I read this article today (What Mothers Want for Mother’s Day) and found myself nodding throughout … though I’m pretty sure it’s not just working moms who feel this way.
All moms probably want more time in the day to spend quality time with their kids — time that isn’t spent schlepping them from activity to activity or feeding/clothing/bathing them. And as a working-outside-the-home mom, this article definitely rings (sadly) true.
The toughest part about transitioning from a family of three to a family of four — when I’m breastfeeding and pumping — has been figuring out how to clone myself to spend time with my little girl, who I miss enormously.
It’s not that I don’t see her every day — I do, and for that I feel blessed — but the time we spend together hasn’t been quality time. And I feel awfully guilty about it.
I wholly believe a mom’s heart gets divided into as many kids as she has … but it doesn’t mean sometimes she doesn’t feel bad when she can’t give one of her kids her all. Especially when said kid really needs a little TLC. Continue reading “Easing the inevitable guilt”→
This came through my Facebook news feed and my wheels got turning.
Contrary to what fairy tales and media influences might tell you, happiness doesn’t just “happen.” It’s a choice. A conscious decision.
A choice we make each day when we wake up; a choice we make when we decide how to react to certain information/situations; a choice we make before we go to sleep each night. Much of what I learned during my year of cognitive behavioral therapy was related to this: how we can control not only our actions, but our reactions to situations/people/circumstances.
And though it isn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s wholly appropriate to drown our sorrows in a bottle of Malibu rum (not that I’ve ever done THAT … haha — flashbacks to my earth-shattering at the time freshman year break-up …) or several pints of Ben and Jerry’s (did anyone else see this supremely awkward Daily Show interview with Robert Pattinson the other night?!) … The thing is, we’re entitled to grieve, mourn, be angry … but when all is said and done, we can still choose the “happy route.”
I want to share this awesome article I read at Rookiemag.com called Eating: A Manifestothat author and blogger Clare Mysko shared on Facebook today, which could be best summed up by this paragraph in the piece:
“Could we stop feeling ‘guilty’ for wanting an effing brownie? Or a plate of fries? Could we stop actively seeking permission from our friends to go ahead and ‘be bad’ and order the cheesecake? Could we all just go ahead and order whatever it is that we feel like eating, instead of saying, ‘Oh, I feel like a pig, you guys are just getting salads’?” Continue reading “Eat the Damn Brownie”→
MMMM Ethel's Chocolates!Have you ever bought something “naughty” knowing you were buying it to taunt yourself, and see if you could, indeed, live with it in your house without 1) binging on it or 2) tossing it in the trash?
If you have, you can join my disordered eating club. I’m guilty of this all the time. I’m constantly testing myself around food.
It started back in college, innocently enough: ordering something I really, really wanted but “knew I shouldn’t have” and “shrouding” it with a napkin when I was half-way through, something my dear college friends and I started doing in the dining hall and then, later, out in the real world.
But many years later, things got worse.
Buying reduced fat Edy’s Loaded cookie dough ice cream, knowing full-well I’m going to pick out all the cookie dough bites at 2 a.m.
Picking up a bag of cheddar Chex mix or candy corn at Walgreen’s when I go in to refill a prescription, knowing full-well both are triggers for me.
Or, though I haven’t done it in 24 days now … buying chocolate I know full well I will chew and spit. (But again, I’m 24 days “clean”)
I know myself “full well,” as you probably all do. You know your triggers in life and with relation to food. You know what makes you tick.
Let There Be Light 