Tag: mindfulness

Monday Mindset: Our power struggle with time.

Consider this:

We don’t get or have time at all – instead we are time. We’ll never get the upper hand in our relationships with the moments of our lives because we are nothing but those moments.

Last Sunday I was sleeping in a dark hotel room with my husband when I heard his alarm going off for the second time. Only to quickly realize it wasn’t his alarm, it was a phone call. A phone call saying our two year old sons asthma was bad and we needed to come home. Luckily our “getaway” was only ten minutes away. If you’re a parent you know you don’t need to be 500 miles away to feel recharged, all you need is a hotel bed, black out curtains and a night or two without a toddler, iykyk. After getting home, giving Johnathan his nebulizer treatments we realized he wasn’t improving all that much. And so, in all too familiar fashion, we filled a bag with necessities and headed for the hospital. Our little bubba ended up needing to stay in the hospital for 36 hours, getting some extra oxygen his body needed.

In the past five years I’ve sat and laid next to each of my children and husband in hospital beds and each time I’m hit with this paradoxical feeling of having time slow to a crawl within the walls of your hospital room while the world outside goes about their lives. Often in our daily lives we are consumed with ideas of not “wasting time” or the pressure of “living in the moment”. We innately begin to view time as a resource that we can manipulate or control, but there’s no greater reality check on your lack of control than a hospital. In a hospital you’re forced to surrender any illusion of control over time or finitude you think you have. As much as we want to wield control over our time the universe will continue to show us that no one can master time, that you can’t outrun the flipped hourglass that is each of our lives.

In 4000 weeks, Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman describes “a more fruitful approach to the challenge of living more fully in the moment starts from noticing that you are, in fact, always already living in the moment anyway, whether you like it or not. To try to live in the moment implies that you’re somehow separate from “the moment” and thus in a position to either succeed or fail at living in it.” So stop beating yourself up for “not living in the moment” enough. You have no choice you are living in the moment, it’s how you to choose to give your attention and experience those moments that matter.

While we were in the hospital last week I kept thinking about this quote. Usually living in the moment is associated with saying yes to the spontaneous invitation, watching the sunrise, dancing without inhibition, fun, light things. Yet there I was, with the Cars 2 movie playing for the third time in 30 hours, laying next to my son, trying to memorize his little curls and the way he rolls his blanket between his hands while simultaneously sucking his thumb, and I could not have “lived in the moment” more. It was a moment I would never have chosen for myself, but it was my reality. Ask any mom about the paradox that is time. The days can drag on, the phases that feel never ending, and yet suddenly you have a walking, talking toddler and you don’t understand how so much time has already passed. This feeling of chasing time, of wanting to savor every minute of it, of older generations reminding us how quickly it all really flies by can add pressure to make sure we’re doing THE most. When what would benefit us the most is to stop splitting our attention, stop trying to see how much we can cram into our day but instead shifting our focus to our focus. What makes our lives meaningful are our experiences. But in order to truly experience something we have to give our attention to it. Burkeman notes “to have any meaningful experience you must be able to focus on it, at least a bit. Otherwise, are you really having it at all? Can you have an experience you don’t experience?”

Things like meditation and breathwork train our brains to pause. To allow room for focus in a world that is filled with pings and dings, devices that are constantly pulling our focus in a hundred different directions.

I snapped this photo this week, we were reading books on the couch before bed, Chris was reading Dragons Love Tacos, and Johnathan held my hand. And I couldn’t stop looking at that little hand inside mine. I gave that little hand all my attention and focus, feeling the warmth from it, how his little fingers gripped onto my palm, the tiny veins that run along the top of his hand, the calmness of the moment. It was hard to believe a few days prior we were in the hospital and now we’re back at home, in this moment.

I hope this post encourages you to slow down, to draw more attention to the moments you’re already living it. Whether they’re the same bedtime routine you’ve grown tired of, or a new destination, or lifes cruel realities. I hope you can find moments to take in and fully experience for all that they are.

Monday Mindset: 2022 Wrapped

The week after Christmas and before the New Year is inherently made for reflection. It’s hard not to look back at the last 12 months, no matter what they held for you, without some kind of pause. Most of our years are filled with a mixture of ups and downs. Last year I shared my tradition of making a list for each year (20 for 2020, 21 for 2021, etc.) I wrote about the origin of this idea and what kinds of things fill this list in a post here . But the idea is that broad, overarching resolutions are ineffective and typically lose their shine rapidly. Filling a list with a mixture of small tasks, fun things, and bigger goals and checking in on the list through out the year is a great alternative to resolutions! Admittedly coming up with over 20 items can feel a little daunting so you could easily have the same effect with a list of 10 or 15 things. Below I’m sharing my 2022 list & some other milestones that happened!

22 in 2022

  1. Get family photos taken – Done! And SO happy with how they turned out!
  2. Read 12 books – To my own surprise, I ended up reading 20 books this year!!
  3. Trip to NYC – This did not happen – but we did go to DC and had a kidless weekend away in Sonoma
  4. Build a neighborhood free little library – YES! Did this and it brought me so much joy!
  5. Day dates with boys – I was not very consistent with this but did do some
  6. Switch to clean makeup – Done!
  7. Run a 5k – I actually laughed when I looked back at my list, I have no memory of wanting to do this!
  8. Go to the dermatologist – eek this did not happen… BUT I did get all my dental work done this year & went to my routine cleaning & have no new cavities or issues!
  9. Find a PCP – yes!
  10. Do 3 Day Refresh – maybe in 2023
  11. Get pictures off old macbook Done!! This was huge, pulling about 7,000 photos off my college computer!
  12. Do a 30 minute meditation monthly – I didn’t do this monthly but I crossed a huge meditation milestone of meditating for 500 days! And I did complete two different meditation courses this year.
  13. Take boys to Tilden / BADM 3x – We didn’t make it to either place once 😦
  14. Plan and Plant a spring / summer garden – yes the summer of tomatoes!
  15. Pay off mazda YES grown up stuff
  16. Take Juno on weekly walks – We didn’t do as many adventures as I’d liked but she got way more exercise than last year so calling it a win!
  17. Make an album of now – did not do this.
  18. Paint master bath / add shelving – nope. still have paint samples taped up lol.
  19. Take a social media Sabbath each week – YES! I did this most of the year and loved it!
  20. Go to a National Park – Arches in UT, was a major highlight this year!
  21. Try therapy – didn’t happen. thought about it a lot. lol.
  22. Shiplap entry way – also no.

Despite half of my list being incomplete, 2022 was a year that has some amazing memories, lots of fun and some tremendous personal growth. I hit a huge meditation milestone of 500 days, something that seemed impossible when I started! I left my kids and went on a solo girls trip! I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone & taught two group exercise classes. I put down my phone and picked up books, reading 20 books this year. I learned to use a jigsaw & nail gun and built a little free library for our neighborhood. We spent more time with family & cousins, we hosted birthdays and I kept decorating themed cakes. I drastically purged and simplified our home and belongings, everything from clothes, kitchen gadgets, to digital clutter. Oh and I survived a road trip with two toddlers from California to Utah!

The last few months of 2022 have been a barrage of high fevers, cancelled plans, sick kiddos, trips to the pediatrician and urgent care; pushing me to my outer limits. But reflecting on the year reminds us that it is so rarely as simple as a “good year” or a “bad year”. There were thousands of amazing moments this year and endless things to be thankful for. The purpose of the yearly list isn’t to have every single item checked off. Instead it’s to bring intention, thoughtfulness and fun, into what you want your year to hold. So that December doesn’t roll around and you realize you floated through the year, reacting to what was thrown at you.

A vital part of growth is allowing ourselves space to reflect. Being able to look back on moments that brought you joy, made you proud, things you may have handled differently etc. If reflection doesn’t come naturally – sometimes reading some simple prompts can open the gates of inspiration! Below are some prompts to get your reflections started.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my 23 for 2023 list! I’d love to hear what goals you crushed in 2022, dreams you have for this year or if you make a list yourself I’d love to see it!!

Monday Mindset – The Power of Reframing.

Reframing is the ability to change your life without actually changing your circumstances. It is a powerful shift that costs us nothing but can make a huge impact on our daily lives. This is not to say that you have to pretend sh*tty things are actually rainbows and blessings – that is toxic positivity. But instead considering things that we come across in our daily lives that we tell ourselves are problems or burdens. What mountains have we made out of molehills? What story are we perpetually telling ourselves? In theory reframing is great but IRL it can be harder to implement, especially if all you’ve known is to reflexively look at situations through a lens of criticism, blame or negativity. Below are some tips to actually make reframing something you can put into action versus just a far off concept that you’re never able to wrap your hands around!

Start finding the good – The harder you look for it the more you will find. The easiest and most effective way to start finding the good is something I’ve talked about before, gratitude. Simple gratitude lists will shift the way you see your day to day life and the more you do it the more powerful this practice becomes. It doesn’t have to be fancy or in-depth, keep it simple. Keep a gratitude list pinned to the top of the notes section in your phone. Next time you’re standing in a line instead of mindlessly scrolling see how many things you can find that you’re grateful for.

The power of pause – when you find yourself doing dishes and telling yourself “this sucks, there’s always dishes, I can never keep up, my kids make such a mess” pause! Try to create some space and reframe. Often times we can’t control what happens to us in life, the dishes will inevitably be there day after day, the unexpected work project, the cancelled babysitter, so much is out of our hands. But the control we have lies in how we choose to react and respond to our lives. There is immense power in seizing that control versus simply relying on old habits or built in reactions. Pausing and reframing takes practice like all of these – often times you won’t pause until well after you’ve complained about xyz, but even catching yourself later that day is progress. As you continue to reframe and look for the good it will get easier to catch yourself in real time. The first huge step is even just realizing you were building a negative narrative in your mind whether you notice a minute after or a day after, progress is progress!

Write. It. Out. Journaling is talking things out with yourself, a diy therapy session… How are you supposed to know what you want, or what’s bothering you, or how you actually feel, if you never give yourself a moment to be with your thoughts. In today’s world we are bombarded by stimulus through our phones. We so rarely turn inward to assess our inner dialogue. At the end of the day all this stimulus can leave us feeling some sort of way that can be difficult to pinpoint. Was it that rude interaction at the store or in traffic, was it the triggering tiktok that you stumbled upon, was it an off handed comment a friend made, was it a narrative your subconsciously told yourself? Writing can give us clarity. It can help us find the good.

Ultimately reframing, like most mindset changes doesn’t happen immediately. It takes practice, and each day present new circumstances and challenges. With mindfulness and mindset improvement it’s so important to remember the journey is not linear. On my own personal journey I’ve often felt the idea of two steps forward, one step back. I’ve thought “I’m writing gratitude, I’m meditating, why is this so hard, why am I still losing my cool and yelling at my kids?” And the reality is it’s because life, and motherhood is freaking hard and I’m human! Over the years I’ve learned how important it is to hold grace for myself the same way I give it to others. We are human and life is hard. But that is what makes it beautiful, and choosing to lean into our emotions and become more aware of our thoughts is powerful. It allows us to feel and live life more deeply, even if it feels like we move backwards from time to time.

Monday Mindset: Affirmations For Every Situation

Consider this: “We think in words, and these words have the power to limit us or to set us free; they can frighten us or evoke our courage. Similarly, the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives eventually becomes our lives.”

Dan Baker, What Happy People Know

Try This: Affirmations. I used to roll my eyes at the idea of affirmations, but science has shown us that affirmations are in fact a way to help alter our internal dialogue, that will otherwise gladly tell us: we aren’t good enough, smart enough, we’ll fail etc. For many of us if we let our subconsciouses run wild they will chatter at us in negative and anxiety ridden tones. It takes work to change our narratives but one of the most powerful ways we can do that is through affirmations.

Below you’ll find affirmations for most situations! It can sound so silly when you first start saying them. But other ways I like to incorporate affirmations are:

  • Write it on a sticky note and put it on a mirror you look at daily
  • Pick one or two to say daily at a specific time (ie: waking up / going to bed / rocking your kid etc.)
  • Save an affirmation as the background on your phone, when you’re going into a tough situation or experience. It’s the perfect easy reminder to see some words that should bring you calmness or courage!
  • Save my PDF version with these affirmations!
Affirmations for every situation PDFDownload

5 Ways to Stop Pushing Snooze

For years I bought into the limiting belief that I’m not a morning person, my old night shift working self loved spending all day in bed and having breakfast at 4pm. Now fast-forward to having two toddlers. Sleeping in all day just isn’t a possibility anymore. But I also quickly learned that mornings where I got up a 15-30 minutes before my kids I was suddenly more patient, calm, I felt like the morning started on my terms instead of whatever meltdown my three year was gonna choose to have at 7am. If you’ve tried waking up early and are in a constant standoff between you and the snooze button here are some tips that have helped me skip the snooze and get my mornings off to a more peaceful, intentional start!

  1. Lay your clothes out – have your clothes for the morning already set out. Whether you’re headed to work or working out, having your clothes picked out the night before makes getting dressed something you can do while still half asleep. There’s no riffling for that pair of legging you swore was clean. Have everything you need right there so you can shut your alarm off and start changing!
  2. Charge your phone across the room – This is the change that has helped me the MOST when it comes to getting up early… Having to physically get out of bed to shut your alarm off means your feet are on the ground and you’re physically “up”. You have to then make a decision of if you want to get back in bed. The snooze button and I have our battles but I know that button would be undefeated if I it was directly next to my bed. Bonus about charing your phone across the room is you cut down on mindless scrolling in bed, which gets me to sleep faster at night!
  3. Have a plan – Take a few minutes the night before and know what your plan is in the morning. Will you be working out, will you be taking your dog for a walk, getting some work tasks off your list? Reading? Our brains will look for any excuse or reason to push snooze. By taking a few minutes to plan ahead, having your laptop charged and set up so you can start on your list, knowing exactly what workout or where you’ll walk your dog, keeps us from having to make these decisions in the moment when we’re struggling to wake up already!
  4. Go to bed early – The best way to ensure you wake up earlier is to get more sleep!! Waking up earlier actually starts the night before. If i’m in bed after 11 the chances of my morning ritual happening are low!! Stop sacrificing tomorrow by staying up late the night before.
  5. Look forward to something – this can be a hot shower after your workout, your cup of coffee, getting to read uninterrupted, a delicious breakfast, enjoying the silence before your kids wake up. Having something you look forward to in the morning helps your brain remember why we’re dragging ourselves out of bed!

Monday Mindset: How to harness your hardships & why it matters!

We think it’s the happy experiences, the birthdays, the week long vacations, the promotions, that make us happy in life, but it’s not. Ultimately what allows us to find happiness and joy even for the smallest moments is in fact, hardships. How can you appreciate the warm sun on your face, if you’ve never known what it feels to be cold. The same is true in life. Glennon Doyle reminds us “The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it’s supposed to be”

All of our lives are shaped by a mix of circumstances, choices and luck or lack thereof. And “being happy” is deeply connected to our ability to find joy and optimism regardless of our circumstances.

Consider This: “Your worst memories don’t go away and they don’t get better. But you can get better. You are more than the sum of your suffering.”

Dan Baker, What Happy People Know

Your struggles ultimately leave you with this choice of allowing them to shape you for better or for worse. Choosing to do so isn’t as simple as a flick of a switch. It takes acknowledgment and reflection. For me personally, writing about my experiences has been key to allowing myself to learn and grow from that experience. I wrote a post about Chris’ encephalitis and how I really struggled to process that experience. A textbook trauma response to a situation I had yet to really come to terms with. I so desperately wanted to step around it, vehemently resisting reliving it or talking about it. I simply wanted to “move on”. The funny thing about trauma is, it doesn’t work that way. The harder you slam the door shut on it & the stronger it will boomerang back bursting open. Ignoring hardships or choosing not to engage is not processing. And you certainly can get better by ignoring it.

No matter what your struggles are, big or small they play a key role in your mindset. If you’ve allowed every struggle, every misstep to accumulate, if you’re holding on to blame, and grief, and anger it is undoubtedly weighing you down. Dan Baker puts it simply “other people can hurt your, but only you can victimize yourself”.

If you play this life game long enough you realize that bad ish happens to everyone. Even the happiest person you know has not had a life free from suffering. The magic happens in your response when life is throwing obstacles in your way. We get the opportunity to write our narrative. The story we tell ourselves becomes our life.

Try This: Harness your own hardships

Write! This is my biggest tip for transforming hardship. Write. Write about what it was like. The way it made you feel, give actual names to emotions that come up: helpless, disappointed, lonely, anxious, jealous etc. Whether it was a job you didn’t get, a string of bad luck, whether it was something life altering or something on a smaller scale, these are all opportunities for us to grow. You know how you feel better after a good cry, writing is very similar. You’re able to empty out your mind and your emotions and often will feel a weight lifted.

Reflect on the story you’re telling yourself – is it one of blame, insecurity, anger? Or is it a story that is hopeful, perseverant, joyful, energetic? The words we tell ourselves our incredibly powerful.

Give yourself time – Not every hardship is created equal. Some may effect us for longer or just take more time to sort through. And that is okay, after Chris was in the ICU I so badly just wanted to snap my fingers and for life go back to normal. When in reality it would take over a year before he felt like himself again & it would take me a whole other year to process from that experience.

Ask yourself “what can I learn from this experience”… Once you start writing a page or two a funny thing happens it all pours out!

Monday Mindset – The one habit that transformed motherhood

If I were to look back and try to pinpoint what set in motion all my mindset and habit changes over the last four years, one thing in particular stands out. Waking up ahead of my kids… This ability to safeguard a little bit of time for myself at the beginning of each day without a doubt transformed my motherhood.

When I started waking up early I was pregnant with Johnathan, Will had dropped down to one nap a day. Suddenly I was scrambling for time to get things done, uninterrupted. My day would start with fussing and crying and I would instantly feel behind. I had started my coaching business, and my to-do lists were long. I was feeling frustrated, short tempered and was quickly realizing I needed to change something. I started small, just 15 minutes ahead of when Wills sound machine would click off. I’d take a few minutes to wake up, maybe jot down a plan for the day, wash my face in silence, sit and pet Juno. This quickly increased to me waking up 30 min early so I could get my workout done first thing. An amazing thing happens when you start giving your body and your mind this space. You begin to CRAVE this silence, this peace. I pretty quickly noticed a shift. Mornings where I didn’t get up early felt tense, I was easily thrown into a bad mood, I was on edge. Mornings where I gave myself a few minutes to wake up allowed for a sense of calm and the ability to handle whatever came at me!

Now I know what you’re thinking “there’s no way I could wake up any earlier than I have to”, stick with me here. I want to be clear, I was never a morning person. I love to sleep in. My former nightshift self relished in getting to sleep until 5pm. However, for the season of life I’m in, with young children, sleeping in is not only unattainable but also not functional or efficient for my life. In this season, when my kids are at home the majority of the day and still need me for many things, I need to front-load my day. When I do this I’m happier, I’m more patient, I’m certainly more productive. I’m able to approach my kids and my family from a place of calm and compassion. Instead of waking to the onslaught of toddler demands, I’m able to exert a little control in how I start my day. If I want to listen to a podcast, if I want to sit in silence and drink coffee, if I want to meditate outside, I can. When I give myself this gift of space and time to wake up, I’m no longer thrown off or upset when I find my two year olds night time diaper malfunctioned or whatever unforeseen event is waiting for me when the rest of the house wakes up. The reality is there are few places throughout your day where you’re able to find some extra time, so giving yourself even a 15 minute cushion of time in the morning allows for you to feel less stressed and more prepared for the day. As mothers we act from a place of servitude, however resentment can rear it’s ugly head when you feel like you’re serving others from the moment your eyes open each day until you fall in bed that night.

** Important caveat here – there are seasons of your life where this is not possible and sleep takes priority, hello newborn bubble. If you are in a season like this, grace. Grace is your biggest friend. Give yourself a big serving of grace, take seconds if you need to, and know that this season will pass **

consider this:

We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic but what it is a profound failure of self respect and of priorities. Then nearly a quarter of us do something else that starts us out on the second wrong foot of the day. We reach for our cell phones within one minute of waking up. Over half of us are checking messages within ten minutes. The majority of people go from out cold to processing mountains of information within minutes every morning. There are only six cars that can go from zero to sixty in under two seconds. Like most cars, humans are not built for that kind of sudden transition, mentally or physically. 

Dan Baker, What Happy People Know

Try this: skip the AM scroll.

Pick a day or two this week to set your alarm 15-20 min early & hold off on immediately scrolling, instead focus on a transition. When we immediately start our days by staring into our prized little rectangles we are giving our energy to other peoples messages, emails, we begin subconsciously comparing and our minds are instantly drawn to things we thing we “should” be doing. When we start our days with high pressure or high stress, we program ourselves to stay in that state the rest of the day and it can be hard to self correct out. By giving ourselves even just a few minutes to transition we can drastically alter the tone of the day.

I’ll share the framework of my morning routine in an upcoming post, but know, it has seen many iterations through the years. And ultimately our needs and circumstances are all different. Some women will want this time to read, to make lists, to workout, to pray or to run their businesses. What works for me in this particular season may not serve you as well. It’s less about how you fill this time and more about creating time that serves YOU. If spending 5 min unloading the dishwasher before everyone is up will make you feel on top of your game do it. If spending 15 min reading while you drink coffee will energize you do it. Consider you pain-points. What is making your morning feel chaotic… is it trying to get ready while little hands grab at you, is it never having time or motivation to workout, is it trying to prep school lunches and make breakfast? Most of our morning tasks can be completed much faster when we’re alone, it’s those tiny people that drag efficiency down… love em’ but it’s true!

I would love to hear if you already do this, or if this is something you’ve tried but struggled with or something you’ve just never considered. For me, waking up 30 – 40 earlier than my kids gives me vastly more energy than staying in bed would for that same amount of time. It sets my day off on the right foot, I dictate the tone and the energy. Try it and see how your motherhood transforms!

Introducing: Monday Mindset Series

Welcome to the Monday Mindset

A series I’m launching where every Monday I’ll share some mindset inspiration to start the week. Our mindset can propel us forward, into a state of gratitude and abundance or it can constrict us, keep us stuck in negativity, paralyzed by anxiety and self limiting beliefs. We’ve all had days where we oversleep, leave our coffee on the counter, hit unexpected traffic, have a rude interaction, and it sets us on this spiral of “everything is going wrong today” and yes objectively things may not have gone the way we expected but only we have the power to guide our minds out of this negativity trap. We all have the opportunity within us to begin again whenever we choose fit. As mothers our mood, our demeanor, our reactions are the unspoken propellent within our households. Our children can easily sense how we feel. If our mindset is chaotic, riddled with anxiety or stress, our children absorb these emotions just as easily as they take on our joy and our calm. Regardless of our efforts to conceal these feelings; the reality is what we feel, our families feel.

It’s no exaggeration when I say the benefits from this mindset work have rippled out into my motherhood, my marriage, my friendships, my nursing career. I feel called to write about this process. And to use this series as a way to share some of the lessons, tips and insights I have learned and adopted over the last few years. Exposing what has helped me move away from a place of stress, anger, negativity and led me to finding joy amidst the chaos, and given me the power of self forgiveness when my old ways resurface. Admittedly I am no expert, but I am extremely passionate about this ever long journey of our mindsets. Everything I share here, is what I work on myself and are the tools that have led me away from simply reacting out of habit to every unpleasant bump or allowing myself to succumb to the weight of modern motherhood. Most mothers will agree, raising humans is the hardest, most challenging yet simultaneously beautiful thing you’ll experience. But if your mindset is stuck in a negativity loop you’ll struggle to be present and feel the joy and love of the beautiful parts. I hope this series enables you to slow down, to feel more present, more grounded and more joyful in your life and in your motherhood. If you’re curious what sparked my personal journey inward, I share a lot about the catalyst that truly started it all for me in the post The Monday in March That Started It All .

Consider This...

“Happiness is neither a mood nor an emotion. Mood is a biochemical condition and emotions are just transitory feelings. Happiness is a way of life – an overriding outlook composed of qualities such as optimism, courage, love and fulfillment. It is nothing less than cherishing each day.” – Dan Baker (author of What Happy People Know)

Try This: Try a daily gratitude practice. It doesn’t have to be fancy, or in depth. Take 3 min before bed and jot down a few things to be thankful for, the smaller the better!

Why This? It’s easy to be grateful for your health, your kids, your home, but finding gratitude and joy in the little things is where the mindset shift truly happens. Noticing the warm dog curled up at your feet, the close parking spot, the impromptu hug from your kid, the cool breeze, the hot shower, the zoom call that got cancelled; the little things are the big things. We are often racing through our lives on auto pilot, you know the feeling when you drive somewhere and then suddenly have little recollection of the actual drive? So many of us, especially moms are moving from moment to moment like this. Training our brains to find gratitude in daily life brings about mindfulness. At first it might be hard to recall the little things throughout your day that you’re grateful for, but it gets easier the more we use our gratitude muscle! Mindfulness flips this autopilot switch off. It encourages us to be present for our lives and notice all the little things that really do go right. If we are only ever focusing on the negative that is all we will see. So try this gratitude practice & see what happens! Worst case? You’re the new owner of a little notebook or a scrap of paper with a list of good things 🙂

7 Minute Gratitude Meditation

The Monday in March That Started It All.

For most people March means the welcoming of Spring & St. Patricks Day. But for me, March will always make me pause, make me look around and think about all the different ways my life could have gone. Three years ago on a random March Monday our world flipped upside down. I thought I was taking my husband to the ER for an unmanageable migraine. In the hours that followed, his mentation deteriorated, I held my 10 month old son, and watched as my coworkers work fervently trying to figure out what had caused my high functioning husband to suddenly become unable to finish sentences, use his hands, or even follow commands. I sat beside him as a machine breathed for him, in the same room I had cared for countless intubated patients over the years. Stunned that this was my reality.

About a month after Chris’ “outage” as we jokingly refer to it now, I did write a post about our experience with viral encehphalitis, you can read it here . It’s funny because there are similar threads, thoughts on immense gratitude for life but reading it now it’s clear that at the time I thought “welp processed that, time to move on”. I refer to Chris’ recovery in the past tense, when in reality it would be over a year before he truly felt like himself again. And I would spend the year having intense flash backs and resisting attempts at truly processing it. Perspective baby.

I wish I could say that those nights in the ICU were the hardest part but the weeks and months that followed would be far more arduous. The get well flowers wilted and life outside our apartment walls went back to normal but inside I felt shell shocked. I was on edge wondering if every bout of dizziness or return of a headache was the start of Chris’ encephalitis returning. In the midst of balancing the household responsibilities and caring for our ten month old son the trauma loomed over us. At the time, I remember mostly saying “I don’t wanna talk about, let’s just move on”. Spoiler alert – you can’t just move on from your trauma without ever processing it.

I resisted for so long, thinking the walls I was building up would protect me. My decade as an ER nurse has been a masterclass at keeping trauma at arms distance, emotionally detaching myself from immense sorrow. It’s how us nurses are able to go from compressing a lifeless chest one minute & doing a vision test the next. A skill that I’ve since learned should be used with measure. When it came to this, the more I turned away the more it hurt. As much as I yearned for everything to “be normal” again it wouldn’t be. And that was the point. This was meant to transform us, if we’d let it.

I started recognizing that even though I didn’t want to “relive it” I already was, and it was happening out of my control (usually at work). Those memories seared into my brain, played like a movie with crystal clearness. I would get flashes of what happened that day, my coworkers sprinting around. The looks on peoples faces. The same hallway I walk dozens of time per shift, that I sat and sobbed in, all those memories loomed under the surface, red hot. About a year ago I was transferring a patient to the ICU. The patient was going into the same room Chris had been in. When I crossed the threshold in an instant I was taken right back to being at his bedside. The first two nights I had ever spent away from my son. As I wheeled my patient waves of overwhelming heaviness and fear washed over me. Fear of not knowing what life would be like when he was extubated. Wondering what would he remember, how much PT would he need, how far from baseline would he be starting at? Would I suddenly be caring for my son & my husband? All the feelings and fears I never allowed myself feel in real time because I was flexing my detachment muscle as hard as I possibly could.

That night I went home and wrote. I wrote about what it felt like to walk back into that room, I wrote about my fears, I wrote about the last twelve months. I wrote about things I didn’t even realize were below the surface. Some of which would be the skeleton of this post. My younger self used to fill journal after journal growing up. That habit abruptly stopped when nursing school took over my life. Writing in journals suddenly felt juvenile, like something I did only as a kid, before I had real problems. But here I was watching the words pour out of me. Chris’ encephalitis albeit life altering and terrifying has been the single biggest catalyst for change for not only Chris but myself as well.

This transformation certainly didn’t happen overnight, and in writing this, I know it is still ongoing. In some ways this experience feels like yesterday and other times it feels like a lifetime ago. It isn’t until you’re met head on with life’s raw fragility that you’re faced with either growing and evolving or hiding away. I could have continued to turn away, continued to say “I don’t wanna talk about it or relive it” but I’m convinced I wouldn’t have grown. Instead, eventually, I turned into it.

Right away we prioritized physical health – Per his doctors recommendations we did the Whole30 diet to figure out what had caused his body to be in such a hyper-inflammatory state. Chris embarked on Neuro Physical Therapy. I leaned into my at home workouts that I knew were keeping me from totally losing it. We slowed way down. Chris started talk therapy, and I actually agreed to open up about my experience. We discovered our enneagram types and recognized the role they played in our relationship, our daily lives and the way we communicate with one another. I started writing again. And last year I started meditating. Sitting with my thoughts, creating space and stillness has opened entire new worlds for me. I started intentionally choosing to use that experience to shape my life going forward. I recognized that through bettering myself, through facing my trauma I could help others.

This March I felt a very strong pull to lean back into things that bring me genuine happiness. I bought a doodle pad, I dusted off my sewing my machine, I’m reading books that make me laugh and cry. I’m posting here more! I’m planting flowers in every open space in our yard. I’m filling journals again, I’m overcommitting to projects (because I secretly love that)!

So this morning, this March Monday, I’m up before the sun. I’m giving my mind the gift of pausing. I’m moving my body and overall I’m thankful. Because even thought it may not seem like it it. It’s all connected. Your gifts, your circumstances, your purpose, your imperfections; your journey, your destiny. It’s molding you. Embrace it.

21 in 2021

Nearly all of us have made New Years resolutions only to watch them fizzle out before February. The end of the year can stir up all kinds of feelings. Whether your year was filled with great change, new additions to your family or maybe your year was filled with setbacks or grief, or maybe like most of us, a little of both. Sometimes it can be hard to look back and try to set goals especially if maybe your goals haven’t changed much. I love reflecting on the year, and thinking about what I want to take forward with me into the new year, but the idea of making resolutions is kinda bleh. A few years ago I was listening to a podcast where they shared the idea of instead of making resolutions creating a list for the year (20 for 2020, 21 for 2021 etc). Often times resolutions don’t strike us as fun things, although they certainly could be. The list is a way to reframe resolutions. You can fill your list with anything you want. Maybe it’s a list of 22 recipes to try this year, or 22 hikes. Or maybe it’s a list of half fun half tasks. They even suggest leaving a few spaces blank so you can fill it out with throughout the year when you get inspired. I personally like to fill my lists with some fun things, a few larger goals for the year, and easy things that I’ve been putting off but that can be crossed off in a day. The goal isn’t necessarily to get every single thing crossed off the list. It’s more just about thinking of what you’d like to accomplish in the year and adding some whimsy! I figured I would share both my 2021 & 2022 lists to give some inspiration!

21 in 2021

  1. Take the boys to the snow!
  2. Go to the dentist – did this with 8 days left in the year!
  3. Night away with Chris
  4. Take the boys to the beach
  5. Meditate / gratitude daily
  6. Take Will on day dates (I want to do more of this in 2022 – we only did a handful of these this year)
  7. Read 10 books (currently reading book # 10)
  8. Create 2020 photo book
  9. Holiday photo frames
  10. Get family photos taken – had these scheduled but bad weather had us cancelled. 2022!!
  11. Swim lessons for Will
  12. Have a spring garden
  13. Get vaccinated
  14. Host at our house
  15. Redo boys closets
  16. Find a PCP
  17. Go to Yosemite
  18. Less than 5 hours screentime / day
  19. Get Johnathans birth certificate
  20. Hike LimeRidge – This was a 2020 roll over! Made it happen this year.
  21. Overnight BFF trip – This did not happen this year but will happen in 22!

22 in 2022

  1. Get family photos taken
  2. Read 12 books
  3. Trip to NYC
  4. Build a neighborhood free little library
  5. Day dates with boys
  6. Switch to clean makeup
  7. Run a 5k
  8. Go to the dermatologist
  9. Find a PCP
  10. Do 3 Day Refresh
  11. Get pictures off old macbook
  12. Do a 30 minute meditation monthly
  13. Take boys to Tilden / BADM 3x
  14. Plan and Plant a spring / summer garden
  15. Pay off mazda
  16. Take Juno on weekly walks
  17. Make an album of now
  18. Paint master bath / add shelving
  19. Take a social media Sabbath each week
  20. Go to a National Park
  21. Try therapy
  22. Shiplap entry way

I’d love to know how the ending of a year makes you feel? Do you enjoy reflecting on the year? Is it hard to come up with resolutions? Or do you take a spin on resolutions and do something whimsy filled like a fun list?

I think most of our lives are more complex than just “good year” “bad year”. 2021 for me was filled with seeing more family, getting to take our boys on adventures, finding a new world of calm and presence through meditation. Turning inward and looking at barriers and old wounds that are holding be back from being the happiest version of myself. There were also moments of grief and struggle. We lost my cousin this year. And in October I laid with my son in a hospital bed for 70 hours while doctors decided if he needed to go to the ICU. None of us are immune to the sorrow that life will inevitably throw at us, but we are capable of looking for light & allowing that light to come in. I’m always brought back to a quote by Milan Kundera from his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being “The heavier the burden the closer, the closer our lives become to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. what then shall we choose? Weight or lightness”. No matter what 2021 brought to you, I hope you are able to find light & take that light in 2022 with you!

Cheers to a New Year! Oh & if you make a list I’d LOVE to see it!