Self-Confident Friday

The past couple of days have been very busy! I attended the Yankton Area Mental Wellness Conference at Mount Marty on Wednesday and Thursday, and my husband was out of town for work. Because it was just me and the littles (Cohan is working with Grandpa), I had to skip my ride yesterday morning. I was right back at it this morning-although I was a bit slow to get going because I didn't set my stuff out before I went to bed last night!
A big difference from my prior two rides to today-heat! Both Tuesday and Wednesday were nice and cool-I wore sweatpants and a hoodie-today was 80 degrees when I set out to hit the trail at 5:40! This prompted a quick change of clothes before I headed out the door. Thankfully, once the breeze hit my face, I didn't think about the temperature for the rest of the ride.
One of the lovely parts of my early ride that I had forgotten about was waiting for me when I got to the park this morning:

I don't think I would have minded the sprinklers except for the fact that I had my phone and I would prefer not to get it wet-my old bike had a zippered bag on the front so it was a bit more protected than it is in my basket.
When I started my ride this morning, I was tired and it was 80 degrees so I gave myself permission to only ride on the lower part of the bridge (I did the same thing on Wednesday). I think I once said this in an earlier post, but I am going to say it again-always give yourself permission to shorten the END of your workout but not the beginning. If I cut or shorten the beginning of my ride, I can't go back in time and change my mind, but, if I tell myself I can shorten the END of my ride, I give myself time to change my mind. I was SURE I was going to cut the end of my ride short this morning until I crossed the bottom of the bridge. I convinced myself that I still had plenty in my tank and I could push myself to get up that long hill to get to the top. Actually, I did one better-I stopped half way up that slope to snap a picture that I wanted to take Tuesday and Wednesday. Both days I told myself that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to make it all the way up the slope. Today, I told myself that I could do it, and I did. This shot was totally worth the extra burn in my legs that it took for me to get going again:

 

I love the contrast of the dead tree silhouettes with the leafy living ones. I'm glad I finally stopped and got the shot. 

I have also been working on eating better and snacking less. I took some tomatoes and pea pods as snacks to the conference so I wouldn't eat as much junk. I did better on Wednesday than on Thursday but one day of better eating is better than no days. I'm just really trying to make myself more aware of what I am eating and how much. Small changes can gradually lead to big results!

Some other pics from my morning ride:

Camden had his first outdoor swim practice this morning so I took it as an opportunity to get another work out in. His practice was only supposed to be 45 minutes long and that seemed like a silly amount of time to drive home and come back. I took my water bottle and walked roughly 2 1/4 miles. Add that to my approximately 5 mile bike ride and I'd say my day is off to a very nice start!

Pedal Power

I have really missed my summer morning bike rides so yesterday (darn clock radio's quiet static) today was the day to start. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and got the bike out of the garage, I felt a little bit sluggish like-was I really ready for this? As I edged closer to my favorite trail, I remembered why I love my morning rides but I am getting a bit ahead of myself...let me back up a bit...

My beautiful new bike!

On May 14th my husband and I got new bikes. Because we moved into a new house with much more space inside and out, we now have a secure place to keep our bikes out of the elements. We made the trip to Ace and test rode several bikes. This was the first bike I took out for a spin (they put it together just for me after we visited the day before just to ask some questions and peek at the different models). I tried several different ones and, while they were all better than my old bike, I could not get over how incredibly comfortable this one is! It is an Electra Townie, and it even has front and back lights powered by the turning of the wheels. It has a nice big seat for maximum comfort, and I can ride in a nice upright position which I like a lot more than the traditional leaning forward position. Plus, the color is AWESOME and totally me! I got a nice big basket for the front which has made it easy for us to bike downtown for date nights or for me to ride it to parties and other events. This is an investment that I won't regret.
Back to my ride this morning...
The air was perfectly crisp and cool. Everything was calm and quiet-I love 5:30 am! I am a morning person. so this is my time. No kids, no distractions animal distractions, and the trail beneath my tires. It really is pure bliss. I rode down to Riverside Park and across the Meridian Bridge (bottom and top). I didn't feel exhausted; I felt energized. It is fun to see all the differences in the trail and the bridge as they make improvements  I no longer dread the hills on the trail; I push myself through the challenge. This bike has helped make exercising easier and more enjoyable which makes it worth every penny. I can't wait to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.
Here are some snapshots from my morning ride:

Not sure what this cute little dude is (muskrat maybe?) but I stopped to watch him for a bit.

He took his branch into this little hidey-hole

Sunrise from the bottom of the bridge

Sunrise from the top of the bridge

Finding Your Self-Worth Outside the Roles You Have Assumed

We all do it. We schedule ourselves into a cave where we feel as if we can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we attach our sense of self to the titles and roles that we fill: Mom, Coach, Caregiver, Wife, President, Secretary, Treasurer, Committee Member etc. We can all attach a plethora of titles and roles to our lives. Some of these roles are more important to us than others and this generally shows through the decisions we make concerning what we are willing to make time for within our schedules.

One thing I want to say before really getting started: This post is not meant to diminish your role in your family or in the lives of others, it is more of a reminder that those are not the only things that you are. You are more.

Here's the thing...before you were mom, wife, whatever...you were YOU. Even if you were "finding yourself," you were still yourself. At what point in our lives do we decide that who we are is second, third, forth, fifth...twenty-seventh to the roles we have assumed over the years? Is it when we marry? Is it when we start a career? Is it when we have children? I really don't know but I will say that I see too many moms that that seem to have forgotten their self-worth along the road of life. We put ourselves last-after all the things that we already do not even have time for. I'm not saying that we should always put ourselves first either but rather that we need to put ourselves first occasionally to have balance in our lives.

Here's the thing people, we all doubt ourselves in our roles as moms, daughters, wives etc. but yet we seem to forget to doubt if we are being who God made us to be. Did God want you to be a wife? mother? coach? Sure, you bet-we should all strive to serve others at some point in our lives; just don't forget to serve yourself, or you will have nothing left to share with others. We don't buy a car and drive it for months on end without filling the tank and yet we do that to ourselves constantly.

Think you need to be a better wife/mom/etc? Try doing something for yourself without feeling guilty about it. Give yourself some time to read, go to a movie, make it a habit to have time to yourself at least once a week or once every two weeks. The truth is, if we value the importance of something, we make time for it. It's that simple. If you don't place value on having time to be you, you simply won't make time for it. If you never make time for yourself so that you can grow into the person that God made you, you are doing yourself, those around you, and the world a huge disservice. In contrast, if you do make time for yourself, you are setting a positive example for your children (not abandoning them); they need to see that carving out time for one's self is an important aspect of our lives.

We like to lie to ourselves to convince ourselves that it's okay to continue to put ourselves last. We tell ourselves-some day when the kids are older-some day when the kids graduate-some day when the kids have families of their own-but if we always say some day, it will never come. We lie and tell ourselves that we will have more time but the truth is our days are numbered. Not one single person knows the number of days they have, and some people would try to make this a point against the point I am trying to make. The truth is, if you are on your deathbed in a hospital and you know it's the end, you are going to want to feel some satisfaction in the life that you lived-that you lived it serving others but also serving yourself-being the person that God made you. The last thing anyone wants is to spend all their final moments on earth running through all the things they would have done differently because the truth is-at that point-it's too late for that.

I am not saying that you are a terrible mother or wife because you spend all of you time serving your family; I am saying that you can better serve you family by building yourself up. Being a mom is damn hard. It can make you question and second guess yourself at every turn. Some days it tears you down; other days it lifts you up. You need something in your life that can ease the stress of those tough times. You need something that can steady the rough seas of life because we don't know how rough the waters can get until we are in the thick of it.

What a lot of this comes down to is how would you recover from a devastating loss? The loss of a husband or the loss of a child? I won't pretend that I know how to grieve through one of these losses because I haven't, and my heart truly goes out to all those that have. What I will say is this: If you spent every moment in your life simply filling a role, what happens when you no longer have to fill it in the same way? Does your world crumble and fall apart? With every tragic loss we experience, a piece of us goes with it, but we must have something left after the dust settles. Too many people experience something devastating and never recover, some of these people take their own lives, some take the lives of others, and some live as a shell of who they thought they were. Be you, know you, have self-worth holding you up when everything else is pulling you down. Know that you are important outside of the roles that you regularly use to define yourself.

I won't pretend that I discovered all of this on my own. I actually learned a lot of it through my extensive nonfiction reading over the past nine years-not "self help books"-but rather the stories of people who lived their lives and learned something along the way. As I have spent the past several years reading their stories and trying to apply much of what I learned to my own life, I have found a lot of happiness.

I don't share this post with you because I'm dying (although technically-we all are) or anything like that. I share these thoughts with you because I am a person living happily as a mom, wife, teacher and, most importantly, myself. Be awesome, be you, you won't regret it.

(Just a note, while this post largely addresses moms/wives/women, this is for everyone. Just pretend it says "Dad" or "Husband" ;) )

Blog Revival

I think it's about time I bring this thing back to life. Summer is right around the corner. YankTON helped me get started toward weight loss and fitness. I have recovered from my foot surgery a little less than a year ago.
I am ready to write about it all.
I am ready to get fit.
I am also ready to continue infusing some of the mental health posts that are some of my most recent posts, and I hope that at least a couple people are ready to read some of my rambling words. :)
I have kept a spreadsheet where I randomly added to a list of things that I wanted to write about so I'm ready!
Stay tuned for a long (but important) post later this week!

The day I had to explain suicide to my 10 year old

As a parent there are plenty of conversations you expect to have with your children. You plan to talk to them about happy things: family, friends, coloring, riding bikes, books, movies, TV shows, food, sports, games...general silliness.
And then there are things that you wish your children never knew about. There are school shootings and car accidents and cancer and suicide.
I had struggled through the day hoping to give a sense of normalcy to my students, hoping that is what they need. It was a quiet day. I could feel a sense of pain below the surface in my classes but they made it through the day; I made it through the day. I kept my composure, more than once I thought about the post I wrote over the summer. I thought about that tattoo I want for my birthday. I thought about the fact that someone chose a period when everyone in their world wishes it was a semicolon. What I didn't think about was that it would impact my oldest son's world.

After school today I asked a question that parents across the country ask their child on a daily basis: "How was your day?" It is a question that we expect to not get a response to half the time. It is a question we rephrase to dig deeper most of the time. It is also a question that we don't always know what kind of response we will get.
This is how it went today:
How was your day?
We didn't have guidance today because the counselors had to be here (we were in my classroom). Do you know what happened?
Yes, kind of. Do you know what it was about?
B told us that a kid died, do you know how it happened?
Kind of, what have you heard?
(long pause of hesitation) B said that he shot himself. Is that true?
That is also what I heard.
Mom (I will never forget the look in his eyes), I don't understand-why would he do that?

This was not how that question was supposed to go. That is not how I ever expected a conversation with my 10 year old to go. Ever.

I will admit that I fumbled with my answer with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. How do I attempt to explain something to my 10 year old that leaves adults asking why? But I did, I tried. I let him talk about what he heard and then I explained that we really don't know why. No one does. Not even the person who did it. Sometimes people get so sad that the feel like they can't be happy again. Sometimes bad things happen and we really don't know why. I just want you to know that you can talk to me about this-if you have more questions or anything. I also want you to know that it is something to talk to me and Daddy about but not the best thing to talk your friends about because this is something confusing for kids. If people are talking about it, you don't have to stop them or correct them but I would appreciate it if you don't participate and that you talk to me about it because this is a very adult thing for kids to be talking about. Kids should talk to adults about adult things rather than other kids. I hugged him and he seemed satisfied with my incomplete answer.

And then he sat in a desk and did his math homework and English homework and I wished I could climb inside his little brain and know that he was thinking. Did I say the right thing? Does he still have questions? Does he understand? Did I say too much? not enough? I'll never really know but I do know that he talked to me about it. He could have answered my question with his usual "fine" or "good" or "okay" but he didn't and I suppose that is one positive I can take from a pretty dreary parenting experience.

Tattoos-Mental Fitness

As a high school English teacher, I have interacted with hundreds of teenage students over the years. One common question that comes up quite a bit is, "Do you have any tattoos?" (Many of my students have tattoos themselves.) The quick answer to this is, "No." Do I have anything against tattoos or people with tattoos? Nope. I don't care much about other people's skin. The simple fact of the matter is that I have never found anything that I wanted on my skin for my whole life (no, not even my kids' names etc.) so, since that is the nature of a tattoo, I never got one.
Recently, that changed. I was scrolling down my facebook feed when I came across a story about semicolon tattoos. The headline was something about, "Do you know what they really mean?" Being an English teacher...and a curious person who clicks on facebook links...I clicked and read and understood and wanted one.
It is all summed up with this line from the Project Semicolon website: "A semicolon is used when an author could've chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life"
If you know me personally, you know that I don't have the prettiest past. I have come a long way from where I once was and I am pretty open to talking about it, well...most of it. Most of you have heard my stories of having a mom addicted to drugs and alcohol; the impact that it had on me and my life and the wonderful people who rescued me from it (some of the most amazing people I know). But what most people don't know, what I really don't talk about, are the really hard times I suffered mentally-silently.
Depression is never an easy thing to talk about. Suicide is even more difficult discuss. Too many people simply suffer in silence and it is some of the most painful silence a person can ever live with. So...here I am...trying to put into words...something I have avoided talking about for about 20 years...all because of the semicolon...
I spent a good portion of my young life depressed which I think will surprise a lot of people because of the person I am today and the outlook I have on life. I wasn't always this way. I'd like to think I hid my depression well but the only people who could tell me that are the people who were around me during those times. Looking back, I know it started in middle school-I remember a good friend that I had at Discovery Middle School in Vancouver, Washington. She was the first person I could talk to about the darkness I felt growing ever larger inside me. She had similar feelings and together we did some stupid things to get our adrenaline going and make us feel at least a bit better, even if it was only for a moment. Eventually, we moved and I never saw her again.
I spent a good chunk of the next part of my life writing about my feelings to release them without letting anyone know. My mind was quite the dark lonely place and constant moving only made things worse. I idolized suicide and wondered what it would be like to just be done with life, be done with feeling terrible, be done with living in scary places where people broke in, be done with sadness...just done. I wrote things like, "My life is a train that's on the wrong track; it won't turn around it just won't go back. Things just get darker and darker until...crash." My mom found that written in a notebook and questioned me about it. I lied and said I didn't feel that way but I was SCARED. What if she didn't believe me? What if she really knew what I was thinking? She did believe me, and I made sure that anything I wrote was well hidden after that. Even today, I wonder why it was so hard to talk about what I was feeling and experiencing. I think I worried about rejection-if people really knew how screwed up I was inside, would they want to be around me? I still have journals going up all the way through college of the constant battle I waged against my depression. Some journals list the kinds and amounts of pills that I had in my possession-my journals of the mental battle I was locked into within my own mind: live or die. I am thankful that the live side won but it never felt good; it felt hopeless. I think I keep those journals and glance at them every now and then to remind myself how far I have come and also to remind myself that there are other people out there silently struggling as well. Maybe a semicolon tattoo is just what I need to let those journals go because I chose to continue my life's story rather than to end it.
Matt was a very bright light in a very dark place in my life. I was able to talk to him about some of the stuff that I was going through, but part of the power of depression is the fear of putting too much of the burden of it on someone else. Like if I shared too much, it would be too much for him and I would lose him. Back when I was struggling, I thought that much of how I felt would go away if I just got out of the situation I was in. But even when my life changed my junior year in high school, I still felt that darkness. It stayed with me through my junior year in college. I couldn't just change the setting of my life and get myself to snap out of it.
Sometimes I wonder what kept me from taking my own life? Did I have just enough hope to get through? Was I too scared to disappoint the people who cared about me? I really don't know and that's okay. What matters is that semicolon. So when did things change? Marrying Matt and When I became pregnant with Cohan. Both things happened pretty close together ;) Some day I will tell Cohan just how much of a blessing he really is. He was the light that chased away the rest of the darkness and it has stayed away ever since. I created the little family I dreamed of-it wasn't some dream in the future; it was reality.
At this point in my life, those 10ish years seem like a little blip in the story of my life. The happiness that I now have and experience on a daily basis feels so much more powerful than any of that darkness but I never knew that back then. If I could have one wish, I think it would be for people to be able to see the happiness that awaits them if they can just hold on a little bit longer...well, that and a semicolon tattoo.

Parenting: The Mental Struggle

This has been one of my toughest weekends in a long time. Those that know me, know that I have a pretty upbeat and positive person but sometimes the load just gets a bit too heavy. I have really been feeling down, and I wish there was something that I could do to make myself feel better.
Being a parent is hard. Sometimes, parents need a break to be better parents. It is frustrating, challenging, and scary at times. It is also amazing, rewarding, and joyous. Simply put, parenting is a balance and sometimes the scales get a little off balance. That is the best way to describe this past weekend-the scales were tipped but not in my favor.
This weekend was supposed to be kid-free fun but it became kid filled frustration. I found myself in the car, in the bathroom, in the shower, on the couch, writing this post-crying and, to be truthful, I feel like a whining kid who didn't get her way having a melt down. I want my weekend back-the one I was supposed to have. No broken arm, no surgery, no scalp lac, no kids. I wanted meals without bargaining, sleep without interruption, games without kids, time with friends without watching the clock; and it was so close I could taste it. I think I wanted it too much.
It isn't like this was the first time that the kids ruined our plans so why is it SO HARD this time? I think it's so hard because I didn't know how much I needed it until I didn't get it; we didn't get it. As a result, every little thing this weekend felt like a bigger thing. The 4 hours of sleep on Thursday night, Cyver still not sleeping through the night, whining, tantrums, wildness, fighting, hitting screaming, it all felt like too much.
I also think it is incredibly hard because it isn't easy to talk about here. I don't want Cohan to hear us saying how much we wish we were on our trip. I don't want him to feel bad or feel like it's his fault we didn't get our special weekend because it isn't anyone's fault. Shit happens. He has enough crappy things to deal with as a result of his broken arm (missing state swimming, final baseball games etc.) I don't want the loss of our weekend weighing him down. This weekend was just a weekend that wasn't meant to be and it sucks. IT SUCKS! And it sucks even more to not get to talk about it and voice my frustration and just openly have a good cry. I am hoping that by writing this I can start to let this go and get out of my funk and open myself up to a better week.

**I don't want anyone reading this to think that I am not thankful for all the kind words, prayers, help, and gifts. Without the help of our little village, this weekend would have felt much worse. I am beyond thankful that it's just a broken arm. I am forever grateful that I did not have to sit waiting for Cohan's surgery with a whining 6 year old and a melting down 2 year old. We were very blessed to just be also to focus on and be there for Cohan during a scary time. So thank you to everyone that helped or sent kind words, it really was appreciated.**