I have an amazing friend who runs an amazing company called Handcrafted HoneyBee, which makes personal care products that are, you guessed it, amazing. Husband and I are pretty big sticklers for choosing healthy personal care products–not only for our own health but for the health of our planet.
My friend, amazing woman she is, creates all her own recipes for things like soap and deodorant and chapstick and face masks—but she doesn’t stop there. She takes it one step further. She creates kits that allow girls and boys to make their own products if they want to. Talk about empowering kids.
Lest you get too excited about this brilliant company, I must warn you that the products you purchase will cause you to do some unexpected things. Husband washes his hand fifty-three times a day now, just to smell the pleasant aroma of eucalyptus spearmint. I disappear into my room every evening to “put on my face mask” and frighten kids away from my bedroom door because I’M TRYING TO READ. The boys won’t give me kisses anymore, because they just applied their black cherry chapstick and they don’t want my lips to take any of it with them.
But probably the most uncouth things you’ll do center around the deodorant. I’ve been making my own deodorant for about three years, because I’m weird like that. I have never been able to get mine to smell as divine as Handcrafted HoneyBee’s. I actually like the way I smell now when I’ve just done fifty burpees.
Here are some reasons why you might not want to try Handcrafted HoneyBee’s deodorant:
1. You’ll go around smelling each other’s armpits.
My friend sent Husband and me a trial size of the deodorant, which comes with five different scents: tweed and spice, coconut and mango, rose and lavender, eucalyptus and spearmint and lemongrass and patchouli. So it’s not unusual to see Husband and me, in the early morning hours, sniffing each other’s armpits and saying, “I like that one a lot,” because, well, they smell really, really good.
2. Your kids will ask to smell your armpits.
This is slightly worse than Reason Number 1, because everybody knows kids are like leeches. If they smell something they like—especially something that smells like FOOD—they’ll never want to leave it, and you’ll have a kid hanging under your pit for the rest of the day (because the smell lasts a LONG time).
This has been the problem every time I wear the coconut mango deodorant. The smell reminds me of a book—Treasure Island to be exact. When I wear coconut mango, I feel like I’m on a tropical island, searching for treasure that may or may not come with dangerous pirates—but if it does come with dangerous pirates, I’m prepared. I have my deodorant.
The kids, however, are reminded every time I walk by that they haven’t eaten in fifteen minutes, and, man, they’re starving. What’s that yummy smell?
And, perhaps the most dangerous reason of all:
3. When Someone says, “What’s that smell?” you’ll make a complete fool of yourself.
“Squeaky wheel on the stroller,” you’ll say, or, more to the point, “It was one of the kids.” You’ll say this because you think you’ve been found out and that it wasn’t as silent but deadly as you thought. The Someone will look at you strangely, sniff the air, and say, “Smells a little like mango.” You’ll high-tail it out of there.
Hypothetically, of course.
All humor aside, the products at Handcrafted HoneyBee really are amazing. Each of the deodorants puts me in the middle of a book.
The eucalyptus and spearmint puts me right in the middle of The Jungle Book. Lavender and rose puts me in the middle of The Secret Garden. Tweed and spice, which is a pretty manly scent, puts me in Wuthering Heights, near the dangerously appealing Heathcliff, who smells oh so nice. Lemongrass and Patchouli doesn’t summon a book so much as a movie: none other than Mrs. Doubtfire, starring the late Robin Williams. It’s a clean, fresh scent that reminds of my house as a child. It does not, however, remind me of my house as an adult. That would need a scent far less…desirable.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and an amazing company. Every Friday, I publish a short blog on something personal that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
Last week I shared about how my video show is celebrating one whole year of production. It started out much different than it is now, but all the same, I haven’t amassed a whole bunch of followers yet. Truthfully, I had expected to be further along than I am.
This happens often in the life of a writer. We all believe that the Internet has made visibility so much easier, but that’s not the case. I told you last week that this is a long game, that the people who show up every day in spite of who is listening or reading or watching—they are the people who will have staying power. Because they’ve decided they will have staying power. When we are dependent on our visibility for whether or not we continue doing what we do, we are bound to be disappointed.
So how do we stay motivated, as writers, to continue producing content every week, spending hours on the writing of words we’ll give away, just so a few people can show up and maybe like it, maybe not? What’s the point?
There is a very important question we have to ask ourselves when we are flailing and wondering why no one is paying attention. And this is not the question that most business people will tell you to ask. I’ve studied business. I know the right questions. But this is something that burrows down to the heart, which I believe is the truest indicator for what we should do next. I trust my heart. So I always ask myself the question: Do I love this?
This question can be asked in other ways: Am I passionate about this? Does it really matter whether anyone shows up or not?
It’s okay if the answer to the first two are No and the last one is yes. You have to decide that for yourself. (One caution, though. If you’re having a bad week, maybe wait until your emotions even out a little to do this sort of analyzing.)
If you decide that you do love what you do and you are passionate about it, at least at this point in time, and that it does not matter one little bit whether someone shows up or not, then, by all means, keep doing what you’re doing. And then ignore the stats.
I know that business people will say. You have to analyze stats to see what’s working. I’m a bit nontraditional when it comes to this sort of thing, because I don’t believe that it’s necessary to write for the market or tailor our stories to the market.
If we’re not concerned with statistics, we’re never going to be bothered by what the market does anyway, right? I mean, logically, that makes sense. So I’ll write what I want to write. I’ll produce what I want to produce. I’ll keep growing and changing and learning and sharing all of that with the handful followers I have, and one day, when my staying power has been proved, people will wonder why they didn’t notice in the first place. Stats don’t matter at the early end of the Long Game. Passion matters far more.
It’s not always easy, but remember it’s a long game. It’s easy to fall into the sort of envy that says, well, that person got a viral post, why doesn’t mine ever go viral? It’s easy to compare and contrast and try to figure out what we can do to possibly get more attention. But we have to remember—those attention spots? They usually go away tomorrow—unless you have a store of information already at the fingertips of people. And when you do, you’ll hit those attention spots and you’ll stay there.
Build your vault. Somewhere along the road of your building, you’ll discover your treasure—because it’s with practice that we become brilliant.
And after all this, don’t forget to reevaluate often. Sometimes our goals change. That means our actions have to change, too. Sometimes we learn something new that feels right. If, at any point in the future, I find that my video show falls outside of my goals, I will not hesitate to cut it from my schedule. The same should be true for anything we decide to do.
Let’s recap my tips for persevering when it seems no one really cares:
1. Analyze the depth of your passion for what you’re doing.
2. Ignore the stats.
3. Remember it’s a long game. Sometimes it’s a long, long, long game.
4. Reevaluate often.
Enjoy what you create, and the passion will see you through you invisible days.
[Tweet “Enjoy what you create, and passion will carry you through your invisible days.”]
Husband and I used to be in a band. Well, we still are. We just don’t ever play the songs we’re still writing, because we have six kids. But before those six kids, we played all over Texas and took a few tours through Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. We wrote our own songs and practiced every day and stayed up way too late playing gigs.
When the first son was born, we continued our pursuit, because we enjoyed doing it and wanted, secretly, to be rockstars. And Son #1 was super easy to pack up and take along with us, because he loved music and enjoyed meeting new people who fawned all over him and was amazingly tolerant of long trips.
Son #2 came along two years later, and it was still relatively easy. We just packed for two kids instead of one. We brought a friend along who could watch the kids while we did our hour-long set on stage, and then I’d rescue the friend while Husband and the other band members went to talk to people at the merch table.
Then came son #3. I won’t say he meant to change everything. It’s just the logistics of it. When parents go from two to three kids, everything gets real. You’ve suddenly run out of hands. And eyes. And ability to focus.
Two weeks after he was born, we boarded a plane to fly to Arizona and record our third album, and we took them all with us so I could worry the whole time about what if the oldest wandered off when one of us wasn’t looking because the baby needed to be fed and he was still so tiny and cute and wonderful and I just couldn’t take my eyes off him but I also couldn’t take my eyes off the older walking ones. We made it, with twelve new gray hairs.
But when it came time to promote our album, here’s where the “we can still do this” really fell through. Because there aren’t a whole lot of people who enjoy watching a 3-year-old, a 16-month-old and a one-month-old. We tried to limp along for a while, and then the twins came along and life was completely over. Because twins.
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to be two things: a writer and a rock star. I get to be one of them, writing every single day of my life, and it’s bliss. And, for the other, well, this is all I got.
Being a rockstar used to mean fame.
I know it sounds shallow to put it like that, but doesn’t any performer who’s good at what they do dream of this? Packed crowds chanting the band’s name and singing along to songs with their camera phones as “lighters?” Fans wanting to meet us just to shake our hand or say a few words to us? People dancing in their places or moshing or whatever kids do these days, even if they can’t hear a note of the music because they’re screaming too loudly?
Actually, this sounds exactly like my house. There’s a packed crowd chanting my name when it’s time for dinner and I haven’t started anything yet. There’s a line of kids wanting a minute of our attention because they have to tell us their brother took the toy they were playing with and they’re really sad about that and they need help getting it back. And there are little boys dancing or moshing (mostly unintentionally, but this is what happens when you’re eight people in a small living room and Imagine Dragons is playing on Pandora) and screaming so loudly you can’t hear a note of the music because we’re playing one of the songs we wrote for them and they just want “If You’re Happy and You Know It” or the Kidz Bop version of anything Taylor Swift.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole crew of roadies.
Roadies are people who carry all the heavy stuff and help set up the equipment and wait around until the show is over just so they can help you do it all again. They’re pretty handy people.
And I suppose, in a way, I still have roadies, because when we go to the local museum, the 8-year-old does do the heavy lifting with those books he likes to bring everywhere, even though we didn’t ask him to bring them. And the 5-year-old will load up that backpack with a thousand stuffed animals he wanted to bring along so they could see the lions at the zoo, and he’ll carry it the whole time. And one of the 3-year-olds will always try to get the picnic lunch out of the car and accidentally dump it out on the sidewalk so the birds come swooping. I know. He’s just trying to help, like roadies do.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole closet of cool clothes.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted to look like on stage. I was the only female in a band of males, and I needed to stand out. Be noticed. That meant bold colors and dramatic makeup and shoes that were comfortable but still said “Woman.”
And it’s true that I do wear a bright orange workout shirt about once a week with my uniform workout pants and I have gone dramatic with the makeup and adopted the “naked face” look, and my shoes do say “Woman” because they’re fluorescent pink running shoes that allow me to chase after my 3-year-olds when they get a wild hair every other minute and decide they’re going to sprint in two different directions and see who Mama catches first. My cool clothes have just become be-prepared-to-run-at-all-times clothes.
Being a rockstar used to mean a glamorous life.
Of course we would meet all the famous people, like Simon Cowell or Ed Sheeran or maybe just Adam Sandler. We’d sit down to fancy dinners and wipe our mouths with silky napkins and engage in stimulating conversation. We would get in the car and cruise to a party at any hour of any day.
Okay, so, yes, I get to meet famous people like the 8-year-old’s principal or the 5-year-old’s best friend (he talks about her ALL THE TIME) and I get to sit down to a dinner of sun-roasted tomato parmesan pasta with the cloth napkins we made ourselves and engage in stimulating conversation like how we could do a sugar experiment with ice cream and root beer, because that’s what they did in class today and they DRANK IT ALL AND IT WAS SO YUMMY and now they can’t stay at the table because they have too much energy and they need to ruuuuuuunnnn. And even though it takes us three hours just to leave the house, we still get to go to the occasional party when the kids are invited, (because sitters for six kids are hard to find). What kind of person would want to party at all hours of the day, anyway? My kids are up all hours of the day. Midnight and I have become intimately familiar, and let me just tell you, he’s pretty exhausting.
I used to want to be a rockstar. And this is all I got.
But you know what? I don’t think this parenting gig was the short end of the stick at all. Mostly because I get to feel like a rockstar every single day. I feel like a rockstar when my kid is whining and I just can’t take it anymore and I miraculously don’t yell but calmly say that his whining makes me feel like the tea kettle that’s going off on the stove. I feel like a rockstar when I finally get dinner on the table without losing my mind from all the “I’m hungrys” following me around and not one of them complains about what we’re having for once. I feel like a rockstar every time I get out the door in the morning with all six kids dressed and wearing mostly matching shoes.
I feel like a rockstar when I climb out of bed after a night cleaning up puke. I feel like a rockstar when I remember my toothbrush on a trip, because I usually pack for the kids first. I feel like a rockstar when they smile at me after a long day like I’m the most important person in the world.
Every parent who is raising a human being to be a decent person is a rockstar, because we have legions of adoring fans (okay, a handful at the most), even if we’re the ones who gave them life; and we have a glamorous life, even if it looks like eating dinner at the same table every night and parties at home and conversation about what they did in school today; and we have songs, every day, in all the spaces of life, because those songs are the voices of our children, chanting their demands and complaining about their problems and murmuring their “I love yous” when we most need them.
So what if I used to want to be a rockstar and this is all I got?
What I got is love and fun and adventure and life. So much more than I ever dared to dream.
This is an excerpt from , Parenting Is the Hardest Insane Asylum Ever, a humor book that does not yet have a release date. To read more of my humor essays, visit Crash Test Parents.
Today I want to introduce you to two middle grade reads that felt a bit old—but in entirely different ways.
Wolf Hollow, by Lauren Wolk follows the story of Annabelle, who lives on a farm. Unlike many of her classmates, Annabelle’s family has done well after World War I. She has enough to eat, enough time to play, enough love to go around. And then in walks a new girl, Betty, who begins targeting Annabelle with her bullying pranks, some of which are quite dangerous. Betty quickly turns her bullying efforts to Toby, a World War I veteran who lives in a small shack in the woods. He is the kind of guy most people tolerate but don’t understand. Annabelle, however, loves him as a child would love an uncle—which is good, because she will have to find the courage to stand up for him and risk everything to clear his name when Betty mysteriously disappears.
Not only was Wolf Hollow a bit long for a middle grade read but it was also written in a way that, to me, felt almost like reading an adult memoir. Bullying is a deep topic. We absolutely need to talk about it with our kids. They need to read about it in stories. But there was something about the way the topic was presented in this book that felt a little mature to me. It was a great read, but I think it could have been classified better, if someone had taken the to unravel all the layers. It felt more like an adult book to me. Just because the narrator is a 12-year-old girl doesn’t mean that it should be classified middle grade fiction.
I am all for dark middle grade literature that explores hard topics like abuse and bullying and parental divorce and growing up. But Wolf Hollow felt a little too old to me. I think it had something to do with how the narrator saw the world. It seemed as though she was an adult, looking back on this one particular time in her life.
So now that I’ve gotten that detail out of the way, I’ll say that I really enjoyed the story. Not only did it showcase bullying, but it detailed what veterans struggle with once they are done with a war. It was intriguing and heart-wrenching and, at times, sobering. The story pulled you in and would not let you go. Annabelle had extraordinary bravery and dedication. She defied her parents to do what was right, what would protect someone she loved in the safest way. The tension throughout the book kept me engaged and hopeful.
Now that I look back on it, I can tell by the first line that the book was a bit old for middle grade, even the upper ages:
“The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie.
“I don’t mean the small fibs that children tell. I mean real lies fed by real fears—things I said and did that took me out of the life I’d always known and put me down hard into a new one.”
So, if you read Wolf Hollow, just keep this mis-classification in mind. I think you’ll enjoy it much better.
The Black Pearl, by Scott O’Dell, is another middle grade book that feels old, but in a completely different way. I read this one aloud to my boys, and they were riveted the whole time. It felt old, because O’Dell was a popular writer back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and literature was much different than it is now.
It’s refreshing to read his books again. I read them all when I was younger, breezed through the whole shelf of my middle school library, because I loved his stories so much. He’s written all sorts of Newbery Honor books, including Island of the Blue Dolphins, which was the first O’Dell book I ever read, Sing Down the Moon (also a fantastic one) and this one.
The Black Pearl is about a pearl merchant family. Ramon Salazar has never been allowed to dive for the pearls, though his father is a pearl dealer. His father believes it’s too dangerous. So when his father embarks on a journey, Ramon defies his father’s wishes and dives in a small area that is known to house a great sea beast—the Manta Diablo, who guards the Pearl of Heaven. But Ramon comes back with the Pearl of Heaven, and he thinks it’s the saving grace of his community—until the old man whose lagoon houses El Diablo tells him that the manta will get his pearl back one way or another.
It’s a dark, adventurous tale that will keep you wondering how, exactly, the Manta Diablo will exact his revenge.
Like I said, this story is written very differently than the stories you see today. It’s not as fast-paced and visual, but it still is a story that stands the test of time. My boys could not wait to hear what happened next—which proves, to me, that all you really need is an engaging character and a good story. A book can have the best visual writing around, but if it does not have a solid story, it will fall flat.
Be sure to visit my recommendation page to see some of my best book recommendations. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, get in touch. And, if you’re looking for some new books to read, stop by my starter library, where you can get a handful of my books for free.
*The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to them, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them.
I have known her for just more than half of those years, and in the same way she has watched me grow from infant to toddler to teenager to adult with infants and toddlers of my own, so I have watched her grow.
I have watched those black-brown eyes she got from her quarter-Navajo great-grandmother, the same ones she gave to me, soften with the forgiveness of years spent working on it. I have watched the mouth she gave my sister smile without the weight of worry more than I ever did as a kid. I have watched her skin wrinkle into beauty lines that speak of wisdom and bravery and joy and a fierce determination that pulled her through all the hell of her past so she stands, today, a woman warrior.
A couple of weeks ago, we pulled off a surprise birthday party for her, and she walked through a closed door into a party room crammed full of close friends and family who love her.
She laughed about having no idea of these plans, because she thought everyone had forgotten she had a birthday coming up at all and had only just begun planning her own celebration. We went right along with her plans so she wouldn’t know our secret, and then we gathered a week early and shouted our surprise and laughed at her shock.
I don’t know if she knows it or not, but the surprise we yelled said much more than that one word.
How could someone forget a remarkable woman like you? it said.
I get to call her Mom.
///
My first memory of her is bright yellow, with orange and pink around the edges, like a brilliant sunrise. She is reading a book to us. She was always reading books to us, because this is what librarians do for their children.
She had a deep love for words, and she wanted to make sure her children loved them, too.
It was in that same house, not long after this first memory, that I remember watching my dad disappear on his motorcycle, and I ran into the house and threw myself onto the bed I shared with my sister, sobbing in my 3-year-old hysterical way because I didn’t know when I would see him again.
She knelt by my side for as long as it took, just stroking my back while I cried. She didn’t try telling me it would be all right. She didn’t try telling me he would be back soon. She didn’t try telling me he was leaving for our good.
I would learn later it was because she didn’t know any of those answers herself. She just hoped. And prayed. And went on with her life, caring for the three of us on her own.
She is the strongest woman I know.
///
She knelt by my side for another crying, too.
It was the first time I’d had a boyfriend. We dated for a month, or maybe two, and I was in love with that golden skin and those blue eyes framed by thick black lashes and the way he threw a baseball from the mound.
And then he decided to date someone his own age, since I was two years younger, and I was heartbroken, sobbing once more into a pillow on my daybed.
She didn’t knock, just came on through without a word and knelt beside me and stroked my back. She didn’t tell me there would be others or that I would probably be glad of this breakup someday or that I was only 15. She only sat there, and after a long, long time, she told me stories from her own falling-in-love days, about the boy who had called into a radio station her junior year and dedicated a love song to her, and it was too much too soon; and about the brother of a friend she’d had a crush on since grade school and how he never liked her back; and about the others who didn’t seem quite right for her.
And by the end of it, I knew I wasn’t the only girl who’d ever had my heart broken like this.
She left my room, and I sat there in the growing dark, thinking about how this woman so beautiful and amazing had handed her heart to a man who had broken it in ways I couldn’t even imagine.
She is the greatest woman I know.
///
I was only 4 that morning we were on our way to church. We had just stepped out the front door when my mom said, Get in the car, kids. Be quiet, but be quick.
My brother and sister and I did as we were told without asking any questions, probably for the first time ever, and we locked those car doors behind us. There was danger in her voice.
We watched her disappear into the house and come back with a garden hoe. She rattled the branch of one of the trees that stood like a canopy over our yard, and something fell to the ground, something striped and long and thick. It writhed on the ground.
She started hacking, in her Sunday dress, chopping like her life depended on it. She saved us from snakes that morning.
She hunted other snakes, too.
The ulcers and sorrow and anger that chased my brother after my parents’ divorce, she hunted those snakes on her knees, praying ceaselessly for him. A boyfriend who asked me to marry him early on, one who held a look she knew too well, she hunted that snake with boundaries and limitations and refusals, knowing what would eventually happen—he would stray and I would leave for good (she was right).
The poverty that followed us like an unwanted dog, because she never could quite make ends meet with three hungry kids, she hunted that snake with a school librarian job on the weekdays and a candy-stocker job at the local store on the weekends.
There were some snakes she could not see, like the ones that waited for my sister in the dark closets of a friend’s house, and the ones that burrowed not-enough holes all through my own heart, and the ones that wrapped my brother tight and hard and closed to the men around him who might have taught him how to be a man.
But she tried with every single day of her life.
She is the bravest woman I know.
///
In sixth grade I signed up for band. In seventh grade I added volleyball and basketball and track, because I didn’t know what I most wanted to do. My mom let me throw myself into all of them. She worked all day and cleaned house in the afternoons and then sat an evening away in the stands, cheering and clapping and paying attention even on the nights I sat the bench.
In high school, there was marching band and state competitions and volleyball and track and softball and tennis, and I wonder how many of those she wanted to miss.
But she never did. She watched me direct the band as a drum major my junior and senior year, and she watched me braid the hair of my teammates in the year I had to sit volleyball out because of a knee surgery, and she drove all the way to a town 40 miles away on her only day off to watch me run the 300-meter hurdles, even though I purposely scratched the event because I was so terrified of the humiliations of tripping over hurdles.
She was there the day I made second chair in the state band, even though I wanted first. She was there the day I ran the 800-meter run for the first time, even though I gassed out by the end of the first lap, since I’d only ever run the 400, and I came in dead last. She was there the day I stood on a graduation stage in my silver robe, shaking through my valedictorian speech while all eyes were on me and the maroon hair I’d dyed the night before as a statement.
She let me be who I was, and she stuck around to watch the failures and the victories so she could love me through every one.
She is the kindest woman I know.
///
She is a piece of my history I am proud to call my own.
I have watched her blossom into a loving grandmother, doting on all these boys (It’s the same feeling I had when you kids were born, she said after the first one slid into the world). And now that I am a mother, I know the courage and perseverance and determination it takes to be a good one, and I am so thankful she carried me in her womb and carried me through my growing-up years and carries me still into my mothering ones.
This woman, who kept every one of my earliest stories in a cardboard box under her bed, is the best mother I have ever known. I am who I am because of who she is.
She is a hero, a warrior with battle wounds and a purple heart and a legacy of love that saved the worlds of three people, and so many more, and it is in her heroism that she has taught me all about how to be the greatest mother—because great mothering does not live in being the greatest housekeeper or the greatest lunch-maker or the greatest provider or even the greatest teacher or discipliner.
Great mothering lives in being the biggest fan.
It means letting children be who they are instead of trying to change them to be who we want them to be, and it means guiding them gently in the way they should go instead of beating them toward our way with words or hands, and it means staying present in the failures and the victories and all the places in between.
It means being the person they most want to be, because we love and honor and cherish and teach and hold and accept.
This is my mother’s gift to me.
This is my mother’s gift to the world.
This is an excerpt from We Count it All Joy: a Collection of Essays, which does not yet have a publication date. For more of Rachel’s essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
