How to juggle it all – work out – quality time with family – time to be a present partner – time for personal growth – time to volunteer – time to just play – time for personal development – time for sleep!

We don’t write enough about the low times – the failures – the misses; which is where we often learn and grow the most.  When we are wiped out.  Pooped.  Scrape our spirit off the floor.  Throw in the towel.

The times we dig in and hang on.  The lowest of the lows.  Why is that?  Too depressing?  Too real?  Too boring?  Too scary?

What do we do those days when we see the worst in ourselves?  The mistakes; the things we can’t take back.

Wishful thinking days we want to keep the experience of time and turn back the clock for a ‘do over’?

The days the critic, the judge and the executioner are all active internal voices.

The concerns sometimes pile up – are the kids ok – is our family ok – is the world ok and the internal response in our head is “no it’s pretty far from f#(ing ok” (eloquently put in Pulp Fiction).

When the grind becomes a real grind.  Fold the laundry.  Where are your shoes.  Where are my glasses. We’re out of milk.  We need gas.  Am I an ATM?  What’s for dinner?  Why a zero on homework reported done?  Brush your teeth.  Make your bed…..

A thankless job; particularly without the absolute dumb drooling smile of sweetness looking back at you!  Now it’s why this – I don’t like that – he did this.  And worse, I’ve started to realize we get on their nerves  now; as much, or more, as they step on ours.

The omnipotent crown, and pure elation, at our walking into a room, are the ‘once upon a time’ of fairy tales that now twist into the dark forest.

It’s the dark forest of all dark forests because sometimes they trick you with sweetness and snuggles to lull you back into the fairy tale of grinning sweet infancy.  Then BOOM, the demonic preteen reappears.  The cruelty of bickering and complaints.  Who had the front seat last?  Who broke the chair?  Who is the bigger jerk? This abrupt crash back into the scary dark forest.

How do we keep the external static from interfering with being present?  How do we pick ourselves up when we feel depleted?  How did we let ourselves run so dangerously low to the detriment of our own health?

As women, empaths and those wired as “givers”, how do we learn to give to ourselves first? How do we learn to stop, put on our own oxygen mask, before we tend to others? How do we do this if we were never taught?  How do we learn?  What is the first step?

If you are reading this, then you probably already have many of these answers and this is just more affirmation to hang in there, we are doing it, and we are not alone.

Unfortunately all those who don’t read, don’t seek and autonomically go through life hitting the ‘repeat’ button make it that much harder for us to stay on point.  For those, we do our real work of patience, tolerance and forgiveness.  Not to give them a free pass but to give us freedom (freedom from agitation they most certainly can cause if we dwell on “them” instead of pay mindful intention to “us”)

Step One:  Start Where You Are.  They even wrote a book about it

Step Two:  Drop Guilt.  For me this is just another form of self centeredness.  My guilt will not bring peace to those people I have harmed or correct those mistakes I have made.  I can mindfully bring intent to self forgiveness.  When I do this, I am able to drop the guilt and be present for those situations or people that I wanted to make a living amends to with corrective actions; not feelings or words.

We drop “I’m sorry”. We all say this is what I’ve learned, this is what I will do differently next time, and/or this is how I can correct this moving forward.

Step Three:  Humility.  On parenting, did I read a book, take a class, join a group, ask questions, go to school or did I simply think I should know and have been faking it?  In order to learn a new skill one must learn!  The more I learn, the more I realize I have much to learn.  The more I am willing to drop my ego, the more I realize how much it dominates many areas of my life.

Step Four: Stop taking everything so personally.  My daughter and I went to a wonderful ceremony at the local healing arts center downtown – for those interested click here:

https://www.facebook.com/aurorahealingarts/

I pulled her mat closer to mine and she pushed off me.  She didn’t want to read her intentions or snuggle with me. Instead she pushed me away with irritation.  Did I not just invite her to my quiet time?  Did I just pay for this abuse?  Those are internal thoughts of my ego with conditions and expectations and a desire to make it about ME!

She hugged the other women, shared her intentions around an open fire and held her own court; especially when I was not around to interfere.  This is not personal.  This is a healthy milestone for a preteen to begin the detachment process.  Did I not complain just a short while ago how they were attached like postage stamps and I can’t wait for some independence? HA!

Here is a great article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-teenagers-need-from-us-more-than-almost-anything_us_57e9b4c0e4b095bd8969fdbf)

How we parents can grow up emotionally so when our kids push off us, we can simply continue to be present.  It is not healthy for our HIGH need to be understood to usurp the needs of our children.  We can go to our parents for understanding; for many of us this is not an option.  We can also learn to reparent ourselves (or attract pseudo parents into our life) so we don’t expect our kids to be our parents, and do for us, what we can do for ourselves.  This way we can be present for their development and not the other way around.  If hearing this stings go back to STEP ONE!

Does it make any sense to use what I learned in this moment to beat myself up for what I did in the moment which just passed?  Shake it off or as the facilitator stated at the Healing Center “All is well.  All is well.”

Lastly, sleep it off.  My husband has taught me that perspectives change after a good nights sleep.  Sometimes a few days of as much hibernation as I can find is a great cure!