"Being a mother is discovering strengths you didn't know you had and dealing with fears you never knew existed."

          To all the struggling moms out there, whether it be a financial, emotional, physical, or a sanity-breaking / all-around kind, here's to us. The real, unnoticed and overly underrated (not to mention UNDERPAID) heroes of society.

        While others wake up and rush off to work or school, we get up for chores and for watching over the kids, making sure the house is in order and the laundry attended to.

        While others get the weekend off and catch up on sleep or outings or friends, we.. Wait.. what exactly is a weekend again?

        While others drive around the city meeting clients and bosses looking all chic and professional, we drive (commute even--pollution plus overcrowded spaces and all) to the market, grocery, bill payment centers, or simply walk up to sari-sari stores and carinderias, in either towel cover-ups, just-got-out-of-bed hair, house clothes that never really accentuate your curves and good angles.

        While others have coffee breaks, lunch breaks, dinner outs, or office parties, we barely have a break, let alone a bathroom escape because the second you stop looking at your kids, they go scream, scatter, spill, or break something. They will follow you everywhere, anywhere, anytime.

        While others have their lives moving forward, even gaining friends as perks of being exposed to extra-curricular gatherings and events whenever or wherever it's held, the norm conforms us to stay at home and be at home.  Especially if with kids not old enough to be on their own because being seen in bars or gimmick hot spots at night (the only time the kids are finally asleep and chores get done, mind you) automatically labels you as a careless, irresponsible homemaker.

        While their wallets' content increase over time, ours remain a fixed amount. Spent only with the family's needs and putting aside our personal wants.  No holiday pay. Overtime pay. Bonus pay. Double pay. What pay?



                                                BUT THEN AGAIN...


        While they are piled up with paperwork, we are piled up with toys and kisses from our little ones.

        While they have keyboards, tools, or loads to hold, we have beautiful little cheeks and noses to poke. A bundle of joy, a treasure worth a thousand fold.

        While they raise issues, complaints and deadlines, we raise precious gifts from heaven and watch them reach great heights as they grow older and wiser each day.

        While they hold meetings and seminars or even presentations with speeches to win the boss over, we hold the teachings and traditions passed on from generation to generation in every moral value we instill in them.

        While they are responsible for office keys, car keys, employee-only keys to specific areas in a building, we hold the key to our husband's hearts and our children's tomorrow.

        With every beating comes a lesson to learn, wisdom to gain.  A heart of a mother is the toughest and most fragile of them all for it can withstand blows men will never understand and still have so much room for all the love in the world to occupy it.  So with every Darn It! has an I'll Know Better Next Time after. Every tear has a smile to cover after.  Every heartbreak, a stronger will to fight.  Every You're The Best, Mom! comes a lifetime worth of purpose and sense of pride. :)