{"id":142,"date":"2012-01-25T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T09:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lemonstolemonade\/?p=142"},"modified":"2012-01-25T04:42:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T04:42:37","slug":"emily-montez-of-mamafusion-her-story-in-her-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lemonstolemonade\/2012\/01\/25\/emily-montez-of-mamafusion-her-story-in-her-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Montez of MamaFusion: Her Story, in Her Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Emily Montez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was raised a good ole\u2019 Southern girl in a good ole\u2019 Southern family.\u00a0 We believed that shopping and makeup could cover any wound.\u00a0 No matter what was happening behind closed doors, and in our life there was plenty, you never, ever showed it when those doors were open.\u00a0 You still fixed your hair, glued on your smile, and kept on going. \u00a0So long as you had a clean house, a pristine life, everyone would believe the lie, even when it was a whopper.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I ever entirely bought into this myth.\u00a0 As a child, I was loud and out there.\u00a0 I was told on more than one occasion that I was \u201cobnoxious\u201d.\u00a0 I was ok with it.\u00a0 I was unique.\u00a0 I was special. \u00a0Most importantly, I was me and no one else.<\/p>\n

But after I had children, I started to feel that pressure.\u00a0 I struggled to take care of two very young children while maintaining a fa\u00e7ade of perfection.\u00a0 I knew there was no such thing as a perfect mom, I just couldn\u2019t see past all of my own glaring \u201cimperfections\u201d.<\/p>\n

I woke up one day and realized I was miserable.\u00a0 I had finally beat Post-Partum Depression, my colicky baby was sleeping through the night, I should have been feeling great about my beautiful family.\u00a0 But instead I was feeling alone and inadequate.\u00a0 I was overweight, frazzled, and felt like there was never enough of me for all of the things on my plate.\u00a0 I started throwing things overboard, trying desperately to stay afloat, but nothing helped.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t overnight, but I finally looked through the fog and saw that the biggest thing missing from my life was me<\/em>. \u00a0Where was all the spunk?\u00a0 All the fun?\u00a0 Where was the active and involved mom I had dreamed my whole life of being?\u00a0 I was trying to live someone else\u2019s life and it was not working.<\/p>\n

Change is hard.\u00a0 It takes time, patience, and lots of dedication.\u00a0 This change took all those things as I changed my habits from putting myself last so that I could put my life first.\u00a0 Slowly but surely, I felt the best parts of myself coming back.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I never slipped back into those old thoughts, but I have never let them rule my life the way they did just a short while ago.<\/p>\n

When I finally reached out to other moms, I found that I wasn\u2019t alone.\u00a0 Many of us are feeling this need to fake perfection in our lives.\u00a0 Many of us are ashamed to stand up and say that being a mom is hard work.\u00a0 I started MamaFusion: Merging Mom&Me<\/a><\/strong> because I wanted to inspire other women who are feeling the way I was, like you can\u2019t keep up with life.\u00a0 I wanted to snap all the mamas out of it who were struggling to keep it all together.\u00a0 When I let everything drop, I saw the beautiful mess I had created.\u00a0 Life, especially as a mom, gets funky, it gets off track, things go any way but the way you want them.\u00a0 Dishes pile up, laundry doesn\u2019t get done, your 2 year old refuses to wear anything but her favorite dingy dress (even when it is 30 degrees out), tantrums happen, things break down. These are all the incredible pieces that fit in to life as a mom.\u00a0 And they are beautiful.\u00a0 You are beautiful in them.\u00a0 God made you, He has a purpose for you, and He thinks you are perfect just the way He made you.\u00a0 When we trust His divine design, we find the woman, the mother, that we are perfectly designed to be, and that, my friends, makes all the difference.\u00a0 When we live authentically, we parent authentically.\u00a0 When we forget about what everyone wants for our life, we are free to live the life we were designed for.\u00a0 It ain\u2019t always easy, but it is certainly worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was raised a good ole\u2019 Southern girl in a good ole\u2019 Southern family.\u00a0 We believed that shopping and makeup could cover any wound.\u00a0 No matter what was happening behind closed doors, and in our life there was plenty, you never, ever showed it when those doors were open.\u00a0 You still fixed your hair, glued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEmily Montez of MamaFusion: Her Story, in Her Words - Lemons to Lemonade<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lemonstolemonade\/2012\/01\/25\/emily-montez-of-mamafusion-her-story-in-her-words\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Emily Montez of MamaFusion: Her Story, in Her Words - 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