5 Lessons My Son Taught Me About Life – #4 is the Best.

You know, as we grow, we learn. In order to grow, you must be open to learning anything from anybody. You never know where or who your next life lesson is going to come from. One of my biggest and greatest life lessons came from my 30-year-old son. The things he taught me stayed with me forever. ( I still can’t believe he’s 30 this year…eep)

So unless you’ve been living under a rock you know I’m now officially in Guatemala living an expat life. (Hahaha I’m just messin’ with ya about living under a rock.) I really didn’t know what to expect upon arrival and it actually isn’t anything like how I envisioned it. This is why you should never have expectations or worry. That’s something I taught myself.

Just let things unfold the way they are supposed to. I still really can’t even believe I’m here. Like I actually truly really did this. That’s crazy. I still look around here and think to myself “Holy cow as if you did it!?”

Anyway, so I’m here all tucked away nicely. A few minor glitches along the way where my patience was tested and pushed to the limit but I made it, didn’t kill or hurt anyone and I’m still smilin’. The airport was a major fiasco. Thank you Mercury Retrograde, sometimes you suck. 8-hour delay there, tempers flaring, and people so irritable. Oh man, it was awful. Moving right along………

My son blows my mind all the time

So I’m talking to my son on FB (which 99% of the time is our normal means of communication) and we’re chatting about how great life is and how far we’ve come and the different paths our lives have taken (you have to know that I am absolutely ridiculously proud of my kid…he’s pure awesomeness) and he says go look at your wall.

There on my wall is this long beautiful post from my son about how proud he is of me and I cried. And cried. And cried.

Let me explain. For all of Julian’s 30-year life, I was always trying to do my best, make sure he had everything he wanted (within reason), trying to improve my life which in turn would improve his life and I failed countless times. Over and over again I hit walls and hit them hard. We struggled, and we were poor, but we had each other and for him, that was enough most of the time. For me, it was but it wasn’t. I wanted more for him. But mostly, I wanted him to just be proud of me and proud to have me as his mom.

Here’s what his post on FB said…

Just in case I HAVEN’T told you yet, I just want to make sure that every single person I know knows that my mother, Iva Ursano, has just successfully sold ALL her stuff and moved to GUATEMALA and now lives the DREAM writing about life on the internet – WTF. She is 53 years young, still gets tattoos, and endeavors to inspire strength and happiness in every single person she meets. A few months ago she went BACKPACKING through Costa Rica for 3 weeks ALONE and has now completely left Canada to be AWESOME. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. We grew up in a tiny, cold, lifeless (sorry) town, struggling with money and constantly moving in order to make ends meet. Now I have been traveling the world alone for 2 years and have inspired my 53-year-old mother to live the dream with me. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT I AM SO PROUD OF YOU IVA URSANO !! GO FOLLOW HER PAGE!

Finally. After 27 years I’ve finally made my son proud of me. And it’s a beautiful thing. I’m not entirely sure he was never proud of me before but this declaration set it in stone for me. And really, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

What my son taught me

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You know, as moms, we beat ourselves up all the time. I’m not good enough, I suck at this, I’m doing a terrible job, my kid hates me, I hate me, this is too hard, I’m a loser at parenting… does any of that sound familiar?

Well, I dunno about you but a few of those statements crossed my mind many times over the course of 30 yrs of being a mom.

The lessons I learned from my kid?

1. Moms don’t be so hard on yourselves!
2. You ARE awesome and doing a great job even though you don’t hear it from your kids all the time.
3. You ARE appreciated and loved to the moon and back.
4. Your kids ARE proud of you and think you are the best thing in the world!!
5. Stop making up stupid things in your head about what your kids think of you. Every silly story you tell yourself is a lie.

Being a parent is the world’s toughest job, but it comes with the greatest rewards and lesson ever. Have you been taught something by your child? Share it down below.

“…and the award for parent of the year goes to………….”

And now one more plug for my amazing son, please take a second to check out his new Amazon product. I promise you’re gonna love this one!

Peace and Love

Iva ♥

(this post contains an affiliate link so I may make a small commission if you make a purchase)