Today I got up like every work day at 5:15 AM so I could have a little time to write before my son has to get up at 6:20 AM for school. Despite having the encouragement to have all his school clothes ready for this morning the night before we ended up looking for socks and shoes. He needed to wear long pants versus shorts because it’s colder than we thought it would be. He needed extra encouragement to get moving at every step. Long story short, like most houses we were running late now. I did my best to keep my cool while ushering him from the bathroom to brush his teeth and kitchen for a quick breakfast before he’s out the door for the school bus. Inside I was steaming mad and felt the rush of stress and hurry-up come over me.
Yes here I was, the writer of keeping things flowing natural and not letting modern day stress interfere with your life, feeling just like any other mom on a Monday through Friday morning. As far as getting a sketch of a blog post done, didn’t happen. Having a cup of coffee before it got cold nope that didn’t happen either. My stomach was in knots over the rush of the preparation for the day and I was so distracted from it so nothing I would have wrote would have come out easy. I totally understand why a lot of people think I’m crazy for trying to mom, work full time and run a business. Sometimes I think they are right.
As I was preparing myself to get to work after all this I sat with the guilt feelings we moms get for being stern with our children, frustrated at the situation and the building up of stress I was about to face in my work day. I knew in the houses down the street my friends were feeling the same right now as they prepared to get to work or were at the bus stop standing in the chilly morning. We push aside those feelings and get about our day dealing with jobs though because that’s what we do. It doesn’t feel good or right or fulfilling but we do it anyway. It was in that moment I realized how much we just give up because we can’t keep up or fight against it.
I do it. I give up time for sleeping, working out, eating well, taking care of myself for the sake of work or a load of laundry that’s needed for clean socks in the morning. I forego my needs to get a quick break or lunch away from my desk to get work in my job done or respond to the latest “emergency” that’s come up. I rush from my job to the kitchen to prepare dinner, throw in another load of wash, empty the dishwasher and help with homework. Sometimes the only thing natural about my life seems to be the harsh routine I have to follow to keep it all going. I give up my own needs because there doesn’t seem to be time or energy to deal with those too on top of everything else!
Wow that is hard to say out loud.
It’s hard to admit how much I still feel like a failure in the mom department, wife area, employee and business owner hats. Oh how much I don’t think I do well or enough of for all these areas while still not even including myself in that list! When I talk about alignment this is where I believe most of us really struggle. This is so much bigger than time management, meal prepping and having a well-organized house with socks easy to find! This is the crux, root cause and bottom of it all! It is the result of living in a modern society that doesn’t give a damn about our personal needs. That is just something you deal with in your own time. However they will report how unhealthy, obese, disease rampant we are to make us feel bad about it all.
There it is.
The hard cold truth we are told, forced and taught. Self-care, fulfilling self needs and taking care of ourselves is something we’re supposed to do but just not when anything else is needed or required. It is done in private in our own personal time and it needs to be time blocked so it doesn’t interfere with anything else. It needs to be its own separate area and container in our lives. No wonder we never have time for it.
We are forced to choose between different roles, hats, containers and areas of our life that will be inconvenienced, have needs not met and deprived while we address (selfishly I might add) to deal with our own needs. I mean seriously it’s not like you can take your lunch hour to go work out because when was the last time you actually had a solid hour for lunch at work? You can get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to do that instead. You certainly won’t have time after work with taking care of the family and getting them fed and settled for the evening. Also by this time in my day at least I’m exhausted from everything!
No wonder at all we all feel like a sad, depressed, overweight, anxious, burned out, inadequate failure. Or perhaps that’s just me. Perhaps it’s just me that feels this way, lets her family and responsibilities down because I simply can’t do it all and do it well every single day. I get overwhelmed and tired. I want to go mind-numb on Netflix and check out.
All the natural living advice and guidance I could ever give someone or have tried in my own life will not work if we’re not even open to the idea of wanting something better and being willing to work at it. At first it feels like an entirely new challenge on top of challenges we’re barely surviving. It seems complex to fit into our already overfilling schedules and demands. It seems like one more thing instead of an easy way. Admittedly this is exactly how it felt when I first tried. It still feels this way when there are mornings like today that are us running late and rushing at the very start of the day. It takes a lot of strength to I realize how far I’ve come and yet how much it still can easily pull me back in. Just forget all this natural living crap and get it done for pete’s sake! Oh yes sometimes it seems very tempting to cave into that mindless living space
where I just go and go and go until I drop.
Natural living in alignment is something we have to intentionally include in our day every day. It is where we realize sometimes we have to adjust our flow to usher our children through their morning routines and still make the bus in time. It is also having grace for ourselves when we didn’t get a healthy lunch or had to skip a workout for a work demand. It is not beating ourselves up over these things and releasing the guilt that transpires from them. The secret is realizing we are human, we are imperfect and we are still beautiful creations that can do amazing things. Sometimes though we have to do things we don’t like and that is ok too.
When I thought about this morning with my son and then dealt with my work day that was also equally mind-boggling stressful I smiled. Perhaps again it is because I have lost my mind but I dared to smiled among all this chaos. This wasn’t my breaking point and I knew I was onto something. I didn’t have to check out to make it through anymore. I could align my life to the needs and demands and myself.l It wouldn’t always fit perfect but I didn’t have to pretend or shove me to the bottom of it in making it happen better. I had found living natural alignment in today’s crazy busy, frustrating schedules, non-stop going world.
I gave myself a moment to appreciate the well oiled machine sometimes my life is and sometimes it isn’t. I smiled because I can be different in how I respond to each area of my life and let that response be natural and in alignment to me. I can still honor who I am and what I need amidst it all. I don’t have to sacrifice one thing for the time or attention I need for myself. I can co-mingle them together into a beautiful landscape of my own where it doesn’t make sense or seem to fit sometimes. Yet I can make it mine. I can make it fit me and what I need, dream of and desire. It requires me to see where I’ve learned to do this already and where I still am growing in that journey.
Sometimes life will pull really hard at me forcing me out of my alignment. I’ll revert back to mind-numbing get through it and ignore my feelings motions to survive it. I have begun to understand when those things trigger and where I am still growing in how I respond to them, release them and not let it change where I am in peace with myself. Yes sometimes I want to yell at my son for being a sloth in the mornings and feel frustrated that I didn’t get a chance to write some beautiful blog post before I scurried off to my day job. Sometimes I let guilt wash over me when I think I can’t do anything well in my life. However, I no longer need to linger there. Living natural in alignment means I know where I stumble and where I can grow from it. I no longer have to give up because I can’t keep up.
Are you ready to find that strength to not give up anymore?
Start by taking my quick and easy Lifestyle & Wellness Questionnaire. This will help hone in on areas where we are living in disjointed segments and can begin to bring alignment back into our lives. We can also fit it into our family budget too! Take the questionnaire here: https://www.dragonspitapothecary.com/