Savor the Success

I lost my website Thursday night. One moment it was there. The next, it wasn't. All that was left? A blue parking page that said, "This URL has just been purchased."

I stared at that parking page for a while. I hit my refresh button a few times. And then panic set in.

"It's gone? Gone?"

I eventually learned that a misunderstanding between me and a sales person at my hosting company had caused them to delete my entire site.

The next morning, my mother called. The stock market was dropping and predicted to fall more than 1000 points. She wanted me to convince her that life was worth living.

"I think I need you to convince me," I said glumly.

I mean, don't get me wrong. My mother potentially losing her entire life savings in the year she hopes to retire is much scarier than me losing a website. But still! I couldn't help but feel as if everything I'd worked so hard to achieve during these past few months was all for naught.

I knew what I had to do, though. It involved a three pronged approach. I needed to:

1) Fix the problem

2) Keep myself positive by joking about it with other people

3) Put some karma bucks in the bank account. Aparently I was low. Perhaps I my karma account had a negative balance?

So I called my hosting company. I talked with various technical people, including the STS Moderator Pup. I wrote about my sorry self here and at other discussion boards. I heard from lots and lots of people. They provided me with the songs they listened to when they felt frustrated. They made jokes. They all offered to go to my site and read every day once it was up again. After I read such emails, I was glowing from all the loving that people were sending my way.

But it wasn't until yesterday that I did the most important thing. I took the focus off myself and put it on helping someone else. At a coffee shop, I ran into a new mother. I asked her how she was doing. She sat down, put her face in her hands, and cried.

"I'm sorry," she said between sobs.

"Don't be," I said. "I've been there. Babies are hard. Really hard."

As she cried, I told her about the day my daughter had cried for 8 hours straight, and how I'd bitten my husband's head off when he'd come home and asked, "Why didn't you feed the dog? And what's for dinner?" I told her that I'd broken down and cried, telling him that I was a terrible mother, that having a baby had been a huge mistake, and that I could not do it anymore.

She took her head out of her hands and looked at me. Tears still streamed down her face, but I could tell she felt better. She knew she was not alone. She knew she was not a terrible mother.

"You need help," I told her gently.

We talked. We talked about the hardest time of day for her. I offered to take her baby off her hands during those times. I encouraged her to ask for help from others.

"I know it's hard to ask for help," I told her. "I never did it, but I should have. Sometimes I think back to those early days of parenthood and I'm just thankful to be alive. There were days when I seriously condsidered driving my car into a telephone pole. Don't let yourself get to that point. Parenthood is hard. Every mom knows that. There is not a single mother you know who has not been to this breaking point. Let other mothers help you."

She promised that she would.

We hugged and then parted ways. Suddenly, my website seemed so inconsequential. It also seemed so easy to solve. 

And so now, four days after the day my website got deleted, it's now back. I lost one post, but I can resurrect it. Mostly, I feel thankful. The loss of my site taught me so much about myself, my dreams, and life in general. It forced me to see what was important, and what was not. It encouraged me to try harder to reach my dreams, but, at that same time, not obsess about how hard I am trying.

Most important, it got me out of the house so I could reach out to someone who had a much greater need than I.

Alisa Bowman

www.projecthappilyeverafter.com