Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

MOMMA’S MINDFULNESS MEMO

Momma’s Mindful Recipe: Grace. Grit. Guts. and Four Days Late

A Four-day Late Memo About Caregiving, Peppers, Forgotten Gardens, House Repairs, Hard Lessons, and The Discipline Of Coming Back While Everything Is Still Banging.

By The Momma Dom by Katie M. Webb

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💭 AI transparency ~ I, of course, used the AI to image and carry out my vision of my photos for this article. I was a big user of clip art in the early days of AOL. Trust me, they are a pain in the rumpus, and they never come out right. Look fast, you might find an extra toe or two.

Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

I am four days late. There it is. It’s not charming that I’m late. I am not fashionable late like a debutante on the night of joy and glee. I am not even “I meant to do that,” late with a tiny smile of mischievous, forgive-me-adorableness.

I am just tardy. There it is. Four days late for a weekly memo I stated I was bringing back. Shame on me.

A writer knows what that means to their awareness of themselves and their talents. You make time to work out a thought and put it down. You protect the work and keep it real. You show up when the idea is still half-dressed, and the sentence is acting like it was raised by wild boars, tearing your brain apart.

You do not wait for perfect conditions, because perfect conditions are a myth told by people with quiet houses and countertops that have never seen a medical bill, had a person requiring your input and time, phone calls with insurance leaders, or your own new healthcare needs.

I know the rules surrounding writers who still have adult children at home, work-at-home husbands, illness still looming in every conversation, your own trials with autoimmune diseases, and houses that seem to want to be part of your every breath.

I also know life does not pause because a woman has a publishing schedule or a slim consideration of one she wants to try and achieve.

Cancer does not care what day I meant to post, although the cancer patient has taken a much greater role in his own life, and Momma has been finding more time for herself in that regard.

Momma has a husband who needs rest, but does not fit neatly inside a planner square. My own body with medical needs does not raise its hand and ask permission before interrupting the afternoon.

A house with old damage and new repairs does not wait until the final paragraph before it starts to demand noise, money, attention, and all available patience. So this week’s mindful recipe begins with the bitter, honest, owned truth.

I was late. I was also still here a few days late. That matters; I showed up, however late it was, but I showed.

Grace was the first ingredient this week. Not the flimsy kind of grace like a dainty princess. Not the excuse dressed up as spiritual maturity. Real grace, the kind that lets a person come back without turning the piece into a courtroom. This article does not erase the missed days or the time served for being upset it wasn’t four days early. This reminded Momma that a delayed sentence is not a dead one.

Grit came next, and it did not arrive with theme music or a formal invitation announcing formal dress, drinks, and snacks on the terrace at midnight.

It looked like me sitting at a too-tall TV tray, cutting peppers while Yellowstone played in the background. I had one plate for seeds, as propagation is the way of The Momma. I had peppers divided for two jobs, as humans have different needs.

Some were going into salad. Some were headed for the pan with onions and garlic for dinner, Steak Em’s.

My husband was down for a nap as the days demand extra rest to make it through. Mr. Fidgit E. was asleep beside me and hoping for a fallen veggie. The room was quiet in a way that almost felt suspicious, like peace had wandered into the wrong house and decided to stay before anyone asked for identification and proof of citizenship.

It was not fancy in the way the moment appeared. It was better than fancy, and I wouldn’t change it. It just worked in a way our life doesn’t define peaceful in the last few years.

I was cooking for my family in my own disabled way. I was drinking water as I went, out of my pink cup with the multicolored braided rope handle. I was remembering my medicine and also doing it on time. The last few years have scattered that routine and I am glad to reinvent the monotony of it.

I was using the setup that made sense for the body I actually live in, not the imaginary one women are constantly sold back to themselves with matching bowls, clean counters, and a nervous system sponsored by silence. The one where they say, “I will get back onto my own routine one day.”

That is where mindfulness found me and told me to be serene and peaceful. It collided with me, not on a mat somewhere at the park with others doing the sleeping dog and pretzel with cheese, on the bench, all those great positions of Zen.

I found it not inside a candlelit ritual and not in some perfect pause where everything smells like eucalyptus, and nobody needs anything but the hugs of the others in the circle of togetherness. It truly found me in pepper seeds, in the knife that cut the onions in two ways, the TV tray that tipped and nearly sent my onion flying.

Someone say a prayer for me, I decided to feed people from the place I could reach. That is no less sacred because it was ordinary. Sometimes, ordinary is where the soul finally stops performing and shows its true face. Momma lives her life with that face, Katie’s, and she won’t sleep if she thinks mediocrity is running the show. She is just like that.

So chasing something more, I moved to the pool room, and another lesson was waiting in the dirt. Why wouldn’t it be in dirt? I just had to see what had occurred, why I was having health issues.

The garden had been badly forgotten. Some plants were fading in color. Some were holding on by their tiny green lives. Others were thriving with the nerve of things that refuse to explain themselves but show up loud, asking why no one wants to stand next to them.

A few were sitting in shadows I had not understood as shadows until I finally saw where the light had failed them and the darkness had dressed them up in full bloom and color and sent them out on the streets to see what they would bring in.

I jest, of course. Plant hookers and weed pimps sound like a new cell phone game just waiting to grace our screens with clickbait commercials in between levels.

There were dirt beds that had exploded with growth. Some potatoes should have been working on growing downward by now, learning the quiet underground discipline of roots, but alas, they were neglected.

There was bamboo sitting in water that was barely a quarter of an inch deep, and yet the roots were alive, bright, stubborn, and completely uninterested in my opinion.

That bamboo preached without permission and kept on going without apologies.

It did not have enough water by any reasonable standard. It did not have ideal conditions according to the gardening sites I go to. It had almost nothing, and still something in it had decided to grow, what a marvel.

I am not romanticizing neglect, Sproutlings. Nobody should have to thrive on scraps and call it character. Exhaustion does not become noble just because we survived it, but there was a truth in that image I could not ignore. Momma saw a lesson of understanding, one of empathy.

Some things remain alive in places we assumed were finished. Some roots form before we are ready to admit anything was still trying. Sometimes the work does not declare that the whole darn growing container is lost. Sometimes the work is to look closer and ask what needs water, what needs light, what needs pruning, and what has already done all it can do.

That garden had been part of my prayers for my son’s cancer battle. I wanted to clean everything as it has become what a garden becomes, a mess of dirt and pottery. Momma wanted order, care, renewal, and something living to answer back to me.

In the way things happen in this family, my hope for us all became another mess to manage, another room full of dirt, pots, water glasses, half living things, struggling things, thriving things, and one woman trying to decide whether she was cleaning or being taught by nature and the universe itself that life is a mess and dirt and clutter and “Oh look at the flowers that art coming up, they are purple and so delicate.”

It was probably that both the universe and nature must always have their say, don’t they? I’d call them loudmouths, but I don’t want them reminding me of what a mouth can do to others. That leads me to the third ingredient, guts, and that one really stung.

Guts are great when you are running into the fire with your hair ablaze and your mouth hollering and a whooping up the night, until the morning when you see what is still smoldering in the overheated way.

I wrote about a series of childhood restaurants. I stripped it down to the bare bones. I saw the corporate machinery inside the nostalgia, as most are becoming privy to these days. I saw how wonder gets packaged to small impressionable eyes, franchised across our nation, sold in that pre-packaged happiness way, and handed back to us with a toy in the bag and a song in the air that we sing by heart.

[embed]The Momma Dom Musings ~ I Was Raised on Stranger Danger, Happy Meals, and Paper Crowns America Warned Me About One Kind Of Threat While Inviting Another One To Lunchmedium.com

I wrote from that place because the observation was real; we were conditioned to loyalty to menu items and jingles with a toy and a mascot attached. Then it landed hard on someone in my family. That mattered because this person helped give me those memories.

So the writer in me had to sit down hard and listen with my whole heart.

There is a difference between challenging the corporations that won’t even notice my meager opinion and bruising the person who loved you in the memory. I can question the big company machines without erasing the hand that took me there and gave me the memories.

I can recognize the marketing without pretending the joy was fake as it wasn’t. I can critique the system while still honoring the meal, the outing, the person, and the child who sat there, believing the moment was magic. It was, is, and will always be the happy memories. My first set of Chicken Nuggets, the smells of the places, the great outfits and hats they wore.

That is not a small lesson, I don’t want to grow up and that’s a fact, my memories are my history. My adulthood thoughts, well, those are things that run amok on my older thoughts and experiences. I am a blogger; you figure it out, I can’t. :-)

Readers do not automatically know the thoughts behind the sentences. They do not know who is being protected under the jokes as they are thrown. They do not know which parts are sacred and not discussed, which parts are being questioned, and which person is still loved while the larger structure gets dragged into the light and set on fire.

If I do not build that bridge for myself, I cannot blame people for not crossing it. A sharp sentence still needs a railing to help advance. Guts is not only saying the brave thing. Guts is admitting when the brave thing needed more care.

I recognize and will explain a bit of context to the point. I can do this.

While all of this was happening, the house decided it wanted a larger speaking role in our rendition of Our House, The Musical. The minute I mentioned I was going to go into my office today, the whole house started to get shot up and bombed.

Bang.

Bark.

Bang.

Grrrrr.

Thud.

Growl.

Bang.

Bark.

Bang.

Arooooo.

All day long.

This was not a gentle repair sound, folks. It was not the polite tap of progress on a roof of need. This was full living room percussion. This was the kind that does not simply enter the eardrum but climbs into the nervous system and makes everyone have PTSD of noise anticipation.

I was trying to write about mindfulness while the walls carried on like someone trapped a hardware store inside a metal bucket. That is when I remembered that real mindfulness does not wait for silence. It does not require the spa version of life to arrive wearing linen pants and carrying cucumber water, asking if you would like to see Sven or Hildegard.

Real mindfulness is noticing the pounding and deciding not to become it but to incorporate it.

I will be honest. There were moments when the pounding sounded like a hammer and a nail type of fairness. Some days, matching the emotional pitch of demolition feels like the only honest response available to the insanity of being on the receiving end of the project’s tribulations.

Instead, I kept working, hoping to prevail at something.

I made templates, 5 of them to be honest. I adjusted the article pieces that needed to be. I thought through formats for my different parts of my writing. I ate again. I drank my flavored water. I took my diabetes medicine and my sore arms and legs from the shots. I stayed with the day even though the day had clearly not been raised with manners.

The basement itself was another issue entirely, also another world unto itself.

It was damaged in last year’s flood, and I have not had the energy to come down and unpack everything before now. So the lower level became a physical archive of “we will deal with this later,” which, to Momma, is a phrase that always sounds reasonable, until later stands in front of you holding a bill, and Momma is the only one with the checkbook.

There were boxes, clutter, evidence of the flood pack out, and the kind of , “It’s all right here. Right!” chaos that does not feel symbolic until it absolutely does feel like the only symbol is a chain of years of packed stuff around your neck. Chains of the clutter of memories and menus and tiny first shoes and lost teeth, the tooth fairy collected, DNA in a weird ritual of American parents and dentists.

Do you give the baby’s teeth back? What do they do with them? Is there a place to dispose of this strange collection of body parts by parents?

Upstairs had its own complaints due to the roof because an ice dam caused leaks in my house. The living room cannot be properly redone until the roof problem is handled, because fixing the inside while water still has a pathway in is not a repair. It is a decorating choice in denial.

So now that the roof is being addressed. The gutters are part of the conversation as well. Gutter guards entered the plan because Katie knows that with the mature trees on her property, the gutters are already hosting leaves to the dances the rains show. Apparently, once repairs start, the costs increase as they fix one thing to find another.

While TheFatherDom agreed, which was comforting and frightening at the same time. When the handsome, practical man in your life agrees to spend more money, you know the problem has crossed from “maybe later” into “we are not doing this twice.”

I do not know where all this money is coming from. I only know water has already had too much access to my life, and I am no longer interested in giving it a forwarding address. Basement, living room, roof, please be the last of the repairs needed in life for a long while.

In the middle of this week, I also took another class, including work around the executive personal assistant role, and it opened a door I did not expect in myself.

That kind of work is not simply answering emails and remembering appointments. It is invisible architecture. It is time protection, communication, discretion, document handling, prioritizing, anticipation, and knowing what matters now, compared to what is only noise, wearing a blazer.

That class helped me see the structure behind people who lead. The bigger the work, the more the requirements ask for other than inspiration and creativity.

A person running anything serious needs systems. A business needs repeatable processes. A writer with a growing body of work needs formats that can hold ideas without flattening them or hiding the first intention behind the thoughts. A caregiver with limited energy needs tools that reduce decision fatigue before exhaustion turns every task into a mountain.

So, readers, that is why I started setting up templates. It was not because I wanted my writing to become cold and routine to death. I do not want every article to sound alike, because I am trying to turn The Momma Dom into a real, honest non-factory with my royal purple trim.

I am making templates because my life is busy, interrupted often, medically complicated by three different people’s lives, emotionally layered daily by the day’s boggle, and full of real people who need real things from The Momma.

A template is not the article at all. A template is just the counter space to roll it out efficiently. It gives the ingredients somewhere to go.

I have a set format for each kind of piece, or at least I am building one. A mindful recipe has one shape it takes on. A culture essay has another and often travels around a bit. A business post needs a different doorway with more rigidity. A closing invitation has its own job of appeal. A banner has to carry the title, subtitle, identity, and reason to stop scrolling before the reader ever reaches the first paragraph.

Until I change something major, these forms carry the hope that they will help me move faster. Knowing myself, I may absolutely change something major, but for now, the structure looks keen and holds hope.

It lets me sit down and ask what happened this week, what lesson it carried, what image belongs with it, where the reader needs context, and what line should follow them home. That is not cheating, that is future mercy for me. It is a way of helping the tired version of me before she arrives, the same and unchanged.

The class gave me language for something I had already been learning the hard way. Systems are not the enemy of creativity. They are what keep creativity from spilling across the floor every time the basement starts banging.

This is where the lemming lesson came in for me. Not actual lemmings, of course. Those poor creatures have suffered enough reputation damage from human metaphor. I mean the herd instinct that hits writers, creators, caregivers, business builders, and women trying to become something while still holding everything together.

They say in the books the formula is to post more, promote faster, build the websites, make the codes, create the banners, and finish the darned article. Learn in class, cook the food, clean the garden, fix the roof, handle the basement, care for the husband, care for the kid, remember the medicines, grow the brand, protect the family, stay visible, stay consistent, stay interesting, stay alive. Oh, stay relevant and make sure to be authentically you.

That kind of momentum can look like purpose from a distance. Up close, it can be panic in an orange construction uniform while trying to stay under the radar and not be noticed.

Mindfulness is the moment I stop mid-motion and ask who decided this direction deserved my obedience. Movement is not always wisdom wrapped up with a bow. Consistency is not always healthy, and sometimes you need to put away the townhouse crackers when you are up late typing in your outline and thesis.

Pressure is not always purpose and shouldn’t always be a flex. Sometimes the disciplined choice is simply refusing to sprint just because the crowd started running. Sometimes, the faithful act is adding water to the bamboo, but knowing the ones you put in dirt are technically naughty, as they are not supposed to be done this way in the wild, they are aggressive and take over.

Glad they are taking over the glass vase with the glasses that make it look like a weird, angry history teacher with a bamboo hair piece.

Sometimes the business move is building a format that saves time later, right? Sometimes the creative breakthrough is realizing that four days late still counts when the work returns with truth in its hands.

So here is the recipe for the week, Sproutlings.

• Take one missed deadline and add grace until it becomes a return instead of shame.
• Add one TV tray, one knife, one plate of pepper seeds, one resting husband, one sleeping dog, one glass of water, and medicine remembered before the day gets away.
• Fold in a neglected garden, but do not rush to condemn it. Separate what is gone from what is still trying. Move the shadowed things toward light. Give the rooted things enough water to stop surviving on drama.
• Add one painful writing lesson and let it sharpen the craft without hardening the heart. Criticize the machine, but do not wound the person who gave you the memory.
• Stir in construction noise until patience begins to smoke, then lower the heat and refuse to become the banging.
• Add repaired but box cluttered, one flood-damaged basement, one roof problem, gutters, gutter guards, and the financial terror of responsible home repair.
• Pour in one class that teaches how much invisible structure holds serious work together.
• Add formats for each article type, because a woman with a complicated life deserves a system that helps her come back without starting from bare dirt every time.
• Season with grace, grit, and guts.
• Serve four days late. Still warm. Still honest. Still mine.

A life does not have to be clean to become a recipe. It only has to be witnessed honestly and swallowed the way it tastes.

So if you are reading this and you know how writers actually make money on the internet, talk to me in the comments. Not vague money. Not “just be consistent” money. Not “build a funnel” money from someone whose funnel appears to be selling funnels to people who need funnels.

I mean real things about writing. Tell me what works.

• Tell me whether worksheets make sense.
• Tell me whether templates should come first.
• Tell me whether a paid newsletter is worth building.
• Tell me whether coffee donations matter.
• Tell me whether digital downloads, caregiver packets, mindful recipe cards, wall sheets, or small classes are where this should go next.

I am over here building The Momma Dom’s structured world while the roof is being handled, the basement is being used again, the garden is confessing neglected truths, the peppers are multiplying, the husband is napping, the dog is sleeping, the medicine is being taken on time, the templates are being tested, and the internet keeps acting like money is hiding behind a button I have not found yet.

So yes, buy me a coffee if that is your thing. I have an account somewhere that allows coffee tips. I will need to add that “George” is out of his dark liquid.

This week was not clean, but it was mine, and somehow, under the banging, leaking, cutting, cooking, learning, writing, worrying, laughing, and surviving, I made a recipe out of it, and it isn’t half bad.

If this memo finds you four days late, one garden behind, one pepper seed away from remembering yourself, or one honest sentence short of coming back, stay with me.

Clap for grace. Highlight the grit. Comment with the gut truth you had to learn the hard way. Follow for more Momma Dom memos from the messy middle.

Pure. Love. Energy. Grace. Grit. Guts. Show Up. Stand By. Defend.

The Momma Dom by Katie M. Webb Ambassador and Writer for New Literary Society

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Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

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Photo and concept by The Momma Dom and her A.I. Program

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