Almost a year ago I realized I wasn’t living the life I wanted to be living.
On paper everything was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. I had most of the things I’d been dreaming of since I was a little girl: a sweet, handsome husband, a trio of bubbly little kids, and a white-walled, sunshine-filled house. These dreams were simple but they were mine, and I recognized that I was 100% lucky to have realized them.
But I was also miserable.
I felt lost, boring, trapped, and emotionally spent. I’d take breaks when I could, and they helped for a day or two, but then that burnt-out, over-worked feeling would settle heavily back over my shoulders. I couldn’t get enough rest to make up for the endless amount of energy I was spending on other people.
Something had to change. In fact, a lot of things had to change. And over the course of the year I discovered, piece by piece, what they were and how to change them. Here’s what I tackled:
- My relationship with my kids. A few months after our third beautiful baby was born, I hit an all-time low in the parenting department. Growing up, I imagined baking cookies, weaving flower crowns, and painting pictures with my kids. Instead I was shouting at them, bossing them around, and struggling just to keep their behaviors under control. I needed to create the sweet home environment I really wanted them to grow up in.
- My kids’ relationship with each other. Bickering and bantering are normal parts of most childhood relationships, and my kids mostly felt affection toward each other. Except when they didn’t. But my real concern was how often I was dragged into their daily battles as referee. Not only was this hard on me, it also seemed to heighten the tension between them. I needed to put them in charge of their own relationship. I also needed to create ways for them to learn:
- empathy,
- responsibility, and
- how to make a proper (and more sincere) apology.
- Money. Oh, money. While we’ve managed to “get by” well enough on one income, it always felt like we were scraping by by the skin of our teeth. Even when I poured hours into finessing our budget, couponed like crazy, and researched every possible way to cut back, our money situation still gave me stomach aches. I never felt like I was doing enough. We never felt like we had enough to really feel secure. I worried over every penny we spent. I desperately craved that sense of being financially safe.
- Clutter. I was buried in clutter. I’m not just talking about clutter around the house, though that was the first thing I hit. I also needed to purge my mental and emotional clutter, as well as the life-clutter that was taking time away from my family and my dreams. I needed to learn how to handle the constant influx of responsibilities, ideas, worries, and stuff that was running my life.
- Self-care. Once the dust had cleared from the rebuild of those first four list items, I noticed something. I was calmer and more peaceful, but I still wasn’t just plain old happy. I wasn’t excited to get up in the morning. And I wanted to be excited. In order get that feeling, I had to create regular time to pursue goals, practice or learn new skills, and let myself rest. I needed to figure out how to wriggle a lot more time for recharging into my full-time-mama schedule, so I could re-energize and keep pouring love back into my family.
At first I thought that these big life changes made me feel like a new person, but they didn’t. They made me feel better than that–they made me feel like myself again. I couldn’t have imagined how good that would feel.
What are you struggling with, mama? Do you ever feel like you’ve gotten lost in motherhood? If you do, I hope you’ll hang around. You’ve got a bright, beautiful life ahead, and I want to help you figure out how to get there.
