☆★Today’s post is Day 13 of the #31WriteNow blog challenge. I’m posting a new entry every day for the month of August★☆

As I deal with daily life, I realize more and more how important our relationships are. We need a support group that helps us destress. As parents, we occasionally need a break. Without appropriate stress releasers, we become overstretched rubber bands ready to pop. And a popped rubber band is useless.

When I look back on my childhood, I remember the people that were around. I have memories of my grandparents, cousins, my mom’s friends. They were my mom’s village. They helped her out with me and my brother. They helped her out with her social life. They helped her out with school. They helped her get through life. They helped her from stretching till she popped. They helped her not be useless.

Life and parentdom look a lot different than what I remember they looked like for my mom. Which means I need a different kind of village than she had. But I need a village. I don’t want to be useless. Not to my kids. Not to my friends. Not to myself. So I’m working to build my village. Because it doesn’t just take a village to raise a child. It takes a village to sustain a person.

And thank you to those invaluable village people that have already claimed their territory in my life.