There are Man-Eating Sharks in Every Ocean – But We Still Swim

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Allstate for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Motherhood is a challenge, to put it mildly… Whether you’re a first-timer figuring out how to adjust to life with a new baby, dealing with the toddler “it’s mine!!” phase, dealing with stubborn teens – or maybe doing all three at the same time! – being a mom can be exhausting. But, even with all of the craziness, we all still decided to become mothers anyway. Why? Because in between the chaos, it’s still a beautiful adventure…

There are Man-Eating Sharks in Every Ocean – But We Still Swim

I absolutely love, love, love this campaign from Allstate. And it’s so incredibly relevant to me as a mom. Yes, every ocean has sharks that could devour me or my family – yet that doesn’t stop me from planning our yearly trips to the beach. Why? Because the horrible things in life really are rare. And that’s something that I totally need to remember every time I read a horrible story in the news… Things like the Ohio girls who were kidnapped and held for 10 years. You hear stories like that, and your heart just breaks – because when you become a mother, so many things change. I have a favorite quote that sums it up really well…

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new. – Rajneesh

This quote has a few meanings to me… There’s the personal side, where having a child changes you. Makes you better by bringing out your best qualities, by making you want to build even more good qualities. It makes you realize you’re more capable than you thought you were. And that unconditional love you give and get is the greatest thing that happens in life. Then there’s the bigger part – this new place that grows in your heart. The part that hurts every time any child, anywhere, is hurt or neglected or abandoned. The way you feel when you hear a scary story in the news, feel intense gratitude that it’s not your child, then feel an intense need to hug the mother of the child who is involved.

Good Hands for the Good Life

This new campaign, Allstate Good Life, is all about celebrating the fact that more good things happen in life than bad. People die in car accidents every day – yet we still drive. We know that having a baby will bring sleep deprivation, bigger backsides, and stretch marks  – yet we still have babies. Everyone agrees that teenagers are a strange creature that almost no one besides other teens can understand – yet it doesn’t stop us from having kids of our own that we know will grow into those same unpredictable teens too. We do this because even though those crazy cable news shows want you to believe that the world is falling apart – the truth is that there is beauty in between the bad. That there are good hands out there doing good things every day, and that all of the good things happening give us all a pretty darn good life. And that’s something to smile about. :)

Learn more about the Allstate Good Life campaign, and what it can do for your family. And be sure to follow them on Facebook to share your Good Life stories with them too!