Kristin Bennett

I’m sitting here with my 5 month old baby girl in my lap. My almost 4 year old was dropped off at her Pre-K class just a few hours ago. My tears are dripping onto my sleeping baby’s belly as I type this.

Boring is a word that I don’t remember using since I was about 12, maybe 11. My dad used to gleefully tell me how I was acting ‘so eleven’ which is what I remember most about that year so I probably was bored then. Since then though, and now, my life has been chaotic.

In my mind, and out of my mouth, anyone who knows me is well aware of these patterns I’m sure. I constantly am spewing the desires I have for a ‘stable’ or ‘secure’ life with ‘routine’ and ‘predictability’ however I’ve never experienced any of this!! I tell myself that ‘as soon as I/we get through this, things will be normal‘ though it doesn’t happen, even I wonder if I really want it? I think I do, but if I look at all that I do, do I really want that?

Maybe I do want that, consciously but unconsciously I have ‘programs‘ (as my Klemmer trained husband calls them) that are against this, and insist on keeping the chaos rampant in my life. I haven’t been through that program, maybe I will someday and then I’ll understand, at this point I don’t though. I am too busy chaotically living my life of chaos trying to make it calm down enough to learn what this word ‘relax’ means, because right now I don’t know.

My biggest fear is that my daughters will only know me as this high strung multi-tasking fake “normal wanter” who can’t seem to figure out what the words normal or calm really mean. It’s clear that my family, dysfunctionally raised from an established military upbringing thinks I’m nuts, or have such unrealized potential.

For me the concept of normal is about as foreign as this flying spaghetti monster I hear about.

For me sending my children away so I can go repetitively do the same thing over and over and over again sounds like pure insanity, I don’t understand the appeal. I haven’t been able to get a job anyway though so it’s not like that is a real option.

What I really want, is for my life, to make sense. Just a little bit of sense. Right now everything is a mess, I feel like an interruption to the world around me. My daughters watch me feverishly accomplish nothing spending my time online, while I explain that I’m trying to make money to make things better though nothing happens to support this.

I agree enthusiastically when people tell me I should write about my experiences, my experiences being sent away as a child to survival camp, running away from boarding school, MS, 9/11, stroke, and the abusive relationship that created my beautiful little girl and that I left behind etc. etc. but have I written? I have written a little bit, here and there but enough for a book? No. Do I know how to get started? I know I need to write, but I don’t know what comes after that. Do I try to take care of myself even? Yes, though I don’t think I’m doing a very good job, I’m getting medical treatment to feel better but all of that is leading to piles of bills that just remind me I’m broke. Then I start working, or writing, and then my daughter cries, or wants to be picked up, to drink mommy milk, go outside, or eat some food.

And it feels like I’ve failed, either at the working and writing by attending to their needs, or at mothering by spending time writing or working.

Balance is another word I need to become more familiar with. Maybe after I meet, my balanced self, I will be able to introduce her to my little beautiful girls who deserve so much more in a mom. I know she is in here somewhere.

One year ago, I was a 27 year old pregnant newlywed working as a Visual Design for a SaaS company where I’d been working for close to two years. I had a 3yo daughter who was just starting at a new school near my husbands house (which was almost done being renovated) where I looked forward to being able to walk her to school with the new baby the following Spring.My husband had been contracting at a large well known local company doing very well.

Then I think it was either in September or October..all our contractors at the company I worked for got cut. It was a surprise to most of us, we had a lot of longtime fabulous contractors at the time. Soon after was the first layoff, this one was a shocker, we lost about 30 people, and in a company with less than 200 employees, this was a big hit.

My belly started to show soon after this, and when my husbands contracts dried up, my job became ever more important, I was the one providing health insurance to the family and still bringing in a paycheck. My husband started working with an MLM, and I became curious about that as well and started one as well around the beginning of 2009, though barely doing it at all because I was very pregnant and work was wearing me out, as was the commute taking my daughter across town to daycare, renovations were put on hold and so we were still living out of my apartment from before our wedding.

Next was a layoff of 2 corporate employees from my company, two that were considered the best by many and so this was VERY disconcerting. It was not a huge surprise when on February 27th, about a month before my due date, that along with about 30 other employees, I was handed my papers and asked to leave.

Fortunately this is about the time the COBRA package was reduced (thank you Obama!) this meant I was able to afford to keep our insurance which is/was about $375/mo.

A month and a half later, I had my baby girl who we named Hazel. I had her at home along with my husband, mother, mother in law, daughter, 2 midwives and a wonderful doula. It was an amazing experience.

In the meantime my husband has been working on putting together a company, which I should be able to announce soon in another post.

I had been trying to find work, though I do have a baby with me, as I can not afford to put her in daycare wi/out a job. This definitely hinders the job search. Then June was passing…and I started losing feeling and strength in my right leg and arm.

My MS was flaring up. Yes, I am a mother with MS. I started all of the appointments at this point, to the Neuro, the MRI place, the physical therapy, psychology appointments, the steroid treatments via IV in the hospital for five days, the support group meetings and so on. Soon the talks about what drugs I should be getting on soon, if I should keep nursing etc. were piling up. Also through the NMSS and another group I’m a part of for young people with MS I was approached to help start a local Moms with MS group.

I had already been ‘organizing’,though not very actively, another local moms group, unrelated to MS so I jumped at this opportunity!

While setting up the local one through meetup.com I managed to discover that … omg … MomsWithMS.com was NOT registered!!

Skip ahead to today. I am now the founder of the MomsWithMS.com website which currently is a community for Mothers who have been diagnosed with MS to come and share their stories, support each other, and compare notes about the joys and sorrows we experience on our mothering with MS journey. We currently have 99 members and I’m expecting we’ll probably get our 100th member very soon.

We’ll be out of the apartment and into the house by October 1, just need the plumbing, packing, and moving done. Baby Hazel will be 5 months old tomorrow and is a big, smart, beautiful baby who just started saying “Ma ma”, she’s on me as I type this.

I’m taking all these ‘hard times’ as a blessing, yes I’m still broke as heck but working on figuring out how to change that while also growing this community of moms who like myself find great comfort in knowing there are others out there who are going through the same thing and thriving.

If you know any Moms with MS who might be looking for a place they can talk to people who understand, or has questions about anything they have heard. Let them know we exist. Many of our moms are newly diagnosed and are already finding us through google search when looking for information for mothers about MS.

We launched on July 1, 2009. My next milestone is making a public portion of the site where anyone can come and get information about MS and how it relates to families as well as finding resources, though they can be hard to find, they are out there.

Getting this site started as the central location for all that I’m up to!! I’m not quite a Jane of all trades…just a handful of my favorites I’ve created this for anyone who is curious as well as a resource to me to be able to find and track all that I am up to. I also have a more personal blog site set up at StrawberryTechMama.com. I think this all stemmed from feedback from lots of places suggesting I should write a book…this is what I think makes sense as a step in that direction. Recently I founded MomsWithMS.com which is currently a community which I hope to turn into more of an information resource and network as welll. Also currently I’m involved with Arbonne, Trump Network, as well as Passion Parties, I’ve created a page for each of these that you can access through the links on the top part of this screen. On those pages you can sign up for more information as well. I recently discovered Etsy as well and I am hoping to get some of my artwork up there and active as well…currently I only have things up on cafepress for my illustrations, paintings, and momswithms images.