Parenting Towards Enlightenment

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Seonaid

We, a class of aspiring yoga teachers, are sitting on the floor of the meditation hall at the ashram in India when the conversation turns to the conflict between practice and parenting. “But how,” asks one of the men, “do you work with being here when your children are somewhere else? You have to worry about them, think about them… otherwise…” His hands go up in a gesture of helplessness. I (chagrined) admit a moment of surprise, because this is usually a conversation had amongst mothers, and to hear a man in a traditionally patriarchal society express the same concerns brings me back to reality. Parenting is this agreement we all make, described by Elizabeth Stone as letting your heart walk around outside of yourself.

I try to take it up, this question. How do you be here when they are elsewhere? How did I justify leaving my three children for an entire month to go to the other side of the planet where (it turns out) I will be unsuccessful even at finding the post office to send home the promised letters, let alone making a weekly phone call? And how is this search for myself related to my search for their mother, hidden somewhere inside me?

The teacher offers mother-love, the mythic, all-giving, all-merging force. The Mother, she says, sacrifices of herself for the sake of her children. The boundaries blur, her self is merged with that of her children, the Love is complete.

“No, no!” my inward protest screams. “That’s a recipe for disaster! Don’t you understand? Mothering must include the art of letting go, of moving from a place of merging, where even yourbodies are shared, to letting thinner and thinner tendrils connect you… it is a process by which you remain and become separate people.”

What I actually say, stumbling, is something like, “I need to have faith that I am not the only one. My children are surrounded by a web of other adults who support their growth. And worrying about them isn’t really about them. It is a superstitious belief that I can somehow influence their environment, keep them safe simply by fearing that they might not be. That just keeping them in the background of my awareness is somehow necessary to maintain the relationship to them. It is, in fact, taking care of the fear that if I stop that worrying, even for a moment, it is a sign that I don’t care.”

Despite years of education and training, daily exposure to cynicism and a tendency to a too-scientific view of the world, my superstitions run deep.
When my children were infants, I was afraid to sleep, believing somehow that their continued existence in the world relied on my sheer force of will. I’d like to say that this improved by number three, but it didn’t really. Some nights, even now, I peek into the children’s rooms on the way down the hall, just to make sure that I haven’t imagined the whole thing, and that no thief has come in the night, stealing these parts of my heart. There they all lie, even the 13 year old whose feet are now larger than mine, breathing quietly all these years later, with no effort on my part. I name this fear, that if I glance away, even for a moment, if I fail to show my appreciation, maybe they will be taken from me. Better not to chance it.

***

When my mother came to meet my first son, mere hours old, I held him up and said, “Hey, Mom! Look what I made!” She grinned. I grinned. We were as proud as when we shared my macaroni-and-handprint crafts in kindergarten. Yet even in that placental space, it’s not quite true that “I” made “him”. I had to walk through the world and gather the molecules from which my son would assemble himself, according to codes so complex that we don’t yet understand them. In this process I was neither the agent nor a mere vessel: he and I grew as entwined systems, evolving, communicating, sharing the resources of time and energy. It continues even now, as my limited time must be allocated among family members and my ever-growing list of projects, becoming myself among them.

In the varied practices of meditation and yoga, I learn to hold up my motivations to my own internal scrutiny. On the one hand, I don’t want to be a mother who treats her children as an extension of herself. This is an easy mistake to make, in a world in which we are judged based on our children’s behaviours. I admit feeling a pinch of pride when older women stop me in restaurants to say, “Your children are so polite.” (I even put it in here. You may call me on it.) Yet I pat myself on the back for having chosen to let them grow away from me organically. I take a certain amount of satisfaction in having faith that they will be OK for a month, even while feeling like I should probably miss them more.

It is a matter of some effort, placing my awareness on this ever-shifting boundary: where do I stop and you begin, child of mine? When I do this thing for you (whatever it is) am I responding to an actual need, or am I projecting one of my needs upon you? Worse, am I doing it to prove something to myself or the world around me, that I am able to play this role, that I am worthy to be this Mother of myth?

Which brings me back to that ashram in India. There is a message for my children even in my absence, and it is this: Someday you will be adults and you will leave me. We are in this for the long haul, you and I, but one of my tasks is to grow away from you, so that when you leave the parting will be gentle. The motion of two human beings, having walked together for so long, finally walking apart.

And in the meantime, as in so much of our practice, the instructions are, “Not too tight, not too loose.”

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Serial Having it All

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Seonaid

Several years ago, I was in the midst of a frantic time. I was working, going to school, still nursing a baby, up all night, getting up and driving to work at 6:30, getting home at 7:00 (or later), living on fast food and coffee, and generally… well. Frantic. And out of shape. Very out of shape.

One day in the middle of this, they had a life coach on the lunch time phone-in show. I called in, looking more for reassurance than guidance, truth-be-told. “I’ve been dealing with all of this, I’m only sleeping 3-1/2 hours a night, I know I need to eat better and get some exercise, but I’m just exhausted.” We talked for a long time (much longer than usual for these phone-ins) and I eventually said, “I think maybe we can have it all, just not all at once.” He concurred, wished me luck and moved on to the next caller.

And did the next caller start with a question? No. She said, “Well, that lady just needs to get up half an hour earlier so that she can go for a walk every morning.”

I looked at my radio, incredulous. Did you even HEAR the part about 3-1/2 hours of sleep a night? Nursing a baby? Writing papers until 2 in the morning before getting up at 6 to drive 100 km to work? My major health risk isn’t my weight or my diet; it’s dying in a fiery wreck when I fall asleep behind the wheel on the 401. (Frankly, I don’t think I should have been permitted to drive at all under those conditions… except that then I would have lost my house on account of not paying the mortgage. I apologize to everybody who shared the road with me for endangering your lives.)

Having it All – A Trap!

I tried to have it all. I spent many years assuming that everybody else was just better at it than me. That their houses were always tidy, that they never had to threaten their children with haircuts to get them to submit to the brush, that somehow, magically, they had more hours in the day so that they were able to cook the healthy meals that they were serving to their children who ate them gratefully and blissfully an hour before they got home from work. (Did I mention that during several of these years my husband was a graduate student, so I was also the primary earner in our household?)

So, um. It didn’t work. And then I spent a fair length of time (like, years, maybe) thinking that maybe it didn’t work just ’cause I was bad at it. Even after that conversation on the radio.

I have a hypothesis. That is, I think I have an explanation that I can’t prove. That’s like a hypothesis, right? This problem of failing to “have it all” seems to be  associated with the middle class, particularly “professional” women. And the explanation I have come to is this: We’re not the class we think we are. We were raised both to be participating members of the leisure class, and simultaneously to provide all our own support. You know those people of past generations that we compare ourselves to? The ones who accomplished so much? For the most part, they had… (stage whisper) WIVES. And/or servants. Chatelaines. Butlers. Somebody else took care of the necessary parts of life so that they could carry on doing the “work” of the leisure class. Thinking, reading, writing, researching were the point of their days… they weren’t also coming home, making dinner, doing the laundry, putting the kids to bed and then trying to fit in 4 more hours of work before they started it all over the next day… We’re trying to be multiple people all at the same time, and each of those roles is a full life in and of itself…

I found this in draft from last year. I still don’t know how to finish it. Maybe because I still haven’t reconciled the reality of my life with the narrative of the “successful woman.” That is, I still don’t “have it all”, and thus don’t feel entitled to speak about it. Does this resonate with anybody?

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Rolling With It

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Seonaid

Yesterday, I passed a test, I think.

First, I managed to lock myself out of the library at which I am the sole employee. Specifically, I left the key in my car, which my husband borrowed and then failed to return at the expected time. When I went to get the spare key, the keeper was also late for work, so instead of being 10 minutes late and opening on time, I wound up being 45 minutes late, and opening half and hour after I was supposed to. “How is this a test?” you ask. Well, here is my take: I did not get all freaked out, creating a blamestorm on my husband who changed his Saturday routine without warning me, while driving my car. (I might have gnashed my teeth a bit.) And when I found myself sitting outside the wrong library at opening time, still waiting for rescue, I realized, “This situation is out of my control. There is no point in getting my knickers in a knot. Something will happen, and then something else will happen, and I don’t know what those somethings are.”

And, unsurprisingly, somebody eventually showed up, handed me a key, and I went and opened the other branch. I even laughed about something completely unrelated on the drive from the one library to the other. It could have been a very bad hour of my life, and it wasn’t.

Also, the keys to the library will now hang on the hook with all the other keys.

Test the second went like this: There is a Celebration in my life this week… something about being married 15 years. So, we made dinner reservations. I don’t know when I last had a dinner reservation, and we decided to spring for the best restaurant in town. I was going to completely go against my norm and have (vegetarians cover your eyes)… lamb. I miss lamb. I like chickpeas, tempeh makes me sing, and I can do marvelous things with eggs and cheese. But I was going to be deliberately… oh, something. Decadent. ‘Cause I’ll be darned if I’ll eat the pasta primavera again.

Only when we turned up, we found out that they were having their “vegan and raw food” night. Ha ha. Nice one, universe. We stayed. We ate. We were ravenous. It is my opinion that they had made the mistake that I see the unfamiliar make with vegan food. Not enough fat! Not enough calories! No protein! A portobello mushroom only has 70 calories in it. Needs nuts! Or a tahini dressing! Or half an avocado! Please, gods, more food! (Or it’s possible that the portions are just really small at fancy restaurants, since we once had to get pizza on the way home from a 9-course meal. And I generally can only eat half the meal at a regular restaurant. I once ate for two days off a single breakfast from an American diner. It’s a mystery. Do rich people need less to eat? Do they live on air and cheerios, like two-year-olds? Or are they all sneaking off for pizza, too?)

Anyway, so, that didn’t work out so well. We stopped at the grocery store and picked up a chocolate cheesecake and some chicken wings to go with the very nice wine that was had treated ourselves to. (We had geared up for the transgression. We were having it, darn it!) Much laughter ensued, and we assured ourselves that we can get a perfectly lovely vegetarian meal at our own house. Lamb not required.

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The Illusion of Choicelessness

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Seonaid

I first wrote this title down several months ago, but that was how far that particular post went. This week, however, I had a moment on the cushion when I realized that I really could do everything completely differently. I am not trapped by promises and contracts, I choose to uphold them.

I could:

  • Sell the house, cash in the equity, buy a house in town, get rid of the car and all our financial worries would go away.
  • Stop all this writing, apply around the country until I found a job that paid me a decent amount and do the long-distance academic commute thing
  • Get off the cushion, leave my husband sitting on his, get into the car and drive to Ontario without providing a forwarding address. For that matter, I have the right to live and work in Europe. And a passport. The possibilities are endless

What stops me from doing any of these things is NOT external forces. I could actually do any of those things, as long as I were willing to accept the consequences.

In most of these cases, the consequence that holds me back is heartbroken children. I can imagine getting to the point of chucking it all and moving to Tahiti. Sometimes I even entertain these rather juicy escape fantasies during my not-meditation. Those are the drifty parts between following the breath. It is where my greatest insights come from, but as one of my meditation teachers pointed out, “You have to be able to label even your greatest insights, ‘thinking,’ and return to the breath. This is a leap of faith.” The insight, though, is that it is not my children that keep me here. It is the commitments that I made to these people when I brought them into the world. I could leave them to deal with their heartbreak, accept the judgment of my community, and walk away. I choose not to, every time I come home. It is a question of Right Action.

In the first case, though, which came up with my earlier struggles with the car, I would feel like I had completely failed at my attempts in rural sustainable living. Also, I would miss the river. I find myself standing and looking at the river, knowing that if I were willing to give this up, I could go to Italy. I have an awareness of clinging: that by holding onto this view, this place, I am missing out on other opportunities. This is a great opportunity to practice aparigraha, or Non-grasping. I can sit with that sensation of loss in some mythical time in the future, that fear, the taste of failure and longing in my mouth as I imagine the words, “Remember when we had that great house in Cape Breton?” I can touch this… and then let it go. It is not. Right now, this desk, these eyes, looking over this river IS. It won’t always be, but for now, it IS. The feeling of choicelessness is really something else entirely… fear. Fear of the unknown, loss of (the illusion of) control, and a tendency to tell stories of disaster. “I can’t choose to sell my house!”

These experiences of internal struggle remind me of the image in the Tarot Eight of Swords:

The woman on this card is blindfolded, tied up, and surrounded by swords. Yet her feet are unbound, there are no captors, and she could free herself and walk away. She just can’t see it. Yet. 

I am so familiar with this sensation… although if I were to draw my own Eight of Swords, she would probably be standing in the middle of a messy kitchen with a screaming toddler, with a laptop full of unfinished stories in the background.

I’m not saying that all things are possible. I have not suddenly become a convert to the way of The Secret. Some situations are horrifying, and the way out goes through struggle, agony, and actual danger. Sometimes there really are captors. Choices may be drastically limited by financial and social resources. But the ability to choose: There’s the rub. We bat around the phrase, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” To this I say: Of course they can. Choice is what remains when all else is lost. (If you do not believe me, as I have never lost everything, ask Viktor Frankl, who did.)

Please don’t hear my position as chirpy, or as victim blaming. People in catastrophic situations exercise their agency every day in the face of overwhelming odds, but success isn’t guaranteed. Privilege exists. We can only choose among the stories that we’ve heard. The way out often involves surrendering our deepest-held, most sacred beliefs about self, relationship, social obligation, success, and meaning. But the structures surrounding a situation are limiting, not deterministic.

Now that I have finished this post, I can see how astonishingly fabulous my life is right this minute, but I still find myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, turning in place, and feeling overwhelmed. So if, like me, you are feeling trapped in a life of freedom, with a modicum of resources, cast off the blindfold, and untie your hands. Make a list of ways out, no matter how ludicrous. Meditate, contemplate, journal, seek therapy, talk to your minister, change your life, quit your job, take up extreme sports… or don’t… but know that it is a choice. (3/362)

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On the Care and Feeding of Trolls

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Seonaid

Warning: Contains obscenities, which is almost completely uncharacteristic for me. Just in case you care.

Photo from wikimedia commons

I got a troll on twitter. Just one, and it was mild, and I did not deign to reply. I chose instead to revert to my sister’s IRL approach (which she brilliantly came up with at 14, I might add.) “You’re not worth the effort it takes to open my mouth to insult you.” It’s a good one. It confuses them. “But you just… but…” Trust me, it works. Especially if it is finished off with a flouncing departure.

The problem on the internet is that there is no flouncing departure. There’s just another comment, and another comment, and a comment conflagration, and people taking sides, and crawling into bed thinking, “But that’s not what I meant at ALL! What is wrong with those people?!?”

Emulating my brilliant and funny sister, I read the comment, ignored it, and went on with my day. At least, that’s what I *meant* to do. But he had implied that I had an eating disorder (specifically overeating) and I found myself defending my food. Again. To myself, in my head. All day long. I made a couple of tweets about it, and then followed with four days of excessive exercise, avoiding food, not eating enough… All this yoga, meditation, therapy, reading, cognitive behaviour therapy, and one miserable bastard implies an eating disorder and I’m screwed up for days. And I never even *had* an eating disorder to start with. What’s UP with that?

Well, let me put on my academic hat to do a little self-analysis. Out there on the internet. Where somebody might call me names. Again. OK, a little risky, but hey, it only gets better if we do something about it, eh?

One of the main ways that we learn about “what we are like” is through external cues. This is called mirroring, although I can’t find the reference in which I learned about it. It was somewhere in the B.Ed., I think. Anyway in this ego-driven world, almost none of us get accurate mirroring. Either we are diminished (“How could you be so stupid?” “Aren’t you *ever* going to do this better?” “How many times do I have to tell you…”) or we are unreasonably boosted, (“What a *fabulous* job!” “You’re the smartest/prettiest/best kid in the world!”) Most of us get a bit of both, just to keep us on our toes. In either case, the disconnect between what we think about our selves and what is reflected back creates cognitive dissonance. As social creatures, we are susceptible to the external validation (positive or negative) and modify our own self-image to better correspond to what we hear.

One of the things that we are encouraged to do as parents in this day and age is to provide more accurate mirroring, so that we comment only on what we see and express our own experience, without judgement. “I see that you haven’t cleaned your room as I asked you to do. I am frustrated, because I would like to play a game with you, and I think that it would be irresponsible of me to do that when your room isn’t tidy.” “You did really well on that math test. I’m proud of you, because I know how much work you put in for that.” Here’s the problem: almost nobody talks that way. I mean, sure, when we put in the effort and we are committed to clear and non-violent communication, when we have a philosophical position regarding boundaries, and the moral autonomy of the person we are speaking to, when we’ve had enough sleep and enough to eat, and we’re centred, we might be able to pull it out after practising with our kids for a few months. Or years.

But somehow, even though we know all of those things, when we encounter, “What kind of stupid bitch are you?” (or, my personal favourite, “People like you shouldn’t be allowed to have children!”) on the internet, our inner child melts. It’s not just a diminishing or negating mirror; the troll provides a distorted evil-fun-house mirror, reflects back some hideous caricature and says, “My God, how can you even live with yourself?!?” And we might be able to pull it together enough to say, “Fuck off, you miserable troll!” but the damage is done. Because that nasty little voice inside us that looks outside to say, “Am I good enough? Am I OK? Is the world OK?” has just gotten enough ammunition to turn on us.

“Aha!” it yells! “See what I said? Not good enough! Not smart enough, not sexy enough! You are a failure!!! Oh, you are disgusting, you are a waste of AIR! Oh, and BTW, the world is full of horrible people, just waiting to attack you!!! You think it’s ever going to get better??? Give up, you stupid bitch.” (Oh, it’s just me? Never mind, then.)

On the off chance that it’s not just me, let me look at dealing with the inner troll. That is more of a problem. It’s very tempting to go back to the original source of the trouble, to try to change the distorted reflection, to flatten the mirror. We get into flame wars, call names, take sides, take positions, and look for other external validation to drown out the internal troll. “All those other people agree with me. I must be OK, after all.” But you can’t grab the voice in your head by the collar and say, “Shut. The Fuck. Up.”

As difficult as it is to flounce successfully out of the room on the internet, it is impossible to do inside.

So here is why it matters not to feed the trolls: You will never win. They will never say, “Oh, you’re right, I’m being a prick. I see the error of my ways.” Never going to happen, my friend. And it consumes your energy and provides more power to the inner troll. So here is a troll practice: Do not hit send. Walk away from the computer. Sit. Breathe. Listen to the inner troll. That is the one that matters. Stroke your own head. Cry for the loss of innocence, the self-hatred, the demons that haunt you. Hug yourself, find the people who will help you back out of the dark. Again. And again. If you must, seek the outer voices that will reassure you.

But do it behind his back.

Don’t give the outer troll the power to withhold. His demons are not your responsibility, but they are using yours to feed them.Starve them out. Take your power back.

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Playing Catch Up

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Seonaid

I would like to be an organized person, but I seem to need to be a flexible person instead. Yesterday, I had three things on my list to be done between 4:00 and 6:00, one of which was to carve the pumpkins that my two older kids had to take to school this morning. But at 3:45, I got a call from the husband saying, “Oh, I can’t do the daycare pickup today. I have a thing at 6.” I checked the calendar: “It says 7.” “Yeah, but I forgot this thing at 6.”

Long and short – pumpkins were carved at 8 this morning, AFTER the kids hadn’t taken the bus to school. Then I took them to school with carved pumpkins, so by 9 this morning, I was still accommodating last evening’s wrench.

On the plus side, it looks like a lot of people read my post about Maura Kelly being wrong. And my evening plans for the meal exchange went ahead, so I have a casserole in my fridge in addition to the muffins that my father finished making for me when I dashed out the door to the daycare at 4:35. Thank goodness for the flexing of the other people around me… and the extra hands from my parents who are visiting. And my neighbour who dropped by and helped carve pumpkins before breakfast. And the fact that my father knows how to bake.

Today, I will try to Do Less Stuff.

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Twenty Years of Boredom

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Seonaid

30 minute challenge – Q&D blog post…

I have been having a renewed relationship with lyrics and poetry of late (and when I say ‘of late’, I mean for the last 4 years or so.) I find myself reaching for snippets of poetry when faced with difficult ideas, situations, concepts… My high school English teachers would be so proud!

The opening lines of Leonard Cohen’s song, “First we take Manhattan” go:

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom/For trying to change the system from within.

I heard this song first on Famous Blue Raincoat in the late ’80s, when I was an enthusiastic high school student, engaged in politics, going to camp for entrepreneurs, participating in Junior Achievement, and bound for a life of Making A Difference. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the whole song, although I have carried it in my head ever since.

Well, finding a way to Make a Difference turned out to be a staggeringly difficult row to hoe. In the deep past of my life, I wanted to work on the solar car, but one of the professors suggested that everybody wanted to work on the solar car and maybe I should lower my expectations. (1) I wound up working on dams and nuclear power instead. The nuclear stuff was interesting; the dam project took place at a company that shall remain nameless… but it convinced me that corporate engineering was a nest of vipers that I had no interest in working in. However, at that job (one of my first summer jobs as an engineering student) I had a couple of formative experiences:

1. We were always behind schedule and over budget. They already were when I got there. The mechanical engineer that I was working for needed sign-off from the civil and electrical engineers, but they never provided the drawings in enough time. One day my boss sent me in to his colleague with a stack of drawings on a completely unreasonable time scale – like, sign off on these five drawings in the next hour, please. The civil engineer eyeballed me and said, “How come he always sends you in here with these?” And I said, “Because you don’t yell at me.” There was a lot of yelling in that office. However, I recognized that what we were asking for was completely unreasonable and was a favor.

2. Every time I did anything the slightest bit out of the ordinary, I got told, “That’s not how we do things at $LARGE_CORPORATION.” But in my performance review, my boss said to me, “You have so much creativity… How come we never see it in your work?” Ha ha. ha ha ha ha ha. Sigh.

3. That same boss was a small-aircraft pilot. He had his own plane, but he only got to fly a couple of times a month because he was working so much overtime. So I asked him whether there was any way of having both enough money and enough time to enjoy it. He said that he didn’t know of any, yet, but if I figured it out, I should let him know.

I gotta say, though, that at 19 years of age, I couldn’t draw the links. I got the barest inkling that there might be a problem with my plans. But after I left my last professional job four years ago, I said, finally, “OH! That’s what he meant.” Slow learner? Or just stubborn? Or does it take twenty years of gnawing away at the oak tree before you start to say, “Maybe this isn’t going to work.”

1. At 18 years of age, I was extremely easily dissuaded, despite holding scholarships and good grades. I would like to caution professors that ‘cushioning the blow’ may actually turn out a lot like ‘discouraging people to the point of giving up’.

 

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The Dance of Balance

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Seonaid

Welcome to the October Carnival of Natural Parenting: Staying Centered, Finding Balance

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared how they stay centered and find balance. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***

Balance (I)

“Balance,” you say.

I will brashly claim that it is the Holy Grail of the over-worked, over-tasked, over-everything-ed mother these days. In the pursuit of this elusive treasure, I have read almost every book on organization in the library. I have followed the guidelines for up to 20 minutes at a time. I have meditated, gone to yoga classes, gone back to school, quit school, quit my job, stayed home with the kids, gone back to work, and (most recently) quit my job again to write and teach full-time.

Before I go any further, I have two confessions/clarifications. First, I taught a week-long workshop on balance this summer that I am hoping to reprise.(1) Second, in case this leads you at any point to think that I’ve got it together, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be writing this and had to be reminded.

So, if I haven’t got it together, and I still forget, drop and neglect things, what is it that I claim to be teaching at this workshop on Balance?

Well, after pursuing the balance-as-time-management approach for nearly a decade, I have decided that it doesn’t work. Yes, you can get better at time management, you can be on time for things, you can have a tidier house, a more successful career, and (in principle), more quality time with your kids and spouse. You can Get More Done. However, that is not balance; it is looking balanced… which is not the same thing.

Let me rewind five years to the height of my time-management solution. At that point, I had two children and a full time job with a 3-hour round trip commute, I was renovating a house, I was taking graduate courses, I was volunteering at the church, and I was juggling a somewhat complicated romantic and social life.(2) Boy, was I managing. Every moment of every day was scheduled. I was listening to language tapes in the car so that I could reclaim some of that 15 hours of the week. One day, one of my colleagues told me that her therapist had told her that she needed to take 15 minutes for herself, and I looked at her, incredulous. “15 minutes?” I asked. She nodded. “He means in a week, right?” Here’s the thing: She didn’t laugh at me, because she considered it every bit as unfathomable as I did.

I vividly remember arriving home one evening after supper and lying on my back on the kitchen floor for 15 minutes before I could even consider moving, and thinking, “Something has to change.”

First, I needed to Do Less Stuff, not just keep doing the same stuff more efficiently. I needed to figure out what the most important stuff was, and to stop doing the rest of it. And I needed to start asking for help – and rather a lot, it turned out. I withdrew from the graduate program, and asked my partner to start looking for work in a smaller centre where my financial contribution would be less urgent/compulsory. I asked my parents to rescue me from my incomplete house.(3) I even entertained the possibility that a mother who couldn’t function when she got home from work might not be the most useful or emotionally supportive family member to have around and started taking 15 minutes every now and then to do fluffy-girly things like yoga, breathing, and meditation.(4)

And those fluffy-girly things that I started doing grudgingly because somebody else’s therapist recommended it turned out to change my conception of the very idea of Balance.

Balance (II)

Balance is an internal state of your body. I wouldn’t be the first to claim it as a sixth sense. Strictly, it is the ability of your body to keep itself in equilibrium, but it is not just a matter of being able to stay upright (or upside down). Your body lets you know when you are “out of balance”. You may have a recurring eye-twitch that alerts you when things are out of control. The pains in our shoulders, backs, necks, and knees are warnings and calls for attention. So are conversations about how little sleep you are getting. Not a good sign.

For one moment, sit upright and as still as you can. Now, as you are sitting there, pay attention to the subtle shifts in your muscles that are keeping you upright. If try to sit too long in that position, they get tired. That’s because you are constantly adjusting and the muscles are working. If something happens to startle you or push you off balance, it takes more work to get back to equilibrium. You might even fall down.

The key in this approach is to recognize that it isn’t static; there is no Holy Grail that you can get to. Perfect schedule, finances in order, house tidy, sex the right number of times per week, enough sleep and exercise, proper nutrition, perfectly supported children, flossed teeth, and whatever the most favoured issue of the week is… Even if you get it right for a few minutes, or a few hours, or a few days, or (if you are very lucky) a few months, something will throw a wrench in the works. It is a dynamic process. Balance is about dancing. It is about finding the right solution this minute, and the next minute, and the next. It is about keeping in touch with your internal monitor so that you don’t find yourself on the floor in crisis before you notice that something is out of kilter. And, on those moments that you do find yourself on the floor, (because they will come) balance is about having the resources to pick yourself up, or ask for help.

Flash forward to this week. I went to a dinner with my husband. I finished a pair of socks. I went canoeing. I took my youngest child to the playground. I wrote some of my long-abandoned thesis, and I wrote some blog posts. I spent some time in the back yard playing pirates and looking at bugs. I hosted a potluck for friends. I hung out laundry. When it was obvious that we were going to be caught in traffic, I parked the car and played tag with the kids while we waited. I attended a meeting at the library and delivered a passionate speech about the environmental importance of finding a more meaningful way of living. And this time, when I found myself lying on the kitchen floor, it was because of a tickle fight, not a traffic jam.

  1. I promise not to spam you; it’s in Nova Scotia. Unless you want to be spammed, and can get to NS, in which case, leave a comment.
  2. Which I might explain some other time. But it’s not really the main point right now.
  3. Which they did, in spades, and with great kindness and generosity. They’ll get a posting of gratitude some other time.
  4. Because despite 4000 years of tradition, everybody knows that yoga, meditation and breathing practices are only for girls. And all this silly self-care talk is really about self-indulgence. Or, you know… Something like that.
 

Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be updated October 12 with all the carnival links.)

  • The World from Within My Arms — Rachael at The Variegated Life finds balance despite her work and her husband’s commitment to art through attachment parenting. (@RachaelNevins)
  • Balancing the Teeter-Totter — Rebecca is rediscovering balance by exploring her interests and passions in several different categories. She shares in this guest post at The Connected Mom. (@theconnectedmom)
  • Balancing this Life — Danielle at born.in.japan is slowly learning the little tricks that make her family life more balanced. (@borninjp)
  • Uninterrupted Parenting — Amy at Innate Wholeness has learned that she does not need to interrupt parenting in order to find balance.
  • Knitting for My Family — Knitting is more than just a hobby for Kellie at Our Mindful Life, it is her creative and mental outlet, it has blessed her with friendships she might not otherwise have had, and it provides her with much-needed balance.
  • Taking the Time — Sybil at Musings of a Milk Maker has all the time she needs, now her girls are just a bit older.
  • Please, Teach Me How — Amy at Anktangle needs your help: please share how you find time for yourself, because she is struggling. (@anktangle)
  • A Pendulum Swings Both Ways — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment found herself snapping with too little time for herself, and then veered toward too much.
  • Finding Balance Amidst Change — It took a season of big changes and added responsibility, but Melodie of Breastfeeding Moms Unite! now feels more balanced and organized as a mama than ever before. (@bfmom)
  • At Home with Three Young Children: The Search for Balance, Staying Sane — With three young kids, Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings knows parents sometimes have to adjust their expectations of how much downtime they can reasonably have. (@sunfrog)
  • Attachment Parenting? And finding some “Me Time” — As a mother who works full time, Momma Jorje wants “me” time that includes her daughter.
  • A Balancing Act — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes has concrete ways to help keep centered with a little one and a new baby on the way, from exercise to early bedtimes to asking for help. (@sheryljesin)
  • Aspiring Towards Libra — Are your soul-filling activities the first to be pushed aside when life gets hectic? Kelly of KellyNaturally.com aspires to make time for those “non-necessities” this year. (@kellynaturally)
  • SARKisms for Sanity — Erica at ChildOrganics has found renewed inspiration to take baths and laugh often from a book she had on the shelf. (@childorganics)

Filed under: Essays and Musings, Family | Tagged: , , | 24 Comments »

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