Putting on my Oxygen Mask

I heard this quotation applied to motherhood and life in general long ago, but never has it seemed more fitting for me.  Between laundry, dishes, preparing food, etc., there really doesn't seem to be any time for self care.  There are times when it is like I have taken on another child.   Here is one example.  My dad will sit down and Akasha will run over yelling, "I was going to sit there!!!"  Really?  This is the kind of thing she does with her brother!  

Or it will look like this in the space of a minute:  "Can you make me some fried eggs?" "Can you read this thing on my computer?"  "Do you know where my coffee cup is?"  "Can you throw the ball for me?"  (OK that last one was just implied by the dog, not spoken lol.)  I just try to remember to say yes. But not in that bad way of overextending myself (most of the time).  I learned a little mental trick from a friend years ago.  Saying yes doesn't have to mean that exact second.  If I say "in a few minutes", it might be met with the dreaded, "No, noooooooooooooooooooooow."  When I say yes, people tend to go back to what they were doing and I can take a few minutes to JUST BREATHE. 

This is about the extent of my self care these days - stopping to breathe and doing a little bit of writing.  I know I need to work on it, but one step at a time.  I don't always say yes, and I am finding myself becoming more and more short tempered, impatient and generally abandoning many of my parenting standards.  So I know something needs to shift.  I am not sure what that will look like now, but knowing it is half the battle, right?  

Balance Can Kiss My Ass

 

Plans have changed and we are postponing our drive a week.  Long story, but at least I feel like I can take a few moments to do some writing.  A few weeks ago, I took some time for myself and had a session with the lovely Sharon Ann Rose from Ministry of the Mother, and so much came out of it I have been wanting to write about.  I think I will start with what came to me about the concept of balance.  I chose the photo above because that elephant looks pretty damn uncomfortable.  I have written glowingly about balance in the past, and probably will in the future, but at the moment, balance can kiss my ass.  Or at least certain ways of looking at it.  Bear with me.

When I started the session, I was really honest about how it had been hard for me to stop packing and even show up.  But I did.  So that is what we started exploring first.  Why did I come?  What was I there for?  Sharon is very gifted at taking people on spur of the moment guided journeys that are somehow always the perfect thing, celebrating the essence of each person, right where they are in that moment.  So where was I?  I do not switch gears well, at all.  My husband calls me a “creature of singular focus”.   It is nearly impossible for me to go from packing mode to chilling with my husband or self care or really pretty much anything that doesn’t involve getting things into boxes.   At one point during the meditation, I asked myself what I needed, and my first thought was balance.  This word has come up a lot for me in my spiritual practice as something I want to cultivate.  It seems like I always have some project going on, whether I am organizing an event or working on a family photo book or searching for quotations to match with my daughter’s photography or starting a new blog.  I tend to make these projects a higher priority than many other things in my life, and the first thing to go is usually self care.  I frequently go through mental gymnastics about how I can somehow manage my time to DOITALL – time with my husband, time with my kids, make homemade food, keep the house clean, pursue my own passions, and um, take a shower now and then.   During that meditation, I had an “aha”.  There were several different aspects to it, which my overtired brain can’t seem to narrate together, so I am just going to list them.

1. So what if I am a creature of singular focus?  Sharon has this way of framing everything in a beautiful light, and that is where I am right now, so maybe I was there to get reminded that was OK.   More than OK even.  So what if I suck at self care in general?  If I choose to play a game with my kid instead of taking a shower, so be it.  I long ago realized I was going to have let go of certain things and decide on priorities because I really do know I can’t doitall.   And I don’t cross the line into a place where I would become resentful.  I do just enough little things for myself, like lighting candles and listening to music I love while packing, to maintain my sanity.

2.  I had been making an assumption that what I needed was the opposite of singular focus, which I was perceiving to be balance.  But no, what I need is self acceptance of where I am in the moment and SLOWING DOWN.  (The session actually happened before my last post, which helps to put that in even more perspective. )

3. The way I had been looking at balance was really pretty sucky, because I was feeling it as yet another task in a manner of speaking.  It was like I was putting pressure on myself to figure out the best way to balance everything, and in the process just setting myself up for another thing to beat myself up for not doing well enough.  Like I said, kiss my ass.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have nothing against the word balance and see how it can be a powerful philosophical concept to strive for.  But in that moment, I realized I was looking at it in a really unhealthy way.  What I need right now is a fat dose of mindfulness.  So that is what I have been trying to strive for, and mostly failing in recent days to be honest, but at least I am trying. 

And if you know me, you will also know I just can’t leave a topic alone without going and looking at quotations, because I am pretty much a quotation geek, and they often inspire me to think about things a different way.  So you can imagine how floored I was to come across this little gem:

OK, so maybe balance doesn't have to kiss my ass after all.  This is just what I was getting at in number 1 above!  I had never seen balance framed quite like this before.  This kind of balance I can get down with.  Now if I can just remember the key is to truly enjoy the choices and not feel guilty about the thing you decided NOT to do!!!  I think I am going to copy this onto some paper and tape it to the wall as I finish my packing.  AND keep trying to remember to slow down.  Always I need the slowing down. 

“I am putting this pony in a box, I am putting this sauce pan in a box, I am putting this pair of shoes in a box…”.  Yeah.  

Slow Down Mama!

Something very cool happened to me the other day, and I wanted to write it down someplace so I don’t forget it.  Then I realized, oh yeah, I have a blog now lol.  And this story even fits the subject….  I was getting my day started and being oh so busy as usual.  It bugs me to have my hair down when I am trying to be really productive, so I was looking for a hair tie or clip.  I took one look in a place I thought I had left some, but I didn’t see any there.  So my thinking went something like this: “Oh jeez, really?  Well I don’t have time to slow down and go hunting for hair things.  I am just going to keep working.”  Sure enough, that set me up for getting into one of those places where I was starting to feel frantic and like, “Oh my god I am never going to get all this packing done and all this food cooked andandand”.  So I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “OK, this isn’t helping, let’s get back to a focus of what is right in front of me and choose ONE thing to work on RIGHT NOW.” So I decided to start unloading the dishwasher and try to think about JUST that.  It is mindfulness technique I have used in the past, and I really like it.  If I am having an especially anxious day, I will literally take it to the level of saying to myself, “Now I am putting this fork away, now I am putting this plate away,” etc.  I guess this time all I needed was a small shift, because the moment I bent over slightly and reached out to open the dishwasher, a hair tie literally fell on to the back of my hand!  I was like, “Um, OK, thanks universe.  Lock this into memory!”   

That is all for now.  SO many posts rattling around in my head but feel like I am down to the wire with packing.  Hopefully I will get at least one more done before heading to CA.  in more mundane news, Ron got approved for an apartment near his new job, so that is one thing settled.  We plan to leave for CA with a Uhaul trailer on February 28.  This is really happening folks!