The first poem, “Happy,” was written during lots of upheaval, when my son was very young and the going-back-and-forth between mommy and daddy was not yet routine. It’s better now, but for a while there, every exchange was heartbreaking.

I don’t have any tips to impart to make that easier. It’s just hard on everyone.

It’s like the extreme version of ending an awesome play date. Any kid has a hard time leaving somewhere he’s having fun and feeling good.  Even if both homes are positive and loving, the transition can be challenging.

I think the best thing we can do for our kids in this situation is just acknowledge aloud that we understand it’s hard to leave one home and go to another. Instead of trying to convince them it’s not a big deal to get them to calm down, communicate that it IS a big deal.

Some things are hard. It doesn’t help to pretend they should be easy.

Photo by crystal

I wrote the second poem, “News Radio,” in October of 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi was killed and there was controversy about the treatment of his dead body. The ideas of revenge,  justice and how to treat people who have hurt you were swirling in my head.

I was wrestling with how to set an example for my son through the mess. And I was trying to figure out how to be a single parent, how to forgive, how to do life and pay my bills alone. And how to experience watching my son grow up and not have a companion to share that experience with.

That is one of the unexpected griefs of being a single parent – sometimes you just want someone to witness your amazing child being amazing alongside you.

I hope you enjoy the poems.  If you’re a new single parent, I hope you’re reminded that you’re not alone.

Happy 

He cries for me when he leaves
with his father, the back and forth

boomerang you never expect
your child will become. The sudden

woes of a two year old. The drama
of honey swirled incorrectly on oatmeal.

Should it have been doused
counter-clockwise? Three fires

have already been put out
in my house this morning and I speak

without metaphor, about the imagination
of a two year old who seems to know

where I break, where my patience ends
and exactly where it will hurt worst

if a plastic fire truck slams into my shin.
Then, completely human, he senses

a crack in our connection, tantrum
suddenly ends, sticky hands grasp any body

part in reach – the need to know
you are loved, even after

you’ve thrown your bowl of hot oatmeal
on the floor: “mommy, are you happy

because you love me?”

Photo by rickbucich

News Radio

I turn on the news. I turn
it off. I turn it on.

Off. I cry. I call
the lawyer to find out

when the divorce documents
will be ready to sign. I turn

on the news. I turn it off.
I text him a picture of our

son in a pumpkin patch.
I turn on the news.

I text him to say that our
son cried because

the little train was too loud
and squeaky, too scary. I turn

off the news. I turn it on.
Justice is only a word.

Cruel dictators die
rarely and how

does being cruel
to their corpse

make anything
better.

What have you learned about helping your child cope with overwhelming situations? Or what helps your children transition between parents?

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• Seasons in Parenting: the newborn baby months
• How to make next Christmas even better
• The basics of single parenting

My kids will be home, we’ll be traveling, and there are plenty of pool and lake days with my name on them, library book in tow. The same goes for my friends I podcast with, and so we’re gonna slow them down a bit. Just for a few months.

We record The Simple Mom Podcast (almost) weekly, and though I know several of you have said you wished they were daily, there’s actually quite a bit of work that goes in to producing them—not to mention juggling two mamas’ schedules to get in a good recording. I absolutely LOVE making them; they’re one of my favorite parts of this weird gig I do. I mean, who wouldn’t love a fabulous excuse to talk to six wonderful women on a regular basis?

But for the summer, we’re going to be producing them every other week, so that we can make the most of our summer with our families. I know, you can throw tomatoes at me. I think you’ll manage. (That was sarcastic, if you couldn’t tell. It’s not always obvious on the Internet.)

Here’s the recent podcasts from the past few months, if you’ve missed out on some:

• The Wayback, with cohost Megan Tietz

• Gauntlet Month, with cohost Kat Lee

• Father Hen, with cohost Hayley Morgan

• Compliment Sandwich, with cohost Lisa Leonard

• Be a Good You, with cohost Emily Freeman (a special episode dedicated entirely to the 5% collective wisdom we share on book publishing)

• Talk About Magic, with cohost Megan Tietz

• The Plate Whisperer, with cohost Myquillyn Smith (aka The Nester)

I’m so grateful that so many of you listen! They really are a joy to create.

And in the meantime, I’d love to hear what you’d like to hear us discuss on the podcasts! Any topics that pique your interest? You can always email me questions using the contact form, or feel free to toss out ideas here in the comments.

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
• Tsukihoshi - Children's shoes designed exclusively for the comfort and health of children's feet.
• Pine Bros. - Softish throat drops.
• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

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• Summer podcastin’, and the living’s easy…
• A Simple Holiday Season (the latest on The Simple Mom Podcast!)
• Start your laundry folding, because you’ve got podcasts…

I’ve been twisting my earrings in moments of stress since I was in the 3rd grade, standing next to mean old Mrs. Boyd’s desk reciting my multiplication tables. I would sway back and forth, sweating in my sneakers, twisting away on those earring studs while I stammered out three times one is three, three times two is six, three times three is three …

And so there I was three months ago, sweating in a hospital bed in the OR prep room, having found out only hours earlier that our twin baby boys were to be born that day, and naturally, I resorted to that familiar comfort of twisting my earrings.

I was just a few twists of the diamond studs in when I felt a small burst of panic. Ugh, I groaned. I was supposed to leave these at home. I can’t go into surgery with them in my ears.

It’s no surprise at all that I forgot to take them out. With very few exceptions, those diamond studs are in my earlobes around the clock. I’m not a fancy jewelry person. In fact, those earrings and my wedding ring are the only pieces of jewelry I own that have any worth to them at all. I don’t wear those earrings to be fancy. I wear them because in a very tangible way, they remind me of who I am.

My husband bought me those earrings for Christmas one year when we received an unexpected windfall of cash. He is ever the responsible one, the logical one, but he is also lavish and ridiculous in the ways he shows love to me, and though we were barely hobbling along financially at the time, he chose to take a bonus given to him and present to me a box of sparkly delight.

To this day, my mother wears a pair of diamond stud earrings in her ears, and when I was growing up, that always seemed like the most grown-up thing a woman could wear. And so when I put those earrings in, I had a little moment with myself. We married young and lived as poor college students for so long that even when we moved hours away from home, I still felt like a little girl pretending.

But then, the earrings. The earrings signaled a subtle shift in adulthood for me. They made me feel grown-up, that I was more than some imposter who shouldn’t be allowed to make choices about health insurance and 401ks. I was a real live grown-up woman.

Photo by Steve A. Johnson

The things we keep in our jewelry boxes and in the back of our closets and in dusty boxes under our beds, the things that have a Story, these are the tangible evidences of where we have come from and who we are becoming.

Whether our daily style is runway chic or kitchen comfy, we find there are certain things that will never be hauled off to Goodwill, things that we rarely allow little hands to touch, things whose worth can never be measured with mere dollars.

It’s why we wrap ourselves in our father’s old cabled cardigan when the phone call from the doctor is not the answer we had been praying for. It speaks to us of comfort and support in our most vulnerable moments.

It’s why we slip on the simple gold band that was once our grandmother’s wedding ring, the one that saw her through the Depression and the Dust Bowl and the death of our grandfather. We slip it on and find courage and inspiration in her strength as we sit down to tackle the project that will make or break our career.

It’s why we keep the boots that never left our feet that summer we spent backpacking after college. We wear them to drop off our children on the first day of school, knowing that no mountain hike could possibly be as hard as this is.

They are just things, sure. But they are also the illustrations and mile markers and memory stones that we gather up along the way, as our Story plays out year after year. They are more meaningful than mere fashion and they long outlive any trend.

And when we need them most, they are there to steady our trembling hands as they remind us of who we are.

What are the things that you keep because they speak a Story for you?

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• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
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• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

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• Dress yourself in story
• Fun jewelry from dollhouse miniatures
• Summer week of giveaways: Lisa Leonard Designs

Next year, my family and I will be traveling around the world.

We’ve wanted to do this for a very, very long time, so this isn’t a rash decision. Ever since we moved back from Turkey three years ago (has it really been three years already?), we knew we wanted to get back “out there” and explore. So the concrete is still very mushy on our plans (in fact, you could say we’re still mixing it), but we’re planning on traveling for the 2014-15 school year. So, a bit over a year from now.

I’ll be writing about our plans a bit more this next year, as we learn about places, glean advice from friends doing the same thing, and make global connections, but today, I thought I’d address one of the bigger questions I get. It’s this one:

Why?

(There’s also How? and Where?, but those are separate posts for another day.)

So, here’s why.

1. Because we can, and because we want to.

This is the overall reason why we’re going when we’re going. Kyle and I both have jobs we can do from anywhere, we’re debt-free, and our kids are young enough to still go with the flow. We’re saving up like mad right now, of course, and this isn’t going to even remotely be a high-falootin’ trip. We’re talking local guest houses, hostels, living rooms of friends, Craigslist apartments, and maybe even some camping.

One of our high values is freedom and autonomy, and that’s one of the main reasons we love working for ourselves. So while this lifestyle is still working for us, we want to take advantage of it. We’ll be working as we go, living out our family life on different spots on the globe.

2. Because our kids are young.

I know some people would argue the opposite—go when your kids are older, when they’d appreciate it more. And you know what? We very well may. Go again, that is.

But we like the idea of taking them while they’re young, when it’ll have a higher chance to form in them a worldview that’ll benefit them the rest of their lives. Giving our kids a global perspective is one of our highest priorities in our parenting, and yes, while that can still happen from our living room in the States, how much broader would their perspective be because of a trip we took while we could?

Our kids, in Paris back in 2009.

And I know Stephanie is taking her baby, but I like that our youngest will be 4-5 years old—no diapers, and able to carry his own backpack. So, our kids will be young, yes—but that’s nothing to stop us. We’ve traveled internationally with little kids before, and I adamantly believe it’s the fear of the unknown (How will my kids handle a long plane flight?) that holds many parents back from traveling more.

We’ll be homeschooling, of course (“roadschooling” would be more accurate here)—and can you imagine what kind of education this would be? “Kids, here’s a book about the Great Wall of China. And later today, let’s go climb it!” I’ll go in to more details on our schooling plan later, when I talk about the “how” of our trip.

3. Because it’s part of our job.

I don’t really talk about it online, but Kyle and I are also part of a non-profit organization that helps provide guest houses around the world for international non-profit workers who need a break. We know from first-hand experience that global workers—people doing amazing, life-changing things around the world—are easily prone to depression, anxiety, and burnout. Plus, they usually don’t make a lot of money and yet REALLY deserve a break, far more often than they take them.

So we provide houses where these people can find rest, without having to fly all the way back to their passport country. They’re run by people trained to help debrief from recent difficult situations, who can serve as a life coach, or who can simply provide meals and clean towels, and get out of the way so these guests can relax. It’s pretty awesome.

Anyway—on this trip, we’ll be visiting a number of our organization’s guest houses, just to check in on them and see how they’re doing. Kyle works in the home office here in the States (along with working for me on the blog here—so yep, he’s a busy guy), and we like to make sure these houses are visited by the main hub team every few years.

4. Because we may, just may, move back overseas.

We don’t really know about this one here, but we hope this trip will give us a lot of insight—we’re thinking and praying about moving back overseas. It’ll look a lot different than when we first lived in Turkey, including the fact that we want to divide our time between living abroad and back in the States (we want a home base back in our passport country, in other words). But if we did move overseas, it’d most likely be to open a guest house, so we’re going to explore whether that’s a good idea for our family—and also, where would be a good, needed location.

5. Because I’m writing another book.

What? I thought you just wrote one. Yep, I did, and it’ll be out early 2014—I can’t wait to tell you more about it soon!

But Thomas Nelson wanted me to write a second book, and I pitched to them the idea of writing about how different cultures around the world do some aspect of family life, and what we can all learn from each other. They liked it, so that’s what I’ll be doing, in addition to keeping this blog running while trekking the globe. I’ll be gathering stories from families worldwide, and collect them into a book that explores… something. Not quite sure yet. Hospitality? Parenting? I’m mulling over it.

Photo by ernop

I don’t pretend to think this book will be all-inclusive, expert-driven, or rich with anthropological wisdom. Really understanding a culture takes years, and we’ll be in different cultures for weeks, maybe months. My job in this book is simply to gather stories from families willing to share them, and then put words on paper.

So… this is the Big Fat Explanation of what we’ll be doing in a little over a year. We’ve got a lot of planning to do in the meantime, along with still living our stateside life. But as this long-awaited expedition draws ever near, it’s becoming and more and more of our dinnertime conversation. We’re excited, we’re humbled that it’s an option, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.

And also, this song has been in our heads a lot lately.

We’ve got a short list of not-to-miss places already, but I’m curious—where do you think we should go?

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• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
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• Around the world
• Rest, reflection, and renewal
• Thriving on intention, not busyness (and an announcement)

I distinctly remember this one evening after visiting some family friends late into the night, when I was soundly sleeping in the backseat, my head propped on the side of the car and my body rolled up in a self-made cocoon. I’m guessing I was about 8 or 9, and we had just pulled up into our driveway; my dad turned off the ignition and my mom gathered my younger brother, also sleeping, in her arms.

“Tsh. Tsh. Time to wake up. We’re home,” my mom said, and then she turned toward the house with her arms full. I wondered—if I sat still long enough, would one of my parents return to the car to carry me, too? Maybe they’ll think I’m sound asleep and didn’t hear them. Or maybe they’ll have pity on my too-big body and schlep my dead weight over their shoulder.

A few seconds passed of stillness and silence, and no one came back for me. This is when I realized: I was too big to be carried in any more. I was growing up, and part of that meant not getting to be a baby. Most of the time, that was cool. But at 11 p.m., when I wanted someone else to do the getting out, the walking up the driveway, the clothes changing, and the teeth brushing, I was bummed that I didn’t get an official memo when that part of my life ended. Somehow, I blinked and missed that phase between being small enough to be babied and big enough to now do some big things myself.

This still continues all the time in my life—the kids are in bed, the kitchen is a mess from dinner, and I wonder where the grownup is who wouldn’t mind cleaning it for me. The bills come, and no one but Kyle or myself can make sure they’re paid. If I want to do well in work, I have to crack open the laptop, make the necessary connections, and teach myself new things.

Slow and steady, I’m learning to be the boss of me.

I don’t mean that in an irresponsible, selfish way, where I raze down anyone in my way, or I disregard any form of authority in my life. I simply mean that part of maturity is owning up to the fact that I own my choices, my actions, and my ideas, and that I can’t blame them on anyone else.

And if you think about it, there’s a lot of freedom in this. In tandem with my husband, we can choose what to spend our money on, how to fill in the calendar boxes, and what to put in our fridge. If I choose to sleep in or wake up early… well, either one is my choice. I decide how to start my day.

This also means I have the freedom to say no to the things that just aren’t best for me and my family, and yes to the things that are. Being a grownup means we technically could exit the freeway and head to the airport to board the next flight, bound for wherever. But because we love our kids and want them to eat, we choose to spend that allocated money on groceries instead. There’s a time and place for the airport, of course, but we have a clan to nurture, and those needs take priority.

I’m the boss of me. No one else forces me to make my choices. There’s a lot of responsibility in that. But it’s also pretty darn freeing.

How will you be the boss of you this week?

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
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• Be the boss of you
• He didn’t make me fast, but I still run for His pleasure
• Simple home, simple life?

The readers who’ve won a copy of Freefall to Fly are: Kristi, Kelli, Catherine, Christina, Kristi, Dawn, Kristin, Laura, Christie, and Katie. Congrats to the ten of you! Look for an email and get back to us as soon as you can.

“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” -Bill Watterson

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
• Tsukihoshi - Children's shoes designed exclusively for the comfort and health of children's feet.
• Pine Bros. - Softish throat drops.
• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

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• Weekend links
• Weekend Links
• Weekend Links

Is history necessary? I mean, it’s called history…it already happened. We can’t change anything about it. Shouldn’t our kids focus on subjects like math and science to get them ready for the future, instead of reliving the past?

Whoa…keep your tar and feathers in your hands and hear me out for a second.

This isn’t actually a post about school, education, or history. It’s a post about you. And me. And the power of our personal history.

We want our kids to learn about history because hindsight is 20/20. The wisdom we glean from the past is priceless for the future.

It’s true in the world as a whole and it is also true in our own personal lives. Yet how many of us regularly take stock of our personal history?

Oh, we have scrapbooks (if you’re like me, half finished scrapbooks) and we know when we were born, where we went to school, and a few stories along the way. But if we can learn so much from decades and centuries past, can’t we also learn from the recent past?

What can we learn from last year, last week, and yesterday?

Experts talk a lot about life planning, goal setting, and dreaming big. They talk about bucket lists, weekly plans, and to-do lists.

It’s fun (usually) to plan and dream, but we only get half the value of planning if we don’t also take the time to review.

Leadership expert John Maxwell takes one weekend each year to systematically go through his ENTIRE calendar for the previous year and evaluate how he spent his time. He reviews each appointment and task listed in his day planner from January to December.

Now, before we consider that crazy and a waste of time, let’s take a look at what John Maxwell has accomplished in his life.

He has authored over 60 books, hit the NYT Best Seller list many times, started several leadership training organizations that serve in more than 80 countries, is one of the most sought-after business speakers, and has been married for over 40 years.

If “wasting” an entire weekend each year yields those kinds of result…sign me up.

But Maxwell doesn’t stop there, he takes dedicated time each week to review the week and time each day to review the previous twenty-four hours.

Football coaches watch game film. Businesses review sales charts. Even fast food restaurants ask us to fill out “How Did We Do” surveys so that they can evaluate how well their plans matched up with our experience.

Maybe it would be worth our time to look back on our day, week, or month to figure out what went wrong and what went right and how we can adjust our course for tomorrow.

Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different outcome.”

Today, I challenge you to study your own history. Make a date with yourself each week and review how your plans and your reality of the previous seven days lined up. If something went wrong, where did it go wrong? How can you try again this next week?

Learning from history doesn’t need to end when we close a textbook or graduate from school. It can happen every day as we forge a new path in our personal growth.

Have you ever thought of having a weekly review time? What lessons have you learned this week or even today?

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• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
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• Harness the power of your personal history
• Weekend Giveaway: Plan to Eat
• Weekend Giveaway: Treed

But since my typical depressive state was feeling…. nothing, I wasn’t surprised, because “surprise” is a feeling, isn’t it? And so I went through about two years, off and on, feeling nothing more than something, waiting for something or someone to pull me out of my cloud and make to my usual self.

It’s now been about three years since I was in the thick throes of depression, though I remember the odd, in between-like state as though it were yesterday, and I’m fully aware that those who’ve been depressed before have a higher chance of becoming depressed again—meaning, it’s fully part of my life in some way. And because those dealing with depression are dear to my heart, I love reading words from someone who “gets” what it feels like. If she packages it in a beautiful book that’s perfect for giving to those who need a dose of encouragement? Even better.

Rebekah Lyons’ first book, Freefall to Fly, isn’t only about depression, but it’s a very real part of her story. And because this book is about her story, her words are a gift of comfort to those who’ve had that freefall feeling, not knowing what’s up.

Rebekah tells her tale of moving from the suburban south to the heart of New York City, and what it feels like to be yanked out of everything normal and comfortable and into constant newness and culture shock.

It forced her to answer big questions about her life, like Why was I put on earth?, How do I turn suffering into something beautiful and useful?, and Is this really the way God intended life to be? And in finding answers to her questions, she found healing.

The book is about finding meaning by taking risks, whatever those risks may look like for you.

The end of the book provides space and open-ended questions for the reader to think through her own life as well, making Rebekah’s personal story an application for anybody. Why are you on earth?

Giveaway

Rebekah is giving TEN Simple Mom readers a copy of Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning. To enter, simply leave any comment on this post! (If you’re reading this via email, hop over to the site to leave a comment there.)

Something Fun

If you buy Rebekah’s book, you can enter your information here (scroll down), and you’ll receive three additional gifts: an original chalk art print by artist Dana Tanamachi, a TOMS $5 gift card, and a Freefall to Fly digital soundtrack. Pretty cool!

This giveaway is now closed. Check back on Saturday, May 18 – we’ll announce the winners then.

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
• Tsukihoshi - Children's shoes designed exclusively for the comfort and health of children's feet.
• Pine Bros. - Softish throat drops.
• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

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• Freefall to Fly
• How to live a better story
• The art film phase of an epic adventure

Earlier this month, we were both getting the springtime itch to do a whole-foods cleanse.  But since we were having such success with the month-long model, we decided to weave cleansing into our healthy habit for May.  I reflected on these two models of cleansing and thought I’d share a little insight as to why you may choose one over the other.

Why Choose a Short-Term, Whole-Foods Cleanse

The benefit of a short term cleanse (which generally lasts between 3-7 days) is that you focus on detoxing your body through a high intake of cleansing foods over a short period of time.  It’s perfect when you need an “about face” in terms of how you’ve been eating.  A nourishing cleanse breaks the pattern of poor eating in a swift and powerful way.

Because it is just a few days, it is often not long enough to trigger a lot of psychological cravings around the foods you are avoiding.  A short-term whole-foods cleanse is a great kick start for seasonal transitions, weight loss plateaus, or times when you feel in a rut with poor food choices.

Why Choose a Month-Long Healthy Eating Challenge

A month-long healthy eating challenge is a different way to support your vibrant living goals.  Instead of crafting exactly what you will eat over a small stretch of days, you’ll focus on just one area of your diet you want to bring in and re-establish healthy habits around.

Without a doubt, the key to our month-long challenges have been their simplicity.  So when I began looking through my cleanse course material, I decided the best habit we could establish for the month was simply to increase the amount of fresh produce we ate each day.

To keep this as simple as possible, we decided our daily goal was 8 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Now, personally, I wanted to create qualifiers to keep me in line, so I added, for myself, that I would emphasize fruits and vegetables which were excellent cleansers by nature and particularly good foods for the springtime.

The month-long challenge is a great choice if your priority is to bring a specific healthy eating practice into your life and give it enough time to establish firmly into your daily habits.

Photo by mhaller1979

Your Body Remembers How Good Healthy Food Feels!

I have been floored by how different I already feel only 7 days into this challenge.  Of course,  I shouldn’t be so surprised- I know how much a diet high in fruits and vegetables increases your feelings of calm, clarity and energy…but my body had forgotten.  Kind of like exercise.  You know in your head it is good for you, but you get powerfully reminded of just how good when you actually get out there and do it!

Tap Into the Power of “Crowding it Out” to Avoid Cravings

Many of us have a long history of dieting, and as soon as we begin to think we are restricting our food choices all sorts of psychological alarms start to go off.

With a month-long challenge the only focus is getting your quota of fresh fruits and veggies in everyday (you are not focusing on what you can’t eat at all).  In this way, you begin to experience the power of “crowding it out”- where all the good stuff that you are bringing in really does leave very little room for the junk.

Either way, cleansing foods are a fantastic way to usher in the spring and get you back into feeling more vitality and well-being- whether they come in a short-term or month-long model.

On May 20 I’ll be teaching a free webinar called The Ultimate Road Map to Your Whole Body-Whole Life Cleanse.  If you are interested in learning a whole new way to think about the power of cleansing in your life, this would be a great webinar to attend.  It’s free to sign up, just click here.

Have you ever tried a cleanse? Tell us about it, the good, bad or the ugly!

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
• Tsukihoshi - Children's shoes designed exclusively for the comfort and health of children's feet.
• Pine Bros. - Softish throat drops.
• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

© 2008-2013 Simple Living Media, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Simple Mom subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please contact hello@simplemom.net to let us know. Thanks.

• Which is the best springtime cleanse for you?
• How to find true freedom with food
• Real Food Cleansing Guide: the winners!

By far, the easiest way to keep up with blogs is to subscribe to them—it’s free, you don’t have to constantly check to see if there’s something new, and if you want to click over and read on the actual site, you can—the link comes to you, in whatever inbox you use to receive the blog’s feed. (“Feed” is fancy web talk for frequently updated content, if you were ever too afraid to ask.)

And like many of you, I used Google Reader for years, and was shocked to hear its ultimate demise by July 2013. So I started exploring, found my new favorite way to subscribe, and now I can’t imagine ever going back to Reader, even if it were sticking around.

So consider this your primer for how to subscribe to blogs—whether you’ve never subscribed to a blog before, or whether you subscribe to hundreds and are looking for a new place to do it.

There are essentially two ways to subscribe to a blog—via a feed reader (more on this in just a sec), and via email. If you don’t want to manage a second inbox, subscribing via email is the way to go. That way, your favorite blogs come to you in your email inbox, which you check regularly, anyway.

(For this blog, you can enter your email address in the left-hand sidebar, or below, at the end of each post.)

Depending on your email client, you can also create filters and tags to send all your subscriptions to a file and bypass your inbox, thereby creating a lineup of feeds in one place, much like your own personal feed reader. It’s a great option.

The other option is to use a secondary feed-reading client, such as Google Reader—except that Reader is going the way of the dinosaurs. So if you’d like to know where you migrate your blog feeds, might I suggest what I now use?

Feedly

I feel like i need to start with this disclaimer: I’m in no way associated with Feedly. I’m just a user who loves their service.

When you head to Feedly, you’ll first see this screen:

If you already use Google Reader, click on “Connect to Google Reader.” Voila—your feeds should have seamlessly migrated. Hooray!

If you’re just now subscribing to feeds, create an account. Then, start subscribing. On the right side, you’ll see a magnifying glass icon. Click on that, then add a blog:

Then click on the plus sign next to the blog’s feed, and it’ll ask you what to name the feed and where to put it (more on folders in a sec).

There you go—you just subscribed to a blog!

Now, when you head to Feedly, you’ll see a personalized screen, like this:

And if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see this:

It’s all your feeds, shown by most current. BUT—you can organize your feeds by topic, helping you read according to your mood and what you’re after:

You can read all your blog subscriptions at one time by clicking on your folder’s name, such as my “Paleo” folder above.

Or, you can toggle each folder, found in the left sidebar, and you’ll see all your subscriptions listed individually. Then you can read just one blog at a time:

I love Feedly’s clean, simple interface. I don’t miss Google Reader one bit.

The mobile app

Feedly’s also got a great app, making it easy to read blogs while I’m waiting in the carpool line.

You can read your blog subscriptions in order of publication, or also by your folders.

There are other feed readers, too. Laura Tremaine recently wrote about her switch to BlogLovin’, though her reasons for using that service are my reasons for using Feedly (I didn’t experience the “Ikea-ness” of Feedly that she describes). There are others out there, too.

So, your takeaway?

1. If you like keeping up with blogs, subscribe to them—it’s an easy way to keep up with latest posts, and it’s free.

2. Subscribe to blogs via email if you don’t want a separate inbox. That way, they’ll come to you wherever you check your email.

3. Subscribe to blogs via reader if you’d like a clean interface you can organize according to your needs. I use Feedly, others use BlogLovin’, and there are more out there.

4. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Simple Mom, why not give it a whirl? No pressure, of course, but we publish new posts Monday-Saturday, and we do our best to keep them short and useful. Head here to subscribe via email (or just use the spot at the bottom of this post), and here via reader. And it’s always free.

Your turn—how do you read your favorite blogs?

CURRENT SPONSORS:

• Plan to Eat - Meal planning made simple.
• MightyNest - Helping create healthy homes.
• Tsukihoshi - Children's shoes designed exclusively for the comfort and health of children's feet.
• Pine Bros. - Softish throat drops.
• The Confident Mom - 2013 - the year to get organized.
• Every Breath I Take - Virtual yoga studio.

© 2008-2013 Simple Living Media, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Simple Mom subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please contact hello@simplemom.net to let us know. Thanks.

• How to subscribe to blogs (Or, why you shouldn’t panic about Google Reader’s demise)
• Subscribing to Blogs 101 : the why, the how, & the where
• Swap your digits with other moms – in style