.)

Whoever told us that as mothers we shouldn't leave our children and stay at home and fight the good fight is probably in a mental ward somewhere. When you have had enough of the obstacles coming at you from the comment postings on your social networking sites to the noisy toys your children (and maybe even your partner) play with, it's time to take a long bubble bath, read a book when the house is quiet, or just simply sit down and do nothing.

You see, when people tell us things similar to what I am saying, right away a mother screams, "I don't have time!" If you can make time to talk on the phone, you can make time to sit down somewhere and just shut out the world including the voice in your head! I use to think the same thing when someone told me to take some "me time" I almost felt offended, "I don't have time. I have four sons, a small business, and I am responsible for the upkeep of our home...blah, blah, blah!" Then one day I noticed that two hours had passed by and I had been on the phone and then another two hours had passed by and I was clicking around on a social networking site connecting with friends from high school. So if we really pay attention to ourselves, we have time and most things we deem important won't be especially if we end up flat on our backs in a hospital somewhere (remember my stories.)

So please take heed to what I am saying when there is cursing, yelling, fighting, and other crazy things going on in your house know that these are signs of something worse to come! If you know that you are responsible for the majority of the drama that is happening in your home then it's time to step back, regroup, take some time for yourself, then orchestrate a new plan to help you help others!

"God bless you with some serenity!"

Written by Nicholl McGuire
http://associatedcontent.com/nichollmcguire

Declaring One's Self an Unfit Mother

It happened suddenly without notice. I was on the phone talking to my grandmother and then I began breathing heavily. I was struggling to stand, feeling faint I mumbled something to her over the phone, then I hung up. I dialed my fiance's phone number slowly -- it seemed like it took forever and then I realized I couldn't speak, I gave the phone to my two year old who was standing there observing my desposition. He told his daddy, "Mommy needs to go to sleep." He repeated again, "Mommy go to sleep." At this point I managed to climb over my toddler's security fencing fearing I might fall down and bump my head on a wooden desk that sat nearby. I took baby steps to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. I still had enough strength to roll over on my back and that's when the seizures began. I was coherent. I knew that my body was shaking and I heard the little footsteps run into my bedroom, "Stop shaking mommy -- stop it!" My toddler jumped on the bed, patting me on my chest with his little brown hands, with tears in his eyes, he cried, "Stop it." He rubbed my chest, "It will be okay mommy." He jumped off the bed, ran into the living room, and I heard him screaming in the phone, "Daddy, Daaadddy!" He sobbed. He ran back into my bedroom. He looked at me. He was crying, but he somehow got himself together and when my seizures began to calm, he laid his head on my chest.

Meanwhile, his brother was sound asleep in the next bedroom. He never knew what was happening. The seizures started up again. My toddler runs out of the bedroom and into the living room. I hear the front door. His dad's footsteps come down the hall into the bedroom, he has my medicine in his hand. The seizures were violent moving me to and fro on the bed and I felt my eyes big and wide. Then there was another moment of calm. I was staring at his dad. He manages to hold me up and put a pill in my mouth. I swallow. Less than 20 minutes later the pills take effect and I am talking as if nothing ever happened.

I learned later that I had a panic anxiety disorder also known as a nervous breakdown. I remember prior to the seizures feeling stressed. I was in the process of sorting some things out in my personal and professional life. The day that I chose to talk to my grandmother was the day that I had let go of some things. I had a personal breakthrough, but I guess in order to get from there (being stressed) to here (finding peace) I had to go through a process.

This was the second attack of its kind and it reinforced a hidden secret I had about my self, I was an unfit mother. I couldn't be trusted at home with the children. I had seen different doctors and they all said that my test results were normal. I had prayed with believers and even they said, "Everything would be fine, just trust in the Lord." All of this was nice to hear, but my fiance and I knew the truth, everything wasn't fine and the reality was that something was setting the attacks off and neither I or the doctors knew.

However, there was an antidepressant that I was taking at the time and of course the doctor who prescribed it was quick to defend it, but after conducting research of my own, I learned that other mothers who had been prescribed the same drug for postpartum blues had similar side effects. The drug was Paxil. For some mothers, they boasted on the effects of this "miracle drug." But for others, the results weren't so positive. Some complained of everything from an increase in weight gain to an increase in depression. When I reflected on my various bodily and mental changes while on this drug, I found that it started out helping me, like the other I took in the past, but then gradually became my own worst enemy.

This was supposed to be the solution to another drug I had been on which was Lexapro. I had learned that doctors will switch from drug to drug until something works. So while they were trying to figure out what my issues were, I was a mother at home with two little ones and I was expected to be a "fit" mother at all times. Well that gradually became more and more of a challenge for me, so much in fact that I suspected my sons' father was formulating his own opinions in his head about me. "I don't know if I can trust her with our children." Understandably so, that was why I had to reach a conscience decision to allow the professional childcare agencies to take care of them or a relative. I knew that I couldn't continue to be at home with them by myself for over 10 hours a day, five days a week. I had reached the end of my stay-at-home mother routine.

So I tell this story not to gain sympathy, but I tell it so that one can have the boldness and courage, who may be in a similar situation, to declare one's self an unfit mother. Oh yes being an unfit mother has negative connotations and we often think of drug and child abusers, but anytime you can't take care of your children for a limited time or for a lifetime the court, society, even your relatives and friends will deem you unfit. Of course, there are nicer ways of putting it, "unable to care for, not well, disabled, handicapped..." whatever you choose to describe your situation is up to you. But the bottom line is don't wait for someone else to make that declaration for you like the police, child enforcement authorities, a judge, your ex-husband, etc. If you can't take care of the children, you just can't! It's better to trust someone else who you know is more mentally capable to handle them until you can get the help you need. I think of all the women who were so far gone mentally that they couldn't or wouldn't ask for help. Then one day they suddenly snapped and that's when they and society started screaming, "Help!" often when it's too late.