Category: Healthy Momma

giving away your power

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Everyone does this at one time or another. I’ve done it through some of the most difficult periods of my life and I watch people around me do it all the time. How does this phrase resonate for me? Giving away my power happens when I’ve been hurt in some way so much that I obsess or fixate on the event or the person who I perceived to have caused harm and I give away the good within myself in order to devote it to negativity and darkness that ultimately overtakes me. When you give away your power, you are at risk of losing precious moments of your existence that you will never get back.

This has been on my mind so much lately and how much it really gets in the way of living. I originally approached this from the angle of what happens when I do give away my power, then I flipped the script. When I DON’T give away my power, I:

  1. Avoid the pain of assumptions. It’s ridiculous how many stories I can make up about a person or a situation. Every which way I look at it, somehow I’ve lost the most, when in reality, I am usually better off. When I make assumptions, I have no idea about the facts of a situation and I’ve closed off any opportunity to learn them. I create unchecked fairy tales and lose moments of my life to pain, sadness, and a false sense of control. I don’t want to lose another moment to assumptions.
  2. Stay connected to the people and things that make me happy and fill me up. When I give away my power and fixate on something or someone that hurts me, all the things I love to do and people I enjoy spending time with fall to the wayside and I spiral. It’s counterproductive to a full and positive life. The one I would rather have – where I am present with my kids, friends, and family, rather than giving away that precious time to a demon in my head.
  3. Bring joy rather than misery to my relationships. When I am out of control with my own pain and feelings, I try to control everyone and everything around me and in the process, I drive people away. I can wish all the evil in the world on someone and even lash out at them (reference the famous saying: hurt people hurt people) but when all is said and done, I am hurting myself the most. I don’t want to spread that poison to the people around me.
  4. Make sound decisions. When I fixate on something so much it overtakes good judgement, I can end up doing things that are out of character or have long-term implications for myself or others. Not giving away my power increases my ability to make good decisions and stay grounded in what’s important.

Although it is much easier said than done, it only makes sense for future happiness and peace of mind to heal and move quickly through these events and away from the people who conjure up these negative feelings and exert this power over you. Life reflects back to what you are giving to it. Don’t make the mistake of giving away your power to others.

get your s#*t organized, and don’t forget to enjoy the present

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I hired a personal organizer a couple of months ago. I had always been led to believe that this was a luxury for the rich and famous and I needed to figure out how to clean up for myself. It’s not. Organizers are pretty reasonable. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart though.

The woman I ended up hiring was the only one who actually came and looked at my space, and then followed up with an estimate I couldn’t refuse. I was ecstatic. I was going to pay an organizer to recreate my space in lieu of a spring break vacation and my kids were happy because they don’t like to leave the house. I could not have anticipated the trauma that would ensue.

She brought two other people with her. I came to know them as the “New Girl” (mine was her first house) and the “Empathetic One” because every time I tried to remember their real names, I got them mixed up and they would correct me. Over and over. Until I started to feel really stupid. They each took a room in my house, minus the kids’ rooms and my living room. My job was really just to stay out of their way. Until I came across the lead organizer dragging a huge black hefty bag behind her and basically swiping things off my window sills into the bag. My anxiety forming quickly, I stopped to ask her what she was doing. She said she was throwing away what she thought was trash. Meanwhile, the Empathetic One was pulling down every picture and kid drawing on my refrigerator just behind her.

Here’s the deal. The organizer and her crew were not bad. They did a good job. Their work helped me start to think through how to organize things and since they came, I’ve been good about putting things away from the spaces they organized and keeping window sills and counters clean. I just didn’t realize the impact seeing my kids’ goofy, half-finished art projects being tossed or packed away would have on me. After they left that first day, I cried. Even after the lead organizer promised not to remove anything from the house. The huge black bag STILL sits in the corner of my dining room, waiting for me to go through it. Right alongside a bag with the kids’ first twin bedsheets in it (Lightning McQueen and Hello Kitty) that I can’t seem to haul away.

They came back again the next day and I cried some more. The Empathetic One was kind and acknowledged how difficult the process could be. I was glad the lead organizer showed up later, I would have been horribly ashamed if she would have seen me crying over handmade votive candle jars that were broken long before she had arrived and spelling tests saved from kindergarten (the last year my son would spell anything accurately forever).

Looking back, I would do it again. There are still rooms in the house that need serious help. I realized that I was not necessarily attached to the things, but more attached to an era that I would never see again. The era when the kids were small and innocent and sweet and created things with their whole heart and soul. A time that I took for granted while in the midst of, and sometimes even resented as a single mom. In a way, the organizing project caused me to stop and really take notice of the moments the kids and I have together, and to enjoy them, or at least sit in them. Sit in every moment, good or bad, because it is part of a period what will never come again. It taught me that worrying about work, or meeting the right person, or how I’m going to manage the upcoming year’s activities and driving, are really not the things I need to obsess about. That is all easier said than done, but sometimes I am able to achieve that state of present living, which is entirely peaceful.

anxiety

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I’ve gotten so increasingly anxious over the past couple of years that I started carrying my “fix it now” anxiety medicine with me wherever I go.

In 2018, I was hospitalized twice after a bit of a breakdown due to stress and relationship issues. I was equipped with pages and pages of coping strategies and emotional regulation worksheets. None of which were news to me, I had been talking to clients about and training practitioners for years on positive coping, trauma and resiliency, thinking errors, grounding techniques, and self care. While in the hospital, I shared space and meals with people who had just gotten out of prison who had mental health issues and no place to go and people who were on mandatory mental health holds. We heated up food that had been frozen since the Ice Age and drowned it in hot sauce. We had structured days, no cell phones, belts, or shoelaces, and lots of resources at our finger tips. I got to sleep for 10 hours straight my first night there. I haven’t sleep for 10 hours straight in years. Staff was caring, approachable, and helpful (you would never have known it was a state-funded program), and I felt at ease knowing that I was responsible for nothing and no one, just simply showing up where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. Would that ever happen again? I’d like to think not.

I would like to say that I’ve made a full recovery and it has been smooth sailing. That I clean my house or take walks or check facts or call a friend or tune into wise mind or ground myself in my senses when I’m anxious. But I don’t. I’m a lazy patient when it comes to preventing anxiety and its attacks. I’m not really qualified to write about anxiety or how to support people with it or what works and what doesn’t work when you or a loved one has it. I haven’t quite processed it to the point that I can provide helpful support like some of my friends can. It interferes with my daily activities and with my relationships. A couple of things that help me when I’m on the brink of disaster are hearing “How can I help?” from someone I trust and when another person shares that they’ve been there, or are there. It makes me feel less alone. It can be especially tough as a single parent. You can’t tap out when your mental health issues hit you the hardest. The best you can do is tell your kids you need a break (if they are old enough), and fall apart behind a closed door, if you can actually make it to a private space in time.

A pandemic, a layoff, starting a new job in a field I know nothing about, watching the world blow up and violent crime increase hasn’t helped. I know it has been hard for lots of people. I rarely go to the grocery store anymore, even though it was a favorite outing for me during COVID lockdowns. The other day I actually had to walk into the store and there was a woman pushing a cart around the aisles aimlessly, wearing only a white bra and shorts (ok, yes, I was in Walmart). Some people drink, some smoke, some meditate or pray, some exercise, some go to the store in their skivvies. We are all finding ways to deal and it’s not easy.

Eating Healthy While Safer at Home!

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Your refrigerator makes for a poor roommate when you are stuck at home 24/7. When the whole quarantine thing started, I relished getting out to the grocery store once a week; it was my one act of normalcy. Now I just don’t want to be bothered with it. I can’t use order online and pick it up for two reasons: I can never navigate the apps well enough to even find what I need so it ends up taking me about 2 hours to put together my order, and I really hate when I pick up and they say “We didn’t have regular Oreos in stock so we substituted them with mint Oreos.” Really??? Mint should not be an Oreo flavor, please don’t think it’s a good substitute for regular.

I decided it might be a great idea to do Whole30 again and my sister-in-law and I started it together. I did it last August like a champ. Definite benefits – lost weight, gained energy, never felt bloated, and discovered which foods typically upset my body when I re-introduced them at the end of the 30 days. I liked it so much, I kept my food intake at about 70% compliant, 30% after I was done. I thought doing it during quarantine would give me a little control over something in a healthy way since we don’t have control over much these days. Definitely a little more cheating than before (weekends), but still staying away from the foods that bother me. So not really “Whole30” per se, more guided by it.

Here are 3 things I’ve learned about eating when being locked in most of the time:

  1. Track my water. I never drink enough water. Now I keep a post-it note and hash mark it with each glass. It has helped, not drinking enough in mile-high Denver will definitely take a toll and make quarantine worse.
  2. Track my food intake, again on a post-it note. I don’t do calorie counting but I don’t remember what I ate even 5 minutes ago anymore so keeping a tally helps me put my day in perspective and helps me know if I should eat more or less, and what kind of food I still need for the day.
  3. Have an idea of healthy snacks ahead of time (even writing them down in the morning) so that when I need a snack, I already know what I’m going to eat (snacks are also not really part of Whole30 but I can’t eat just 3 meals a day). My biggest issue: I’m eating all day, but that means I eat during meetings. Your face looks even more horrible on a Zoom call when you are eating and it freezes up and it’s probably not good meeting etiquette anyway.

It’s hard not to eat like a maniac when you have access to food all day (for me, my fridge is about 10 steps away from where I’m working). I do know that if I am not paying attention, gaining weight and being stuck at home will make me even more anxious and depressed than I already feel at times. Most people I know would love to have some other ideas to help with this, so please feel free to share them through messaging (and I will share them in a future post) or responding to this post.

 

Solo Mama: Single Parent Overload

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Whhhoooooaaaaa!

I hit Monday night, at the end of a long weekend (Dr. King, I celebrate you AND I also celebrate sanity AND there are too many Monday holidays over the next few months), and I realized I was on the verge of losing my mind. I was anxious, irritated, and had a very short fuse. Does this sound familiar to any parents with an extra day tagged onto the weekend? I’m blocking any Facebook parents who post cute, smiley, huggy-family pics from their long holiday weekend snowmobiling, ice fishing, taking a cooking class, posing with Mickey at Disney World, adopting a cat, getting matching tattoos, attending a major sporting event, soaking in hot springs or skiing at ??? (I don’t even know where it’s cool to ski anymore). Insert LOL emoji here. Especially this past weekend.

I’m an introvert, and every introvert knows that you need time alone to recharge. Time alone over the past 10 years=non-existent. In addition to being an introvert, I hold myself to standards that are simply not achievable. Our little family was non-stop from Friday night until Monday night with activities, friends, family, typical weekend chores – groceries, laundry, house cleaning – and by the time I realized I was tapped out on the final evening of the long weekend, it was too late.

Back to the time alone piece. Every parent knows that once you have children, you are never alone. They follow you everywhere, like tiny little poltergeists, they appear from out of nowhere and they are usually bleating “Momma. Momma. Momma” and then they disappear as mysteriously as they appeared.  As they’ve gotten older, “Momma” is just the stem to a monologue about a random piece of trivia that they’ve encountered on YouTube. The other day, I opened up the browser on my phone, and the first page was titled “How do I be a girl in Roblox?” Really. Everything about them is shocking. And it never fails, the moment you’ve hit your word quota for the day, one of them launches into a speech about Tones and I and how they imagined she would look based on her voice in the song “Dance Monkey” or they ask you about sex.

It is also a one-way street with these people. The other day, my daughter and I were painting clay animal figurines, and I brought up what I thought was an important topic. I wanted to know how she felt about it. After she answered my first question, she said, “Momma, can we not talk anymore? I’m trying to concentrate.” I will need to remember that line the next time they want to discuss the body styling of Mustangs versus Camaros in the car or ask me what world events I might be hiding from them (my son accused me of purposely withholding current news from them about Iran last week).

I hit a wall Monday night. I need to notice the warning signs before everything caves in. I need to be better about going into my room, closing the bedroom door, and hanging up my “Keep out” sign and escaping even just for 30 minutes. It might just make us all appreciate each other more as well. For others who hit this wall on a regular basis, I see you.

 

Finding Love…

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That’s a catchy title isn’t it? Unfortunately this post is not about a juicy romantic interest or a dashing new lover (why don’t we use the word “dashing” anymore?). 😂

No. It’s about accessing love from within yourself. Accessing love for yourself. Loving yourself. Connecting with some warm fuzzy feelings for you.

See? I can’t even saying it’s about “loving MYSELF”….I have to put it in the second person point of view. Loving myself feels selfish.

The problem I’ve discovered though is that if I don’t love myself, I can’t expect others to love me. And I can’t very well love other people because I’m too busy criticizing others or picking them apart to try and convince myself that I’m lovable. And that just puts me farther away from feeling good about me.

Before you start wondering, I’ve only had two drinks tonight, and that was hours ago…

So, if I’ve committed to writing, and there’s no pressure to bring any wisdom or humor or great story telling to my posts, I can safely wrestle with this idea and I don’t have to convince anyone reading that I’m sober (but I am).

It has really been on my mind a lot. Loving me. Barf. I can’t say it without my stomach turning. Let’s just start by saying “being kind to myself.”

It’s probably because I’m on what a woman in my therapy/skills group cohort refers to as the “rope bridge.” Picture yourself standing over a canyon on a rope bridge. You’ve come halfway across, but the other side is still a bit farther. It doesn’t make any sense to go back from where you came. The bridge is shaky, unsteady, uncertain. The side you’re headed to looks good. You want to make it there, you don’t want to backtrack. But there are still several steps you need to take to make it there, to get on solid footing. Have you been there?

That’s where I’m at. Right in the middle. Everything is still pretty wobbly and tentative. Okay days and rough days.

Keep going. Don’t look back. Don’t look down. Don’t even look ahead. Just be where you are at. 🤗

Reset

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It has been more than 6 months since I last posted. At least that’s what my blog account says. It isn’t keeping tabs on dozens of post starts and scraps. Striving to find balance between the meaningful and the overshare, the dismally humorous and the downright depressing.

I’ve been pretty absent in any authentic way, notably in my work and social interactions. Inauthenticity just doesn’t make for good writing, especially when you can’t connect your mind and soul. I’ve thought about trying to regurgitate months of YouTube meditations and motivational speeches on gratitude, letting go of anxiety and unhealthy connections, building self confidence, stopping overthinking, finding peace and calm, inducing deep sleep, relaxing, reducing stress, letting go of fear, attracting abundance and on and on, with some application of lessons learned. Writing posts are also a great way to connect with the outside world, to find common ground, to give voice to struggles that others are just too darn smart to make public.

So I’m going to start here, and make posting a gift to myself. Self care. Because if I don’t start somewhere, I will never start. Maybe writing can expedite healing. xoxo

Solo Mama: What Happens When You Let Go of Your Destructive Nature?

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Oh. My. Goodness. I’m reminded of the song that has a line that goes “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” Who was that? Who cares. I’m old and I don’t have space in my memory banks.

It was this summer as I was in the shower, crying, that I realized that my harmful coping skills were gone. The negative self talk about me and anyone who had hurt me. Murderous, slaughtering, blistering language that overlooks the humanity of me and others and dehumanizes, devalues, in order for me to accept myself and my situation. The thoughts wouldn’t come. The words wouldn’t come. Spewing rage. Didn’t come.

There I was left standing, without an angry word or malicious thought, water rushing over me, scorching my body because my protective skin, my shielding strategies, were all gone. I felt raw. All I had left was, when someone hurts you, tell them what they did and how it made you feel. Use “I” language. Don’t assume anything. Give people the benefit of the doubt. When you are hurting or anxious, check your toolbox for your new tools. Breathe. Distract yourself. Fully participate in an activity. Describe. Ground. Tap. Affirm. Self care. Text a friend. Call the crisis line. The problem is that I am new to this tools. They are like picking up a power saw, which I’m not super comfortable with, and using it as a way to a more positive, healthier outcome. I might lose a finger or an arm in the process.

Having kids doesn’t lend itself to the luxury of time to practice using your new tools. It’s awkward and clumsy and the frustration of trying to find a quiet space physically and mentally often exacerbates my anxiety. Then, not only am I dealing with the pain and anxiety of some other situation, I’m also the lousy parent who checks out to fumble around with a coping skill that is foreign and seemingly less effective than just a rush of thoughts and words to describe the latest asshat I’ve interacted with or me regarding something stupid I’ve said or done.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” I have NEVER been good at that. Hence the therapy and the medications and the tools and the constant push to grow through this. Often I’m encouraged to “give it to God,” or “pray about it.” I appreciate the sentiments and the effort to reach out with this, but DONE. Check. I’ve done that. Doing that. It doesn’t flip a switch and make everything better and I think God’s on the same page there. It’s pretty explicitly stated in stories and accounts throughout the Bible. Still have to engage those awkward new tools and counteract destructive old strategies. XOXO

Solo Mama: “I Never Thought I’d (fill in the blank)!”

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I have to travel for work this week. On one hand, it is nice to go to bed when I want to, not worry about monitoring minion behavior, and share a bed with two children and a dog. On the other hand, I typically end up missing my kids terribly and spend a lot of time on Facetime exchanging “I want you”s with my daughter and trying to get my son’s attention. In any case, they both spend a lot of time making faces or playing with their hair and looking at themselves on the screen rather than focusing on any coherent conversation with me.

GJ 11-2018-2

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to find an episode of Law and Order on TV. It is almost guaranteed that you can find an episode playing on some hotel TV. This time I found L&O Criminal Intent. What a great show. Vincent D’Onofrio is brilliant. Through unique detective work and clever interactions and pinpointed perceptions, he is always able to put together very quickly who committed the crime and the person’s intentions, motive, weaknesses, strengths, etc. Yes, it’s very make believe, but wouldn’t it be grand if that’s how crime was solved and criminals were caught? Like a beautifully scripted dance…which inevitably ends with the person charged with the crime crying out at the end “I don’t know why I do this!” or “I don’t know how I became this person!” This is exactly what happened in two episodes I watched tonight.

In one, a woman who had become a murderous monster on account of her greedy husband and a nightmare divorce (“Look what you turned me into!” she screamed as she was hauled off camera by two NYC police officers). In the other, a shy, socially awkward man in his 20s who performs lobotomies on women he drugs and kidnaps so that he can cuddle with them and care for them and they never leave him. He even eats some of their body parts to connect with them (“I don’t know why I do this, I’m so disgusting”). With tears and snot running down his face, the cannibal, played by Neil Patrick Harris, breaks down after being coaxed into a tearful confession by D’Onofrio, who has taken pity on this young nerdy guy who can never get the girl, and masterfully pulls the confession from him in order to avoid the death penalty.

I can relate to these revelations. While I have not murdered anyone, disabled people so I could cuddle with them against their will, or eaten human body parts (THANK GOD!!!!), I often find myself alone crying “How did I become this person?” or “How did I get here?” At first, I would blame something or someone, usually a husband, romantic interest, family member, or more recently, children. If I wouldn’t have met that person, made that decision, sacrificed for that partner, things would be different. Then it was unhealthily turned inward (and still sometimes is) with I’m so screwed up, I’m stupid, I’m unlovable, God hates me, I’m worthless. I once visited with a sort of “medium” who tried to explain to me what had happened in my past lives that had caused certain things to happen to me in this life.

I guess when we are young, we often imagine our future lives as something that is known or familiar already. So it resembles our childhood experience or something we saw on MTV Cribs (wow, that dates me). I certainly didn’t envision two failed marriages, having children by myself, dealing with several mental health diagnoses or living in my MTV Un-Cribs neighborhood and single in my mid-40s (yeah, I’m on the high side of mid but nearly 50 sounds totally inaccurate). These kind of thoughts haunt me on a daily basis. I imagine it might be a common experience, but people rarely talk about it unless it’s a positive thing.

“I never thought I’d win the Powerball!”

“I never thought I’d get to work with Lil Wayne!”

“I never thought I’d win a Grammy!”

“I never thought Bradley Cooper would discover me singing at a drag club and I would sleep with him!”

You get the point. Some days it’s hard to combat the “I never thoughts” with gratitude. And yet, on the positive side, I’m not killing people or eating them. There are no restraining orders out on me. I have a job that is in the field of my passion. I own a house (which is a privilege reserved for the very wealthy in Denver these days). I have great friends. I have two amazing children. I have a great family where there is relatively little drama (it depends on any given day how much I might be causing).

Do you ever think about the “I never thoughts”? How do you deal with them?

(Photo credit: Me)

Solo Mama: Defixating on a Fixation

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I was checking in with a friend who has a young daughter who struggles with mental healthiness. He mentioned this thing about her fixations and how much energy she puts into trying to get certain parts of her life to improve. She refuses to give up, even when she is failing, and has essentially become obsessed with righting parts of her life to the point that it is debilitating her.

As he spoke these words, it was like part of the conversation was spoken into the dense, foggy part of my brain and when he mentioned her fixation, the fog cleared and I clung to his words. Yes, yes. That’s it. Part of all this has been the fixation. There are a couple parts of my life that I’ve become unnaturally obsessed with. Not necessarily the people who tie into the fixation, likely, it could be anyone, but the fixation itself. Two major fixations jump out at me. I have not been able to extract myself from them and the harder I try to get them right, the more things fall apart.

My therapist asked me recently “What if you were to let go of these things?” Not storm away, burn bridges, hurt people, but to simply let them go free. One of the issues I can’t really let go, but in a sense I guess I could let the fixation go. But how? I sat with her words for a week. If I let these issues go, I would be failing. In part, these issues were the impetus, the trigger, that got me here. If I let them go, I’d be admitting defeat. I’d be saying that I was unable to overcome them, to conquer them, to show them that there is nothing that I can’t do. To show them that my own mind will not stand in the way of me succeeding. I had invested so much time, in one case, years and years of energy. Months, hours, minutes, seconds. Hundreds of thousands of seconds. Obsessed, triggered, consumed, to the point that when my mind is spinning on these issues, I can’t hear, I can’t feel, I’m not even sure if my eyes are functioning and I can see. I’m not aware of anything going on outside of me.

How do you defixate on a fixation? I can distract my mind for only so long – as they say in my group therapy – fully participate so that my mind is completely in the present moment and can’t focus on the fixation. Moving away from the unhealthy distractions (men, alcohol, negative self-talk) toward the healthy: podcasts, music, side work, budgeting, readings on mindfulness, playing cards with the kids, cooking a favorite recipe, facilitating a workshop, church, learning about a new topic at work. I move from thing to thing, trying to fully participate and defixate. Realizing that I can’t succeed if I continue to fixate. Letting go is necessary, essential, healthy. Working on the how…