If you have seen my earlier blogs you know that I have a foundation that works in Haiti to support a community with 3,000 orphans.  I started it in January and as you can imagine it has consumed me.  My life is completely different than it was last year.

I wanted to blog here to say what it’s like straddling both worlds.  Here I am a mom of three, a teenager (14), and two little ones (5 and 4).  They fill my life with joy, and keep me on my toes.  They say funny things all of the time.  The four year old saw big kids on the top bleacher at baseball and said, “Hey Mom, look at those boys getting high, I’m gonna go get high with them“, and off he went, to the top bleacher.  We live in California next to the ocean in a small town, I was home with my kids since my daughter (5) was born, and we were just very “normal“.  

Now we travel to Haiti every eight weeks.  Sometimes the kids go with us, sometimes they stay here with my incredible mother-in-law.  I spend my life collecting donations for the “lost children“, researching aid organizations we can partner with, and asking strangers for money/medicine/donations.  I study jatropha and moringa farming to help start sustainable co-ops there.  I do it all with my kids around while I am on conference calls.  Sometimes I’m doing a puzzle with them or playing a game, or we are in the car shuttling them to activities.  Sometimes if it’s really important I’m locked in my bathroom for the quiet.  One thing is for sure though, I LOVE being with the orphans and spend the weeks in between trips looking forward to going back.

My life is no longer ordinary, I call it extra-ordinary, but sometimes it feels like I’m in quicksand.  I actually wake up and don’t know where I am sometimes.  I definitely wake up and don’t know WHO I am sometimes.  I don’t have the vaguest idea why I thought I was busy last year... what was I doing?  Now I feel guilty for not being fully engaged with my kids, and wonder like all moms how many games I’m supposed to play a day, how many books I need to read... it feels like I’m falling short there more often than I like to admit.

My life is crazy.  We have all had a bad cold this spring and my stepmother says we are always sick because my house is so dirty.  It is dusty, not dirty and I don’t think that is making us sick.  She means well... I laughed when my teenage son said, “Isn’t that crossing a line?“.  Yeah, it is, but as I said, she means well.  I got tired of being angry with her years ago. The truth is that I was a compulsive neat-freak for years and standards have slipped.  The kids are bigger, messier, and my life is too crazed to worry as much about the dust bunnies that sneak into the gap by the fridge.  Maybe someday I will get some help.  Maybe I will keep moving so fast I don’t really notice.

The blog here is meant to be about what it’s like to lead a double life.  I’m no spy, I’m just a mom.  A mom with a passion that has shifted my life and personality so much that at 41 I am basically starting from scratch.  It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it’s often comical.  My official blog is at [Link Removed] if you want to hear work details, but if you are interested in the crazy part I will try to give that story here.  Shorter in the future.  Just sending this out as a sounding board...  

Michelle

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