Sometimes even grown ups can succumb to peer pressure. How many of us read DIY and decorating blogs and sneer at the perfection we see there? I mean, seriously, how on earth do they post something EVERY.SINGLE.DAY!?? It’s maddening, when we are struggling to just keep dinner from burning and kids in clean clothes, right?

Facebook is a major perpetrator when it comes from feeling guilty about not being able to keep up with the Joneses. Our neighbor is always posting posting about her herb garden and posting photos of the glass of wine she drinks while making dinner … Our sister in law shares photos of her afternoons making art with her precious kids… sometimes it’s enough to make us cram a bushel basket of truffles into our faces and leave the laundry unfolded out of spite.

In this month of Thankfulness, I’m so thankful for the life I’ve led, and the fact that I have always been encouraged to listen to my own drummer by my family. My path has been a little unpredictable. I’ve headed in a direction and ended up at a dead end more than once. And I’m not saying that I have never felt inadequate or thought that there were things I should be doing. My sad attempts at creating scrapbooks for my daughters are still stashed in a drawer somewhere as evidence… I realized early on that I was not that mom.

Instead, I’m the mom that takes her kids walking in the woods looking for fairies. I’m the mom who haunts thrift stores for Halloween costume fodder. I’m the mom that forgets to hang the Advent calendar until a few days before Christmas (it’s a tradition in itself, really, the forgetting of the calendar).

I still have twinges of envy – I’m human – but I am thankful for the fact that most days I am super comfortable in my own skin. This skin has seen a lot, and experienced a lot. It has made me who I am, and who I am is good. There is dust on my wine bottles, and that’s okay with me.