Good Evening FlyLady,

I wanted to share a bit of my journey with you. I will fess up I was a fly baby many years ago. And then I left my abusive husband, went to university full time, raised my three kids and worked. And I’m not happy to admit but FLYing fell by the wayside. Trying to finish my BA and then obtain my MA while I raised the kids and separated from my ex took my focus and time. That was in 2006.

Since then, I remarried, had a baby, had a house fire losing everything, had my hubby OD on fentanyl and subsequently got evicted and am back to being a single mom of four this time.

The fire happened in 2014, the OD in 2015 and so here I am. I finally feel like I have sort of settled into my own home with our furniture (all donated as I had no insurance or money to replace). But one thing that constantly escaped me was being able to keep on top of keeping my house clean as I now am working 4 jobs. And then something clicked in my head and I remembered FlyLady.

So I got myself back connected with the FlyLady community. Last week I wasn’t able to get much done except swish and swipe but today I got the mission done (and went a bit overboard getting tomorrow mission done by accident).

I started to berate myself for not accomplishing the missions and even kept the emails with the intent to go crazy and catch up on them and then I remembered what you always say: “babysteps” and “you are not behind! I don’t want you to try and catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are. Ok?”

And I found myself saying “ok.” Very courageously as I have myself permission to not have succeeded last week. Except I did succeed because I swished and swiped.

One other thing before I close and sorry this is so long. While swishing and swiping I showed my eldest how to swish and swipe to take care of his bathroom. And then he got the stomach flu and was thankful for the clean toilet. And while I was showing him I spoke the words of blessing over him “you deserve a clean toilet” for you see with an abusive father his self esteem has been severely damaged but I was able to take a teaching moment and speak words of blessing into his life (knowing it is so much more than a clean toilet, it is about his value). And he grinned and rolled his eyes and he comically and dramatically said “yes, mother….”

So thank you for giving not only the tools to clean my home, but the courage to give myself grace and the ability to bless and speak worth and value into the lives of my children.

From a weepy FlyBaby in BC