I wanted to write about how to possibly get your wife on board for when SHTF [1] from my own experience. I think I should start out with first giving all the credit to my husband. In vain he had tried for many years to get me on board. He would request that we purchase guns, have supplies, buy gold/silver etc. All that talk and the only word I ever heard was gun. Are you kidding me? Guns had always represented a negative feeling inside me. Now I don’t want to go into the discussion of whether they are right or wrong because that’s not what this article is about.
My husband tried many approaches. I used to think; here he goes again wanting to play Army Man. Nope, not going to happen. It was as if I had blinders on, walking through life. Yeah, yeah, yeah I heard the news reports, read the paper, listen to the talk. I was not so naive to believe that our country was not progressing the way it should be. But like most Americans I was too busy in my own life to get all worked up about problems I couldn’t solve. Leave all that big stuff to the people in charge. That’s why I pay my taxes and vote to have people represent me. Right?
Throughout my husband’s talks he would say a word that would get under my skin and drive me crazy. He would bring up one word: Mother. Yep, that’s right. He would use the seven letter word. How dare he question that I was not prepared to fight to the death for my children. How dare he question something that goes to the core of my being? How dare he question my job of being a mother! Survival? I was doing that every day. Who did he think was going to the store every week and cooking dinner every night? If anything it just got me further away from him and his cause. If he knew me at all he would not be questioning the whole reason I feel I was brought into this world. To be a Mother.
Now as time went on I would drive to work in the morning/evenings. When we travel by ourselves we have two options of entertainment available to us. One being listening to the radio or the second would be no radio but alone with our own thoughts. Yikes, scary!!! Well one morning there had been a particularly hard morning in our family household. You know, that morning. The spilt milk, the dog ate the homework, where are my shoes, blah, blah, blah. The mornings that you get into your car and think to yourself, are you just totally messing up your kids’ lives? Are you the worse parent in the world? You know the one!
As I drove that morning I didn’t listen to the radio. Instead I started thinking about thoughts of what in the world would these people do without me? I started thinking that they don’t know how lucky they have it to have someone care/work so hard for them. One of those “Calgon take me away” moments. Then all of a sudden it hit me. These young children need me. Yep they need me. Now if you’re a mother you already know that you are needed. You know that in order to have a smooth running ship it’s the mom’s responsibility to hold it together. To be a kind of provider that is different from being a father. Now please, I just like to make a side note here. There are plenty of fathers today that can fill this role with no trouble at all. They are just as capable of handling the day to day grind as a mom. My point is that there is usually one person in a family that the kids run to when they have the boo boo that needs the kiss. The one they run to when their first love breaks their heart. In our family it’s me. Mother.
Now back to my thoughts. I started thinking about what it means to be needed as a mother. I started thinking about how these little people would survive if something would happen to me. Then it hit me. It was like I ran my car into a brick wall. Hellooooo. I get it now! I finally got what my husband was saying to me all these years. He was never questioning my ability to be a parent. If anything he was complimenting my ability to be a parent. He was trusting in me to do the right things for our children if/when SHTF. He was trying to make me understand how much I’m needed.
As I thought some more I started getting a panic feeling settling down deep in my bones. Oh my goodness, what if the SHTF tomorrow? I am so not prepared. If something happened to me I’m sure they would know how to go make a peanut butter/jelly sandwich. They might even know how to put some seeds in the ground. But would they know about compatible planting? Would they know how to treat the slugs on the tomatoes? Better yet…..would I? I realized that as much a super mom that I thought I was, indeed I was not prepared. Yes, I am a fully well-tuned working machine as a mother in today’s easy times. In fact I consider myself one of the better ones. But if SHTF, times would surely be different. Was I prepared to become the mom that they would need? The answer was no, as much as I hated to admit it. A sense of doom that had me in tears.
Let’s examine the word MOTHER in the SHTF terms.
M (Maintain): Today as a mother it is fairly easy to maintain my family’s lives and schedules. I said “fairly”. The technology today has made my life so much simpler in the matter. However if/when SHTF what will life be like to coordinate whose job is it to weed the garden today? Am I going to know how to maintain some sense of normalcy when their lives are turned upside down? I need to learn now how to turn the breaker off at the electric panel and go through a couple days of living without all the little conveniences. Learn to shake their little lives up some just to learn to maintain calm and normalcy.
O (Optimistic): In our easy time of living it is so easy to divert my children’s attention to something else to make them feel better. Be it the XBox, friends over to the house, sports etc. But what happens when they spend from morning to night tending to the gardens, collecting chicken eggs and all the thousand other things that might become daily chores. I’m sure their attitudes towards life will change considerably. Time for me to learn the basic things in life again. To teach them the wonders of a sunrise/sunset. To teach them the imagination of a good book. Teach them how fun it can be to help the family prepare. I need to become the one to boost their egos to make them want to survive not just exist.
T (Tactical): Today I lock my doors/windows, kiss my sweet children and fall into a dead sleep until my alarm goes off the next morning. What happens if there is a gang/animals/neighbor waiting for me to go to sleep so they may come in and steal all our preparations/resources? Time for me to learn/master how to use those guns.
H: (Healer): When my children have a fever today I instantly grab for the Children’s Tylenol. But when SHTF will I be able to drive to the closest Walgreens and pick a bottle off the shelf? How long will the current two bottles in my medicine cabinet last? Will I know what to do when their little bodies are chilled with fever? It is time for me to learn/teach how to grow medical herbs.
E: (Educator): The other day my son asked me what the Great Wall of China looked like. Easy. I just Google searched it and bam the answer was there. I’m so smart. But what happens when there is no longer an Internet? Time to stock up on encyclopedias and reference books to help educate my children. Time to teach my children skills that would make them useful.
R (Resourceful): Of course I know how to make a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Just watch me whip them up in no time. I know, I know, you wish you were as good as a chef as I am. But when SHTF how am I going to open up that can of soup when there isn’t one? How am I going to roast that chicken when it’s on top of fire pit or on the fireplace insert? How am I going to make that next loaf of bread? How will they take a bath? How will I wash their clothes? I need to learn to be more resourceful and examine our everyday tasks so that I may prepare. Reuse, reduce, recycle.
As I type, I continue to think about how important a Mother’s role is in the life of her children. There are a thousand little details the we do that no one sees us do every day. Many times it’s a thankless job. I love my children as much as every other parent does but will all that love be enough for them to survive? Being a Mother in SHTF times is going to require so much more of me than love. I realize now the steps I take to help my husband prepare for our family is buying insurance that my children will survive. Just the thought of hearing the words “Mommy I’m hungry!” is enough to make my prepping an everyday/every minute thought and motivate me. It scares me to my core to think that something would happen to them that I wouldn’t know what to do. Education and preparing is the only hope/sanity I have. I have so much to learn but at least now I feel there is a point of all this storing of ammunition/food/water/solar. It has changed my life forever.
I can only hope that America will pull it together and someday I will be playing safely in the yard with my grandchildren and everything I am doing will just bring my husband and I closer together as we worked as a team. If not at least I’m on board now before it’s too late for the sake of my children. I love being a Mother!