Tag Archives: time for self

motherhood, Perspective

Full Circle

My big kid is home from college.

While her younger sisters have all returned to previously scheduled programming (albeit sleepy and missing vacation), she is still home for a few more weeks.

Most of her days are filled with making back money spent on tuition and checking in with friends from home, but she found herself with an open weekday yesterday. I had already scurried off to an oil change appointment when she awoke, receiving a text as I packed up the work I’d brought with me.

“When will you be home?”

“15 min. Why?”

“I’m bored.”

Having her home, even as a grown woman child, has brought me back to the younger days: of mine as a mother and her as a kid. When home was truly home base. Where we spent a majority of our time. Possibly in pjs – or maybe princess dresses. Where the living room became ball pit, blanket fort, vet clinic.

When it was all on me to occupy and entertain them – and fight to find time for myself.

We ended up clearing the living room floor to lay out yoga mats, her muscles tense and tight from standing all day at work (and yes, I realize the irony as I type that about a 20 year-old, but I will not one up her discomfort with my old ailments. My tongue is clamped between the teeth of my allowing her own experience in her own body. With age comes at least the attempt at maturity. And it is important to maintain our musculature at any age. I digress . . . ). She doesn’t usually do yoga on her own and I have a Pinterest board full of yin yoga routines, but I wasn’t sure she’d want to do the slow reflective yoga of middle age. I knew I was not all in for an energetic round of sun salutations. (God, this says so much about our stages of life). We popped on YouTube and I selected a Flow for Beginners video. Figured we could meet somewhere in the middle.

I was amused to find that both of us grunted and groaned as we assumed different poses.

“I got your Ujjayi breath,” I thought as I exclaimed.

Bones popped in their sockets and muscles shredded tension as they screamed.

“I didn’t realize how tense I actually was,” she said.

“Looks like you could’ve used yin yoga,” I said.

Ironically, I had a scheduled free online drawing class immediately after our session. Always my sketcher/doodler, I figured she could do that with me like we’d done yoga together.

And here is where it really became like the good old days.

While I collected my materials, set up the laptop, and grabbed a cup of tea, she took up residence on the couch with her phone (instead of a tablet of old) and watched videos at full volume. First, I entreated her to come draw. Next, I told her to turn down the volume. Finally, I fended her off as she bugged me.

Here’s how that went . . .

It wasn’t as bad as doing yoga with toddlers (yes, I’ve done that, too), but it certainly brought back memories. And while she certainly got my goat, as she’s wont to do and you can tell by the look in my eyes, the whole evolution told me a lot about where I’m at.

That I’m still learning how to make time for myself. That I’m better at it than I was. That it’s a continual process, not a height to be achieved. That kids can be annoying at any age (yours or theirs). That kids will still need you at any age. That I can look back at that time I found incredibly tough and realize I did things right, we had fun, and they felt love.

All because my twenty year-old first born got bored.

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Living, motherhood

On the Treadmill

No, this is not an account of my latest exercise endeavors.  The only personal story I have about treadmills is my daughter’s run-in with one that ended in road-rash (see what I did there?).  That still makes me giggle.  Don’t judge.  It was her own fault.  I’m pretty much in love with OK Go’s endeavors on treadmills, too.

But me, no.

Which is ironic because I’m on one every damn minute of every damn day – the metaphoric treadmill of motherhood.

Maybe it’s unfair to blame all of my mania on motherhood.  There probably is some part of my personality that would still schedule me to my utmost limit – but it’s hard to imagine what life would be like if I ‘only’ had to work without the constraints and constancy of mothering.  And even pre-kid working me would binge watch Trading Spaces in a blob on the couch after a particularly hectic day of work.

Now, when I get the chance to step off the treadmill, I’m like that blob – but without the decision-making capabilities of any grey matter.  Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the grey matter used for ‘personal’ decision-making is so underused it has atrophied.

When we get off the treadmill so infrequently, our bodies and minds know not what to do without the cycle and incessant motion.  Being at rest is so foreign, that part of ourselves we’ve shoved down for so long is like a salamander with a light shone on it.

That part that cultivates hobbies, interests, passions; rest, rejuvenation, relaxation.  That little corner inside ourselves closest to our souls.  The part that should be getting more play, not the least amount possible.  Not so little that when it can come out to play, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

By some stroke of luck and generosity, I find myself alone and stuffing my face with donuts.  I’m also sipping on a caramel-sea salt-molasses-coffee concoction.  The caffeine and sugar combination is already thumping in my veins and lining my blood sugar up on the cliff.  BUT what else does one do when you can stuff your face with forbidden foods without little people’s pleading eyes killing your buzz?  Yoga without a little person sitting on your head or smashing into your pelvis while you try to relax into savasana?  A warm bath with the aromatic soaks your friend handcrafted!?  Scrap some of the eight-thousand photos that would bring you into the last decade?  Write that folktale you’ve been ruminating on?  Or the several posts you’ve been marinating?  Or actually get down ideas for the next big jump in your life?

Or you could stand in the middle of your living room floor, holding onto your phone with your atrophied little T-Rex arms and scroll Facebook on your browser – not the app because you took it off your phone for Lent so you wouldn’t go on FB so much – and not sitting down because that would mean it’s not just a temporary distraction to which you’re not totally committed.  You could stand there and fill the void with more vacuous activity instead of plucking one valuable thing out of the myriad you haven’t had a chance for in so long.  You can give in to the confounding paralysis that comes from wishing desperately for more time and then desperately wanting to do all that you’ve missed out on once you get a bit – that you do nothing.  You could also invite your anxiety in so that even watching Trading Spaces or whatever binge-worthy show has replaced it is ruined because you can’t let go of the things you’re not doing.

The answer, I suppose, is to get more free time; take more free time.  Part of that is impossible because – treadmill.  Part of that is more difficult because of my ‘prepping for a sub is more work than a day of teaching’ theory.  And a huge – perhaps the most insurmountable – part of it is breaking ourselves of the mental and emotional habits that have led to this.  Yes, we can be angry at the treadmill, curse the unseen figures that keep turning it on and programming it to higher, faster levels, but we need to learn how to unplug it, unplug ourselves.  So that even when we get some time, we don’t spend the whole time trying to unwind.

Now I face the insurmountable task of unwinding with a gob of caffeine floating throughout my system.  I’ll let you know how savasana goes.  Or maybe I’ll have an energized bout of writing.  I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet.

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Identity, Living, May is Mental Health Month, Mental Health, parenting

Christine Koh: Minimalist You: Self-Care Is Not Selfish

Christine Koh: Minimalist You: Self-Care Is Not Selfish.

My last post is a perfect segue to this, no?  Ha!

Simply put, I suck at self-care.  Obviously (if you read yesterday’s post!).

But I can’t function without it – which is why I struggle with mothering a lot.

Does that make me a failure as a mother or a person because I need it?

Last month, my youngest was sick.  While her two older sisters were at school, she slept in bed.  I wrote the whole time.  I felt so alive, so rejuvenated.  I had time to formulate thoughts, solutions, ideas for my writing, to move beyond the small task at hand. How excited I got and how invigorated I felt to face life and motherhood after that.

But that was tempered with a guilt.  Why couldn’t I find joy in my children even without such creative time?

How do we care for ourselves when we don’t feel worthy of it?

Or when we don’t even have the energy for it?  When depression drags you down so much that even getting out of bed takes too much energy, let alone getting dolled up and entering the world.

It truly is a vicious cycle.

But read this article and follow some or all of its tips.  Self-care is worth it, whether we believe it – or in ourselves – or not.  And if we don’t, it’s been proven that faking a smile actually lifts one’s spirits so fake that you enjoy that yoga class and maybe one day you will. (Quoth the reverend who needs to review the Ten Commandments 😉 )


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