self-care

What is Saving My Summer Life

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 June is done (uggggggh!), and I hate the idea that summer’s almost half over. But here is what is saving my life in these summer months.

  1. Dresses – I am a deep lover of flowy, graceful dresses. Stores like Altar’d State and JessaKae were absolutely made for my aesthetic, if not my wallet. Dresses have always helped me feel my glorious as a feminine figure. Over the past few years, I have leaned into my cottagecore joy with long, full skirts, gauzy sleeves, lots of ruffles, and all the pastels, lacing a romantic air through the most mundane of daily tasks: getting dressed. I recently cleared out several old dresses that were being kept more for nostalgia’s sake than actual wear, reminisced about how pretty they had made me feel, and then packed them up with a whispered blessing for the next girl who finds her glorious in them. Then I coordinated and organized my remaining dresses so my side of the closet is now a gorgeous riot of fluttery rainbow color. I’m still squee-ing about it!
  1. Reading/Books – I am continuing to gobble up stories as fast as I can. I feel bereft if I do not have something to read, to fill my mind with “voices and stories and friends as dear to me as any in the real world” (Little Women, 1994). So far this summer I have devoured seven books, mostly fantasies and historical fiction with a splash of romance for good measure. It is so fun to read things that are unserious and just for the pure enjoyment of the act. Last night, I laid in Spare Oom (my cottagecore-inspired space/guest bedroom), lying in the bed with my mother while she watched old reruns of Archie Bunker. I had my book, she had her show, and we were just laid there together in companionable silence, occasionally broken by one of us making a comment to the cat, who had of course made himself exceeding comfy (belly to the sky) between us on the bed. I have found myself more drawn to my books than my TV shows of late, content to sit in my bed or in the companion recliner in my husband’s den and just inhale story after story. Quite a few of the books I have read have been debut novels, and I am doing my best to make sure that I leave good reviews for those authors so they know how much I appreciate their work. As it is, I post on social media and tag them whenever available so they know just how their hard work is paying off and touching souls. I am also obsessed with pretty books, the ones with gorgeous covers, endpapers, illustrations, and beautiful sprayed/stenciled edges. They are works of art that simply cannot be overlooked. **Side note: if you ever want to give me a gift, give me a book with lovely, stenciled edges. I honestly do not care what the book is; that is utterly beside the point.
  1. Fans – I love to collect hand fans. Carved, lacy, silk, paper, small and soft, large and loud…it doesn’t matter. I love them! They are a beautiful nostalgia for the Sunday evenings when I would sit with my grandmother in church and she would fan me with her gorgeous lace fan or even (gasp!) let me hold it and fan myself. My collection started with a gift from my mother’s coworkers for my college graduation (a genuine fan from Hong Kong) and has just grown from there. I cannot pass up a pretty fan! Recently, I have started taking them everywhere with me. My bag or purse almost always has a fan in it. I even keep one in my desk drawer at work, just in case the unthinkable happens and my always-cold classroom crashes out. It also feeds into my love for the classic feminine aesthetic. Knowing me, my next collection will be parasols.
  1. Water – I hated drinking water as a kid; it tasted like nothing and therefore had no interest for me. Nowadays, through fervent re-conditioning of myself, I cannot cope without a cup of ice water close to hand. I will choose that over just about anything else when it comes to beverages, and I have finally discovered the truth to my mother’s lifelong claims that nothing can hit the spot like cold water. I now have my own collection of pretty tumblers and water cups so that, no matter where I am (home, work, gym, car), I have water close to hand. I am working hard to remember that I need to treat myself like the lovely flower I am and water myself regularly.

As we enter July, I really hope that you find some things that can help to save your life this summer. Things that give you hope and joy, even if they make sense to no one else but you. You deserve that. Always. Meanwhile, I’m off to be a public nuisance at the bookstore with my big-skirted dresses and fans.

Empathy’s Two-Way Street

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I am intensely empathic (in case I haven’t already said that at some point). I take on people’s moods and emotional states quickly and easily. I read changes in mood, tone, or behavior very sharply. It’s exhausting. It helps me in my writing, my relationships, and my work, yes, but it can be wholly exhausting, that close connection. And it takes no effort, empathy. Whether it is or not, it has always felt like a natural state for me. Separation is what takes effort. Being able not to feel a particular way is the accomplishment because, in my world, emotions attach to people. Memories and feelings commingle, attach, and trigger. So getting to a point where I can not feel (note: can not, not cannot) is a large task and not easily accomplished. That’s not always fun either, though, because it means that who or whatever it is, they once meant something to me, quite deeply, but things have come to a point where those feelings are detrimental to me.

This is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of being an empathetic person: coming to a point where I need to, sometimes drastically, change my emotional paradigm in order to maintain my mental/emotional health. Now, I understand that this is often called “moving on” and I accept that I am growing through these situations, but that does not change the heaviness of them. Perhaps saying that I do not feel anymore is misrepresenting it, however. I never feel “nothing”, not ever. I always feels something. What I am doing, however, is trying to change how I deal with what I now feel. Sometimes, for example, that’s setting the feelings aside and putting on my “professional face” until I can get home in private to process what I am feeling. Other times, it might be recognizing that sometimes feelings are irrational, acknowledging that certain feelings might be, and letting them pass on (still working on this mindfulness practice. Regardless, I am having to do the work to shift an emotional paradigm, and that can be a lot of heavy lifting.

I remember how mired I got in a particular situation when I was in high school. A person I had counted as a friend stopped talking to me the minute they found out, under the pretense of dispelling rumors, that I wasn’t interested in more than our platonic friendship. The connection was instantly severed. They left our friendship, which I had come to enjoy, along with our “professional” relationship (read: we were both heavy hitters in our school’s music program). It felt as though our friendship was a car where they had ripped away the steering, jumped out, and left the car to crash into a wall with me still in it. For a long time, I was stuck in my empathy, in my emotional loyalty, and in what I felt was a betrayal of that loyalty without any explanation as to why. At the same time, my own family’s empathy didn’t help because they were firmly on my side and would gladly harp on it with me whenever my blood got up, which kept me from moving on. I did, eventually, but it took a while to figure out how to separate from what I had felt before, particularly the sense of betrayal. With the benefit of hindsight twenty years later, I have a clearer picture now, of course.

We have heard over and over in movies and read repeatedly in books that “You can’t just un-love someone all at once.” I believe this to be very true. Teaching myself to un-feel particular emotions has been a very hard lesson in re-calibration, not only replacing the feelings with others but actively working not to let guilt set in about not feeling that way anymore. I have zero issues with admitting that I am a born-and-raised people-pleaser and that it is a constant process to un-learn that sense of guilt at not being what I think everyone wants me to be or feeling how they want me to feel. I have come to realize something very important over in recent years.

Being an empathetic/empathic person means that I need to have empathy for myself as well.

I have written before about guarding your peace, defending your boundaries, and doing so boldly and truthfully.  The same goes with empathy, though it is at times the harder of these lessons, at least for me. I am still an active student in this, even at this very moment of writing. I am not done with the work. Reconnecting with my empathy for myself sometimes takes help (something else I struggle in asking for). I remind myself that there are people willing to go to bat for me, and I have had beautiful examples of that this year. 

My department chair stepping between me (the new teacher at the school) and an irate parent and supporting my judgement and following of protocol in a grade dispute. 

My beloved husband offering to deal with a situation if I feel trapped and paralyzed over what to do.

My mothers encouraging me that I am doing well with my little one, especially when said little one is unhappy with the answer she has received or consequences of her actions and lashes out.

My therapist reminding me that there is no deadline on life, its new chapters, or the changes that we go through except the ones that we impose on ourselves. Gently reminding me that I have time.

If you need permission, consider this your slip, dear Reader:

Empathy for yourself is not a sin. Separating yourself from detrimental situations is not a crime. Maintaining your boundaries is not unforgivable. It is part of growing and changing. It is a part of holding to your truth, the purpose you were made for, and what is good for you. 

Empathy for others is wonderful and needed. 

Empathy for yourself is necessary.

Art by Rachel Eck – IG @rachel_e_lettering

A Year Later, As the Story Goes…

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Of course, it popped up in my memories today. All of them. Facebook, Google Photos, Instagram…they all found it absolutely imperative to remind me that, one year ago today, my little corner of the world shut down–just like everyone else’s. First, school closing was announced until April 13. Then, this morning a year ago, it snowed. Snowed heavily enough for my daughter to go out to play in it and for me to take a snowy tromp out across the field behind our house. The next day, I took my last dinner and a movie outing with a bestie. Then the world screeched to a halt, and I haven’t done it since. I may miss it but this is not a post about what I miss. Not really. Not entirely. More like it’s about what’s missing.

A year ago, I posted about stopping. Could I just stop? Stop and embrace the unknown of what was next? Stop and rest? I decided I could, and I did. I found new avenues of connection, encouragement, and expression. I held hands with dear ones, students, and strangers across the digital gap, turning my talents into new strands of gold. Despite the hardships of lockdown, which I detail out quite honestly in my personal journals, I don’t remember being afraid. I don’t remember the paralysis of worry and fear. In fact, in some ways, I thrived in that odd spring.

Here we are now, a year later. Progress is being made, medical measures are now available for safety, the world has begun to move again, in some cases very quickly, and, now–NOW–I feel as though I am in survival mode. The avenues I had discovered and thrived through last spring feel barren and cold to me now; they have become things that I no longer have time or energy for. Tricks and emotional hacks that have lost some of their efficacy; the shine has dulled, the gold seems to have flaked off.

And that hurts. It hurts more than I care to admit at times.

A year later, I am honestly avoiding people. I am avoiding socializing. A friend messaged me the other day to let me know that they were glad to see me on a Zoom gaming session last week and, as grateful as I was for that and as much as I did have fun for the most part, I felt an internal balking at making it a consistent thing. It takes so much to participate in life now. So much energy, so many spoons, so much emotional risk. I find myself hesitating at things that I would have leapt at in the Before Times, such as seeing friends in person that I haven’t seen in a long time. I find myself thinking twice about saying yes now; so much so that the hubby has taken to telling me, “Say yes. Yes is your answer,” when I bring up invitations. So I am trying to say ‘yes’ more. Do I always say ‘yes’? Absolutely not. Sometimes I just cannot handle the idea of sitting with someone in person and talking; other times, it’s all I want in the world.

A year later, I feel depleted, shrunken rather than grown. I feel hunched and inward-facing rather than outward-facing, though I still pour out out of sheer habit sometimes, which is a very strange dichotomy in which to be. I am hesitant to hope, to look forward to things, because disappointment looms. Large changes drain me because this last year has been one full to overflowing with them. So, like Tony Stark, I concentrate on what I can do. (“You’re a mechanic, right?” “Yeah.” “So build something.” “…Okay.”) I am giving everything to the point of exhaustion to work/teaching, because that is what I can do. It’s frustrating as all get out. I will not call it rewarding because that is not where I am right now, but it’s my job. It is what I have to do, and the kids in my classroom need something I can hopefully give. We are all closed-off to an extent right now but…I can try. I will cry and curse and collapse, probably, but it is what I can do right now. So I do it. I am unsure as to whether anyone truly understands the withertos and whyfores for me in this, but…it is where I am. I don’t know if it is helping me, I know it is not a long-term answer, but I cannot help but hope it is helping. Someone. Somehow.

I was not emotionally prepared to be this emotionally unprepared a year later. I feel more fragile than I did last spring; more hesitant, shyer, and more anxious. I feel less seen and, in some cases, less willing to be seen. Like I want to hide and hibernate until I am ready to be in the world again, when the climate is right again for me, whenever that may be. But, as I am not a tardigrade, that is not an avenue that is open to me. So I will keep on. I will try the avenues that are open to me and try to give myself and others a fighting chance at making it.

If you are in this place of emotional unpreparedness, too, you aren’t alone. Know that. The world has not ended; this struggle will, though, I hope. Just hold on, okay? I’m right there beside you, holding on, too. Even if it is just by our fingertips. Feel that? That’y my pinkie touching yours. You aren’t alone.

If you are struggling, please do not hesitate to reach out. There are avenues open for you, friends.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or Live Online Chat

If you or someone you know is suicidal or in emotional distress, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Trained crisis workers are available to talk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your confidential and toll-free call goes to the nearest crisis center in the Lifeline national network. These centers provide crisis counseling and mental health referrals.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline – 1-800-662-HELP (4357)

SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

The Work of Christmas is for Me, Too.

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As this new year begins, this is me. Full disclosure: total bathroom selfie. No glasses, no makeup, hair undone, no filters. Just me.

As 2019 begins, I am considering the work of Christmas, that work that began on Christmas Day and continues on from there. The work of love. One of the things that I am going to be working on is loving myself. I know very well what I have been struggling with, one of the chief things being building more rest into my everyday life. Not just waiting for spring, summer, or Christmas breaks to actually try to rest in that admittedly limited space but acknowledging my need for it as I go along throughout my normal days and weeks.

The work of Christmas needs to begin with me, as much as it needs to involve others. As a dear friend reminded me, I need to love myself and give myself as much grace and permission as I give others.

So here I am, just me, and I am going to work on loving myself better.

The Cost of Self-Care

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Why does self-care always come at a cost? Or, rather, why do I always require/attach a cost to it?

Real life case-in-point. this past week, I was diagnosed with strep throat for the first time in my almost thirty-five years and was ordered by my doctor to stay home from work on Friday. I did, and, over the course of the weekend, I did what I could to rest from Thursday evening until roughly 3pm on Saturday. I laid in bed when I could, slept as late as I could, took hot baths, took my meds, drank fluids, and made sure I fed myself. At around 3pm Saturday, however, I saw the overflowing sink, the cluttered stove and kitchen table, and decided that I needed to make up for the time I had taken off, to make up the day and a half that I had spent being a laze-about. I actually said the words “I need to make up for lost time” to myself. My kitchen needed cleaning; clothes needed washing; I had already bathed my child, but she still needed attention, few spoons though I had to offer in that particular area. I felt like I had to make up for taking care of my own sick self.

Now, let’s look at the facts again. I wasn’t being lazy. I had strep. I was legitimately ill. And, yet, I felt like I had to make up for the time taken to help my body begin to heal. So I washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, sanitized the house, and did three loads of laundry, not to mention helping my daughter tidy up her daylong mess in the living room and look for the TV remote that she had lost. I pushed my body that is still working to fight off an infection and heal (and will continue to push—I still have grading to do and midterm grades are this week, along with preparation for our school’s accreditation visit) because self-care has a cost, and that cost is time.

Time cannot be held onto. Time cannot be gained back. Time can only be spent. Time can only be lost. So we are told. And, honestly, self-care often takes time that I just do not have.

I have a family.

I have a job.

I have a home to take care of.

I have responsibilities.

Extra time—or what feels as though it would require extra time—is something I often do not have.

But why? Why do I insist on having to make up for taking time out of all-important life, time that something inside tells me “could have been better used” than lying in bed and trying to get extra rest? Truthfully, I don’t know. Rationally, my brain knows that self-care and taking time for healing is important. However, we human beings are often anything but rational, me included. For example, I am sitting here writing this in my living room when, with my child already asleep, I could go to bed early.

Not to mention that this week, I lost a grandparent. The diagnosis, progression, and succumbing were immensely quick and unexpected. I live very far away from that side of the family, so I am somewhat at a loss as to what to do or even how to grieve in this moment. And I feel like that I don’t even really have time to figure that out. Time and the world keep marching on and so I must with it. Processing time is something I need but I almost feel as though it is a luxury in this moment.

The cost of self-care is time, time that I don’t have–or, rather, don’t think I have–and that makes me feel…less. I feel weak for “giving in” and “letting things slide”. I feel like I am less able to order my life than others. I feel as though I am not fulfilling my responsibilities to my family and our home. So, in my mind, I must make up for that. I must fulfill my role. I must make up for lost (read: wasted) time. This is a headspace out of which I am still struggling to break at almost thirty-five years of age. My progress in this area is imperfect and often feels minuscule to nonexistent, but that is why I am writing about it today. Acknowledging and exploring the reality of the dichotomy is at least one step forward I can take.

Through all this mental/emotional struggle this week, I have been gifted with and blessed by dear ones who have done their best to remind me that I need to take care of myself. They have showered me with grace, gentleness, and kindness in their reminders and sharing of this truth (yes, again, my logic and common sense acknowledge that this is true), filling in the spots where I have failed to grant them to myself.  So, thank you, friends. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your kindness, gentleness, and grace. I will try to follow your example and extend them to myself, too. I doubt I’ll be very good at it (at first, at least), but I will try. Everything that is said below has been said to me more than once over the past week. Thank you again, dear ones. I will try harder to remember this.

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The Mornings I’m a Person For

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Today is Labor Day. No work. No school. Freedom to sleep in as one sees fit and is able. What did I do? I rolled out of bed at eight o’clock and headed to the gym. One of my sacred spaces. There I can do for me and just for me. I can work for my good and what I do is for no one else but me.  I can leave feeling accomplished and stronger. I love starting mornings like that.

I often declare that I am not a morning person, but the truth is that, within the right parameters, I am. Work mornings are all about doing, going, getting there (wherever there is) on time. They are rushed and clinical and I am focused on almost everything but myself. There are days that I have been so rushed that I have left my coffee on top of the washing machine and even forgotten to comb my hair or brush my teeth once or twice had to sneak into the bathroom at work to do so before I met anyone or my students. No, most days I am not a morning person.

Now, give me a morning when I can sleep until I wake up on my own (meaning, I’m not summoned by our four-year-old or an alarm). A morning where the light in the sky is tinged with newborn white and gold. A morning still so new that I haven’t even planned it out yet and anything could happen or be done, where I can choose to do something just for me without the guilt of all that “needs to be done”. A morning where I can drink in silence and cool breezes. Give me a morning with all of these magical ingredients and I’m absolutely a morning person and completely in love.

I love going out for breakfast. I love early morning matinees at the movies. I love morning walks and talks and deep thoughts, sitting on stairs, sofas, the foot of beds, and coffee shops. I love cuddling up in a cozy blanket and watching movie trailers. I love holding my TARDIS mug full of coffee in my hands and breathing in the morning mists that roll off the fields, basking in the silence of our little town in the early of the day. I love the dusky color of the morning sky, like the fragile, lovely shell of a robin’s egg. I love the feeling that the day is waking to greet me, rolling over in its arched bed like my loved one to start my day with a tender kiss. It’s in these beautiful moments that I am most definitely a morning person.

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Holding Time Gently

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Here is how I usually feel that I am dealing with my time: My days/hours are laid out in specifically shaped or metered boxes, like a weekly pill container. Each box is colored differently and I have roughly 18 “pills” of time in my hand with which to fill them (because I honestly need at least 5-6 hours to sleep or I’m just not functional). And so I count out my hours into the boxes – Work, Family, Home Care, Errands, Cooking, Listening, Driving, etc. I try, try, TRY to hold back a few bits of time just for me: things like reading, writing, taking a long hot bath, exercising, devotional time, and naps. But there’s usually something “more important” that requires doing. I am rubbish at asking for help of any kind, and so my self-care ends up getting shoved into a really short amount of time and not feeling like self-care really at all. Usually it’s me sitting on the couch after the almost nightly battle to get my daughter to bed, too tired to think, much less read or write.

I feel as though I am grasping at time, holding onto it for dear life, lamenting that there is not more of it as it slips through my fingers. Like sand, it leaves behind only tiny grains, minuscule bits of itself that don’t seem to amount to much of anything. But that is not true of sand, is it? Though its individual grains are minute, all together they create vast deserts and snow-white beaches and ocean floors that stretch on for uncountable miles. All of that is those tiny bits and pieces, not on their own but together. Perhaps I have been holding my time so tightly that I am looking at it wrongly. While my introverted soul yearns for extended blocks of retreat and refreshment, I should not–must not— discount the small pockets of time with which I am gifted, even if they are very small.

A few nights ago, I gifted myself the time involved to take a hot shower with all the lavender amenities. It boosted my spirit and refilled some of my dwindling spoon drawer to feel fresh, clean, soft, and have such a soothing scent wafting around me. It was only half an hour but there was intention behind it. The intention of care and refreshment for myself, of aloneness and quiet, even if just for a little while. It was not a week-long isolated retreat but it did help, that one half-hour.

Last year, I wrote about (and even gave a commencement speech on) not discounting the value of smallness. How fitting that here I am, a year later, reminding myself of this very oh-so-important lesson, when my own well-being and all-around health hang in the balance.

Fifteen minutes of exercise may not be the hour-long gym workouts that I was used to doing when I was a SAHM but it is something.

Ten minutes to read before bed isn’t finishing a book in a day as I did of old but it is something.

“Tea-Time Quite-Time” with my daughter isn’t an afternoon alone in a coffee shop but those quiet moments together of both of us watching the lovely “Sarah & Duck” with our tea before bedtime are something.

Putting my earbuds in of a Sunday afternoon and turning on my rain app isn’t spending a whole sleepy, rainy day in bed but dozing amidst those soothing sounds for a little while is something.

Friends, I am learning to hold my time more gently, to remember and admit that the small bits I can get, that stick here and there can indeed be helpful, refreshing, and sustaining. And, bit by bit, those fragments add up, just as grains of sand, together, can create a vast, beautiful landscape. If you are walking this path of learning and viewpoint shifting, I want to encourage you. We can be gentler with ourselves, gentler with our time and the realities of our lives. Sometimes our realities do not have space for week-long retreats for our soul. We can still find rest in the small moments, brief though they may be. A shut bedroom door (or closet door even). A second cup of coffee. Ten minutes with a book or video game or podcast. We can find those little grains of time that will add up to refreshment for us. Trust me, I wish us all extended time to rest and relax but, until then, I’ll be gently collecting grains alongside you.

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Fragile. Handle with Care: Being Gentle With Myself

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I have been sick, quite sick, for the past month. Actually, I haven’t been able to shake this cold/sinus stuff since September (yay for teaching and a toddler starting preschool). Nevertheless, the New Year came and with it the time to start on my goals, one of the chiefest being to get back into a healthy routine of activity and exercise. This past semester has just shattered my momentum and I have lost a good deal of what I worked for two years to gain. So I start again. But, because of being sick (and because, you know, breathing is a thing), I am having to start back slowly. Too much activity will leave me wheezing and coughing, my throat sore and dry. So I am having to be extra gentle with myself, not something I am used to doing. I am used to pushing myself. I want to push, pull, work, strive, and mold myself back into that shape and tone that I was so proud of back in July. So, right now, it is proving hard to handle myself gently, but I have to or else I will hurt myself and ruin any chance of continuing towards my goal for the foreseeable future. I have to listen to when my body cries “Enough!” and believe that, for the nonce, it really is (and has to be) enough.

This year’s word of intention is gentleness and, ironically, here I am: at the beginning of the year, having to apply that gentleness to my own self. I am having to sit down when I come home from work. Perhaps the dishes go undone or the laundry unfolded of a night as I choose to lie on the couch instead, after Daughter has been put to bed, and I’m having to remind myself that doing just that is okay.  I have never been good at being gentle with myself, so I have found that I need reminders. The graphic below from Alia Joy – Writer‘s likewise-title article is now the lock screen graphic on my phone. I have a chalkboard that hangs in my kitchen and on it is the quote: “Be easier on yourself. If being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now.” These are reminders that I have to keep on repeat in my mind and in my heart. I find it ever so much easier to say them to others, admonish gentleness with themselves, and believe their truth than I do when I am the one in need of the reminder. But I do need it. I need gentleness, too! Particularly from myself.

So, while it is frustrating and a bit galling to have to slow down and just concentrate on the small things in my goals for now, it is what I need. I need to hold myself softly and gently for, right now, no matter how I may feel mentally, I am physically a bit fragile, so I have to let my ability catch up to my determination.

It is okay for you to be gentle with yourself, too. If you think you need permission, you have it. There are times when we all are fragile and need handling with care. So, as we continue on into the second week of this new year, let’s check in on how we are handling ourselves, how we are treating ourselves. Could you use a little gentleness, a little lightening of the goals, of the have-to’s? If so, do it. Be gentle with yourself. I know it’s hard and I know the fear of falling behind/failing/losing our place/etc. is always there, but know that you aren’t alone. We all could a little gentleness from ourselves now and then and it’s worth it to learn to give it. And I’m learning to believe that.

 

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Graphic from and belonging to Alia Joy’s post on incourage.me

 

Reflections on Thirty-Three

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Author’s Note: Today, I turn 33 years old. It has definitely been an interesting three and a half years since my daughter was born and life changed in a big way. I think that I have learned more about myself in these few short years than in many others combined throughout my lifetime. I see myself differently, am taking better care of myself, am learning to love others better, and live my faith and purpose more honestly and, I hope, effectively. I do more than like myself at 33. I truly believe that I have finally learned to love myself.

= = = =

My form is a thing of beauty.

Take all your definitions of allure

And weigh them in your hands,

As I make mine my own.

Breasts, waist, hips, legs,

Arms, stomach, shoulders, back.

All I work to make strong.

This I do for myself,

For the good of my body as well as my soul.

To be strong enough in body to hold the skies on my shoulders

But soft enough in soul to hold joy in the sway of my hips

And grace in the reach of my hands.

My mind is a work of art.

Growing and challenged still,

Deeply considering and intense.

My intelligence has not been silenced by time,

But continues to grow and refine with new challenges.

My art is a meeting of thought and feeling,

Pulled together, chiseled, and shaped.

I share my art with a desire for hope,

Encouragement, uplifting, and joy.

I write to challenge to love, to kindness, to compassion.

I write to create refuge, worlds in which to escape,

To send out words that my own voice might find difficult to speak.

I sing to birth joy. I dance to proclaim free. I dress to cry beauty.

I write and post and mail to connect and pull threads together.

In life. In community. In love. In friendship. In chosen family.

I am a being made unqiue and becoming uniquer still.

The older I get, the finer I am becoming.

You should rejoice. I’d love for you to rejoice.

If you don’t, though, that’s your choice.

But, most of all, I just want you to smile with me.

The Adult You Are Looking For Has Left the Building.

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Adulting is hard! Allow me to repeat that: ADULTING IS HARD! And, yes, like so many other words in the 21st century we have verbed the noun. Our predecessors would most likely remark that there is no such thing as “adulting” when you are one; it’s just living life and doing what’s necessary. Perhaps so but, sometimes, it can feel downright oppressive.

Here was my adulting today:

  1. I got this week’s bills written up and ready to mail.
  2. I wrote letters to friends and loved ones.
  3. I sussed out our budget for the next week and a half.
  4. I went to the post office.
  5. I went to the bank.
  6. I helped my in-laws get their tax forms printed off since their printer is being a jerk.
  7. I went to the credit union to make sure all was in order for some important payments.
  8. I dropped four bags of stuff off at Goodwill.
  9. I found a prop my husband needed for a project in under three minutes of entering the store.
  10. I ordered and picked up dinner for my family and my in-laws.
  11. I chatted with my husband about something I felt God had led me to do today that he needed to know about.
  12. I washed and dried a load of laundry.
  13. I fed my daughter.
  14. I baked cookies at her request.
  15. I made the beds, tidied the bedrooms, and aired the house.

In my opinion, that’s some respectable adulting for one day. As I speak, however, there are some things I am leaving undone. The dishes in the sink have not been washed, the laundry in the basket is still waiting to be folded, and the living room is a mess from my girl’s afternoon play. And you know what? With the exception of the living room, which needs to be tidied up a bit so I can do my barre workout, I am just fine with it staying that way for the rest of the night. There’s reading and working out and relaxing to be done!

Self-care is still a learning process for me. I was excellent at it for about a week while visiting my parents; I read more that week than I have in any space of time in recent memory. I went for walks, I got myself ice cream, it was a good time. But now that I am home in the same old same old, I am having to relearn how to do self-care every day. And this is part of it.

The dishes and laundry can wait. It’s Tuesday. Things that I enjoy are waiting for me.

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