To find the monthly features, follow the links below:
January 2015 | Angela Ness
February 2015 | Tammy Czapiewski
The following is the background behind the Moms of Bismarck|Mandan project, started by Megan Milbradt of Everyday Art Photography in 2015.
“I don’t know how you do it all.” “How do you find the time?” “If only there were more hours in the day.”
Do any of these phrases sound familiar to you? Maybe you’ve heard them from a fellow mom or maybe you’ve said them a time or two. I hear a version of these quite often, and the truth is, any time someone says something like that to me, I do my best to smile and come up with some way to change the subject because deep down inside, a lot of the time I feel like a total mess. Yeah, you may have seen me succeed or make progress on one thing, but there is always one hundred other things that I feel like I am failing on. Feeling like I am never giving 100% to everyone and everything that is a priority to me is an everyday struggle. And forget ever accomplishing the things that I really dream of doing. Keeping my family and household taken care of and doing my job is more than I can handle most days.
My kids had a full two weeks off for Christmas vacation and both my husband and I had a lot of time off work during those two weeks, as well. It is amazing how refreshed you can feel with two weeks of few schedules and commitments. No alarm clocks, no lunch packing, no rushing, no meetings, no homework…just time together. A couple of nights before the new year, I was up late after everyone else had gone to bed and I started to reflect on our time off and I thought to myself, “If this is how life was year round, I would have it all together.” Right?!
The truth is, even if there actually were more hours in the day, I will never have it all together. Well, at least not in my mind. I will never accomplish everything I could possibly dream up for me to accomplish. And that has got to be okay with me. But I also want to remember that every day of my life, I accomplish a lot. And just because I have not done it all at the old age of 33, that doesn’t mean I never will! Even more so, I need to remember that there are so many moms around me who share these feelings, too. And with that thought, came my light bulb moment.
As moms, we are so quick to compare ourselves to one another in a negative way. “How is she better than me?” “How am I better than her?” What if we all started comparing ourselves to one another in a different way; a POSITIVE way? What if we all realized that there are so many moms surrounding us who have been through the same things we have; who have the same hopes and dreams that we do. And what if, instead of putting ourselves down for not accomplishing all that another mom seems to have accomplished, we start looking to them as inspiration for achieving our own goals?
The year 2015 will mark my tenth year of calling Bismarck my home, and in those nearly ten years I have met some amazing mothers. I know that there is something to be learned from each and every one of them, the most important being that, while we are all unique, we are also so much the same. That is why I have started the Moms of Bismarck | Mandan project. Each month, I want to feature a mother in our community who can be an inspiration to us all. Truthfully, I think everyone would qualify! Every one of us is amazing, and while I know so many feel that they are nothing but ordinary, surely they have inspired someone in an extraordinary way, maybe without even knowing it! My wish for us all is that we can come together to support and learn from one another and be inspired to stop feeling like we are not enough and start understanding that we are! And I think one great way to start doing that is by getting to know and understand what is on the heart and in the minds of the moms who surround us.
Keep your eyes open for the first featured Mom of Bismarck | Mandan very soon. In the mean time…do you know a Bismarck | Mandan mom who you feel is incredibly inspiring? It can be anyone who inspires you in any extraordinary way, the only criteria is that they must be a mother and live in the Bismarck | Mandan area. Please send me a note telling me a bit about this mom and how they inspire you! Email to: everydayartphoto@gmail.com After a quick post to Facebook, I’ve already received a handful of emails which have both brought me to tears and made me smile. I can’t wait for you to “meet” these moms!
And if this project is going to be a success, it will only be because all of the Bismarck | Mandan moms encourage and support it, and that starts with you! So PLEASE share this post on your Facebook timeline, email it to a friend, whatever you need to do to spread the word!
To help keep you updated on each amazing mom featured, be sure to the follow the Everyday Art Photography Facebook page and also subscribe to updates via email by clicking the green SUBSCRIBE button on the top left of this page.
I saw this quote awhile back, and as I was writing this post, it was constantly in the back of my mind. No statement could be more true, and I think it applies perfectly to the context of what I hope Moms of Bismarck | Mandan will be. As a thank you for your support of this project, I want to give you a free download of this print so that you can be reminded of these words every day. Print it out, set it as your desktop background, do as you wish, and enjoy! (click the image to download)
by Megan