A New Adventure. A New Journey.

I have had a love/hate relationship with this whole COVID experience since day one. So much of COVID sucked right down to the depths of hell, but like with all truly bad things, there is always also something good. In this case, for me, the good has been the changes in me. I guess the conclusion I have come to is, that if you try to lock me down and break my spirit, I will rebel like hell and find a part of me that I never even knew existed. Take that COVID!

So many lessons have come out of the last 16 months for me, and one of the biggies was that I am far more competent and capable than I ever gave myself credit for. I am, for lack of a better phrase, still very teachable...even at my age. I also learned that I am worthy of at least as much care and effort as I give everyone else. Imagine that! 

Ultimately, I think I may have learned more about myself in this time period than I have in all the decades before. 

Prior to this last year or so, I have not been someone who took myself very seriously. I was an afterthought, even to myself and I looked and felt like it. I also didn't push myself to do a lot of things, because I always felt that I wasn't smart enough or capable of enough. This came from years of being told that I would never amount to anything by my dad. I think it was because I was a girl, and he just didn't think very highly of girls/women. Because of this thinking, I quit things when they got too hard as I think I felt I would fail anyway. Rather than push ahead and try to find answers, I just felt I wasn't smart enough to make it to the finish line. I don't know that I was really okay with all of this, but I did settle for this outcome more times than I would like to think about. 

This last year though, I challenged myself. Maybe it was because we were on lockdown and it was either challenge myself and learn, or die of a stagnant boredom. Since I haven't actually allowed myself to be bored since 1983, then learn and push ahead was my only practical choice. From this choice, I learned why for four decades my cookies had tasted like and had the consistency of sheetrock. I learned that the reason some of my past sewing projects didn't come out properly was not that I couldn't sew, but because I didn't take the time and/or have the patience to read the directions and sew properly. More importantly, though, I learned that taking care of myself was not the chore that I had always viewed it to be, but worth the time and effort I put in to make me feel better and in some cases make me feel more whole so that I was better for the people around me. This has been huge for me and I know that I am not alone in the difficulty (especially as a woman) of finding the desire and the energy to make myself a priority and to take care of myself. 

This particular blog, Do I Look Like a Celery Kind of Girl, was originally started as a blog to talk about health and self-care, even if I couldn't frame the right words at the time. Unfortunately, over the years, it has been ground zero for a lot of false starts with big ambitions and very little long-term follow-through. Because of this, I decided if I ever started hitting the keyboard again for this particular blog, that it wouldn't be until I had something long-term to say with some real follow-through as the end game. I think COVID may have just given me all of that and more. It also made me realize that long term may just be overrated because quite honestly long term is not the same for all of us. 

COVID and the year 2020 and the start of 2021, have put me on a journey like no other journey I have ever been on in all my years. Something was opened up inside of me that gave me a bit of childlike wonder, and a whole lot of desire to push myself and see just how far I could go. 

I have never been big on limits in the big scheme of things (David taught me that) and yet in so many ways, I have limited myself over the years and I am working very hard to stop that. Life is very short and if we don't live it on our own terms, we will end up wasting it on someone else's. That is not the life I choose to live. 

I am no longer tying myself to big ambitious goals that are usually too big to be attainable and when they fail, end up hanging over me like another missed opportunity. Instead, I am thinking and planning at best, no farther ahead than this summer and in most cases, no farther ahead than next week. This is going to give me opportunities to try things on the spur of the moment and rearrange things when something doesn't fit. My OCD where order and scheduling occur will simply have to make peace with a little bit of spontaneity, as I am allowing myself no guilt if time or situation doesn't allow for something, but I am also not allowing myself to give up, give in or quit anything I do start. 

Moving forward, I am going to use this blog to the fullest extent and I am going to take you on the journey with me, that I started several months ago.  I have no plans, very limited goals and the only thing I really know is that it is going to be about transforming me and ultimately, taking care of me, whatever that ends up looking like on any given day. 

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons, to come from all of this is that life and health are a gift. For me, it is especially so, with all the genetic issues and illnesses my family possesses. I am 58 years old and before I know it, I will soon be hitting 60. Rather than see me and my body as winding down, I prefer to see myself and my body as entering an exciting new phase of life where I don't have any expectations and everything is a new chance at a new beginning. 

So if you are like me, and ready for an adventure in life, then join me on this journey. I won't be blogging here every day, but when I do, I promise you that I will try to make it worth your read, and maybe together we will find a little joy, a little laughter, some new ideas on life, and some much-needed self-transformation. 

Until next time, may you have no expectations, may you have no guilt, and may you push yourself farther than you ever dreamed possible. 

Just Who Has Time for Self-Care Anyway?

Self-care! Self-care! And for those in the back...SELF-CARE!!!!

So funny story, before I went to Al-Anon, I don't think I had ever really heard, or maybe more to the point paid attention to the term "self-care." Al-Anon however, is a huge proponent of self-care as taking care of ourselves is about the only thing we as individuals have control over. 

As a mom, and maybe just a woman in general, I had never really thought much about self-care. Perhaps it was because women of my generation were at that fork in the road where we were choosing whether to be stay-at-home moms or being out in the workforce. If you were a stay-at-home mom, then your attention and care were all about your family. If you were in the workforce, then you had to work twice as hard to prove that you were just as good, therefore there was little time to focus on much else other than the work. If however, you had that "S" on your chest and decided to be both in the workforce and a mom, then your days were usually 25 hours long and each minute was consumed by something or someone else and there was zero time to even go to the bathroom, let alone do something special for yourself.  

In my world, in particular, I spent all day every day, as a widowed mom, trying to be both mom and dad to my kids, and most days, feeling as if I had failed miserably in all areas. Add to that, taking care of a differently-abled child, cooking, cleaning, and at times holding down a job, and there were days that I was lucky to comb my hair, let alone practice anything that even remotely looked like self-care. 

I remember a time when my life was so crazy and so hectic that I would go entire days and forget to eat, baby wipes were at times as close to a shower as I got and I was so worn out and tired that I actually fell asleep at the kitchen sink while I was doing dishes. Yeah, I came pretty low on the totem pole when it came to care of any kind and my life and demeanor showed it. 

Later, as my kids got older, my dual parenting role turned into unadulterated control, and I was way too involved in my kids lives, doing too much for them, expecting too little from them, and focusing all my time and attention on their care.....or as they like to refer to it as my smothering years. 

The biggest and suckiest part of that time period was that I truly felt like a  martyr who was completely unappreciated for all the love and misplaced care I gave. Looking back though, I don't think I would have appreciated me as a mom either. 

Not only had I become a self-proclaimed martyr, but I had also become a bit of a whiner to anyone who would listen to me. I was just so confused because I literally thought I was doing what I was supposed to do as a mother....live for my children, and I could not understand why instead of being grateful to have such an amazing mom as I surely had to be, that they were avoiding me like the plague and angry at me for just about everything....including my very existence. 

It was one day, when I was mid-whine into one of my poor-me stories, that a very kind and yet very direct person, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Lisa....get down off that damn cross. We need the wood." It startled me into silence, and then it was kindly and directly explained to me that my kids couldn't stand me at the moment, because I had no life of my own. Every breath I took was for and about them and I had no identity other than being their mom. It was a realization that hit me like a brick right between the eyes. If I didn't totally immerse myself in the lives of my children and control their every move, then what was I supposed to do? I felt as if my Mom Card was being revoked.

Not long after this revelation, was when I started Al-Anon and was introduced to self-care. Hmmm.....it sounded fishy to me. No, it actually sounded selfish and not at all the way I was brought up or taught that a mom was to behave, and just who had time for this self-care nonsense anyway?  Then another very kind and direct individual pointed out to me, that I had been doing it my way all of this time, and then they posed the question, "How was my way working out for me?" Well, that was just uncalled for! It made me mad clear down to my toes, and then it hit me, it wasn't working out well at all. 

They then went on to point out that my care had turned into control and my control had become borderline insanity. Harsh, but not completely incorrect. It seemed that the more I tried to care for control my kids, the more they rebelled, and the more they rebelled, the more I tried to control them. The reality was that I only had control over one person and that was me, and outside of that, I was just a crazy woman who was pissing off everyone in my hemisphere. This is where self-care came into play. 

It seemed that if I took care of myself putting the focus on me, and let those who were old enough to make their own decisions and deal with their own consequences do so, then my world might just start changing for the better. I was skeptical, but as was pointed out earlier, my way did not seem to be the tried and true winner that I thought it was. Perhaps.....I wasn't as wise as I had led myself to believe. Who knew?

I remember the first time after that, when I said, "No!" when asked to do something that they could do for themselves. The initial reaction was utter shock on their part, but guess what? They did it! For me, it was a heady feeling of release and freedom. Next was the afternoon that I shut my bedroom door and.......took a nap. That's right. Their laundry be damned. It was the most glorious nap I had taken since my drooling Percocet nap after my hysterectomy. I was beginning to see the beautiful wisdom in this whole self-care thing. 

Since that time, I have learned more and more to focus on myself and to take care of myself. This doesn't mean that I have completely abandoned my family, it just means that I have stepped back out of their lives and allowed them to succeed or fail on their own merits. They have learned that their failures are often as important as their successes and I am learning that they don't need me to fix things or clean up after them. This gives me a lot more time to find out who I am and what I like, outside of meddling in my children's lives. 

Of course, I still care for my differently-abled son, but even with him, my relationship has changed. I work hard to allow him to be as independent as his abilities allow, although sometimes I catch the crazy mom in me, trying to slip out and I have to shove her back in. Practicing self-care though has made me healthier, stronger, happier and in many ways a better mother (not mother and father) to my kids. 

Over time I have learned a lot about myself and the things that make me happy. I have found that I like to mow the yard, sew and craziest of all.....go to the gym. I like to take the time needed for all those things to give myself a break from my daily life and to recharge both my body and my soul. In turn, giving myself those gems of time, makes me feel happier and more productive in the rest of my life. My kids I am sure, are much happier too, now that I have learned to stay in my own lane and it is much easier to stay in my lane when I know who I am and that whenever necessary, I am able to practice a little bit of good old self-care.💜

So until next time, may you never have to replace a shower with baby wipes, may you get to take a drool-worthy nap, and may you practice self-care every chance that you get.