Tag: overwhelmed

We Yoga. Do you?

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I did it. I joined the gym, again. Truth be told, I’m a little disgusted at myself for not having done it sooner. I allowed by membership to lapse after a minor stomach surgery this summer, always using the excuse that I didn’t want to come back too soon. The truth is, now it is harder than it ever has been to drag my butt to the gym because I have more legitimate excuses than ever. It’s tough to make myself go while the kids are so little. It requires a lot more schedule juggling. It’s tough to make myself go when I have physical issues, like stomach surgery or aching knees or a shoulder that really could use a scope. It’s tough to make myself go when I already feel stretched so thin and out of spoons, like I don’t do all of the things that I NEED to get done, so how can I justify taking out more time for myself?

But the truth of it all is that those are absolutely the reasons that I need to get back in the gym! I need to keep my strength, stamina, and health up to keep up with my little girls. I need to get my muscles strong and limber again in order to support my body better and to be a better dancer. I need an extra hour, every other morning, just to recalibrate, to do something physical with no distractions, so that I can come back to my role in our family refreshed and ready to tackle the day.

These days, my exercise of choice is yoga. I believe that yoga is a great mode of exercise that EVERYONE should do at some point in his or her life. I started practicing yoga 20 years ago. I took yoga as a PE class at Cal State Long Beach, and our instructor was what I believe is the stereotypical Yogi. She was older and thin, she wore long flowey skirts over her leggings, lots of bracelets, toe rings, and anklets. Everything about her was ethereal: the music we listened to in class, the way she glided across the ground, the whispery way that she spoke, and the smell of incense that followed her around the classroom. She was a strict teacher, there not to just lead us in some stretches, but to teach us the proper alignment in each pose, as well as the Sanskrit name, meaning, and origin of each pose. It was hard, but I loved it. And I’m grateful for her instruction, for at various times in my life I have practiced yoga without a teacher or studio, and had a good understanding of what I was doing.

I got out of my first yoga class in months on Monday and I immediately texted Jen, “I need to write about yoga!” What I love about it is that for an hour, I not only turn off my phone (or leave it in the car), but I also turn off my mind to everything in the outside world. Rather than being stuck on an elliptical machine or treadmill, then some lifting machines where the TVs and music are blaring, competing for more of my already fragmented attention, the yoga mat offers me a time to pause and turn inward. I don’t think about what’s for dinner, or what I have to do that day. I don’t catalog the things that I haven’t had time for or the projects that I have yet to start. For that one hour, I focus on breathing in and releasing the tension in my tight muscles. I check my alignment in my poses and when that little voice inside my head begins to chide me for not being able to touch my toes, I tune her out. One of my favorite parts of every yoga class is the final pose that we take, Savasana or Corpse Pose. Though it takes some practice to really clear one’s mind and not let it wander to the day that lies ahead, lying completely still in mind and body is for me, the most restorative thing that I do.

Most gyms offer some kind of yoga class on their schedule, and those are a great place to get a taste of what yoga has to offer. Oftentimes the classes are filled with people of varying levels of knowledge, but what I love about gym yoga is that the instructors are always so accommodating and helpful. Often, gym yoga is not as “serious” or as technical as yoga studio yoga, nor is it as “Zen,” but still offers a place where strength and stretching meet, where physical activity and spiritual restoring can occur.

For those who are more looking for a little more technical instruction, yoga studios are often really neat places to jump in and become part of a yoga community. The studio I have practiced at here in our area (The Yoga Den, Corona, California) offers a wide variety of classes and times, even prenatal yoga, but also offers other events at the studio. There are special concerts, potlucks, and groups that get together outside of the studio to do other fitness-related things. Truth be told, I would join the studio again, if we lived a little bit closer.  It really is a special place to belong.

If you’re curious about yoga, please try it!! It’s great on its own or in conjunction with other forms of exercise. It’s low impact, but still offers cardio and strength building. And it’s absolutely for every body type and fitness level. If you do, let me know how it goes. Afterward, let’s get together, listen to Enya, and have a nice cup of tea. Come on, we can put off meal planning and mopping for another hour.

I’ve Run Out of Spoons

One of the things I was looking forward to most about my daughter starting preschool was the opportunity for ME to meet new friends. I was really hoping to find a really cool group of women who have the same kinds of values with different backgrounds, and that we would all hit it off amazingly well and have coffee together and talk about the trials of Mommyhood.   And guess what… it happened! I have met the neatest people at this preschool. I really like them, and I really like their children.

Now, when I say that it happened, I mean the first part happened. But it’s just amazing how, no matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to find the time to get together for a cup of coffee, or sometimes even for a 5 minute chat after drop off. So when there was a flier in my daughter’s cubby for a Tuesday morning group called Moms Supporting Moms, I was all over it. We’ve started reading a book by Lysa TerKeurst called “The Best Yes,” which is about learning to say no, and learning to say yes to the best option for you and your family.

The other day, our conversation turned to the fact that many times, we all just feel overwhelmed. The other ladies in the group and I are all in different situations: a mom who works full-time, a mom with a child in grade school and a preschooler, me, the mom with a two-year-old and a four-year-old. I said to the other ladies that sometimes I feel ridiculous saying that I feel overwhelmed. I stay at home with my girls, who are still little, so we don’t have a million activities to do or practices to attend. We have family and friends that are close by who are always willing to help out. And yet, especially for the last couple of weeks, at the end of every day I sit down and realize that I didn’t get half of the things done that I wanted to, and yet, I can’t really put my finger on one thing that we did do.

One of my new friends in the group, Becky, said that she read an analogy recently in which a woman said to imagine at the beginning of the day, you have a handful of spoons, like a handful from the cafeteria line. And every task that you need to do takes a spoon. Make breakfast? There’s a spoon. Get yourself and the kids dressed? Another spoon. Grocery shopping? Spoon. But where it gets tricky is when extra things pop up that take an extra spoon. Breakfast takes one of your spoons, but what about when the two-year-old keeps playing with her cereal milk, even after you’ve told her not to, and just when you get up to get another cup of coffee, the bowl ends up on the floor? That takes up one of your spoons. A tantrum at the grocery store? That takes up two spoons, on top of your already allotted grocery spoon. Sometimes at the end of the day, you reach in your pocket for another spoon and there are no spoons.

Let me tell you, lately, I’m out of spoons by, like, dinner. Violet is shaking off her nap, which means that she needs to nap, but has realized that Mazie and I do stuff while she sleeps, and she’s missing out. So by about 4:30 on days that she doesn’t sleep, she is losing her mind. And Mazie is at the age where she super wants to help with everything: mopping, washing the dishes, making homemade bread, cleaning the toilets, folding the clothes. It’s really sweet, but those of you who have a four-year-old know that when they “help” it isn’t really help, and the task itself then takes minimum twice as long. Throw in teaching SAT tutoring classes, blogging, hosting essential oils classes, and a ton of other things that I want to do, and I’m all out of spoons. There was a day last week that I woke up and reached for my spoons for the day, only to find that my stash had not been replenished. Perfect.

And honestly, I just hate when I get low on spoons. I feel my patience slipping away and it seems like my kids just can’t do anything right. In my worst moments, I feel like they must just see an angry face in mine all of the time and it breaks my heart.  Because I have great kids, and they are so enjoyable. I look around the house and I see the things that I just didn’t get to. My floors need mopping, I forgot milk at the store, and I haven’t replanted my vegetable garden. My friends are noticing that I’m out of spoons. Jen called me on it last week, which is how I know she’s really my friend. She didn’t let me off the hook when I said, “I’m ok, just a little overwhelmed.”

Unfortunately, I don’t really have the answer at the end of this blog post. But I will say that it helps to talk about it; it helps to know that it isn’t just me who is drowning out there in Mommyhood.  There just might not be an “answer.”  In “The Best Yes,” TerKeurst writes that we often fly the flags of things that we have overcome in our past, but that we rarely talk about the shortcomings that we are struggling with in our present. So here I am. I’m waving the white flag of the Overwhelmed Mama, hoping that you will see it and take solace that you aren’t alone. I asked Grandma Betty once how she survived being a single mom of two little kids who were only 15 months apart and she looked at me and said, “Some days I didn’t.” While that seems a little bleak, it was also very comforting. It means that I’m not some horrible failure as a mother, as a woman, or as a person. It means that we all go through valleys where the struggle is real. It also means, though, that we will come out on the other side having survived after all.

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