Who is it all for?

I don’t know if it’s because I’m finally growing up or because I find the need to defend my attentional space rigorously, but in a world or “busy” and “distracted”, I’ve been dissecting what I’m doing it all for.  As vulnerable as it may be,  I do think we need to cut through the baloney and the flim flam.

19 years ago, Darin and I made the choice to leave our close knit families to move out west.  The idea was romantic, adventurous and wildly selfish.   We were dreamers and we had no idea what we were doing but the wind was at our backs.  We only had each other to please,  the world was our oyster, and our vision was sweeping.  

By the time our oldest son, Simon was a toddler, we were busy, bedraggled and tired.  I went back to work when the kids were between 6 and 9 months and because our families lived 3000 miles away, we made use of the best daycares, preschools and child sitters we could find…and I felt guilty. 

Having worked with moms and dads everyday for 2 decades, the all too common resounding theme of parenthood and the two apparent constants are GUILT and WORRY.  We feel guilty because we’re not home enough.  We feel guilty because when we are home enough,  we take our kids for granted and we sometimes succumb to impatient language and behavior.  We feel guilty because maybe we can’t breastfeed them the way they do on facebook and at La Leche meetings.  We worry that maybe we’re too lenient.  We wonder and if we’re too strict.  We feel guilty because we should read to them more.  We feel guilty because they have an X-box.  We feel guilty because the I-watch they desperately wanted for their birthday emits EMF’s and when they go out to lunch with their friends they’re eating Arby’s.

We compare ourselves to the people around us who seem to have figured it all out, and we sometimes feel inadequate.   

Maybe I’m slow to launch, but it’s just now occurring to me that the guilt and worry, as impressed upon us as they are, are not only unnecessary but nonsensical.  These things don’t have to come hand in hand with parenthood, despite what we’ve been told.  Guilt traps are baited with comparison and comparison is always destructive, unless it’s deliberate for the sake of being inspired.

On a Tuesday night, years ago, I was leaving Darin and the boys right before dinner to go give a community talk and my “mom guilt” was abound.   In an effort to make “them” feel better about the fact that I wouldn’t be home for dinner,  I was going on and on about how I didn’t want to go give this talk.  Simon listened to me go on for a while and interrupted me to say  “mom, you don’t get it do you?  It’s not about you.  It’s about the people you’re going to speak to”.  I’ve never for a moment complained about a community talk since that moment.  There’s nothing like a 7 year old to put you in your place.

For years, I told myself that everything I did was for them.  I realize now that this thinking was a trap that I created and that I was lying to myself and to them because I really wasn’t doing it for them.

Why is it that we often compromise our health, our joy and our sense of purpose under the guise of living for others?  

When I go to work, it isn’t to take care of my family, although my work provides this.   I go to work because I want to have massive impact on my community.  I feel an immense amount of love and personal sense of responsibility to all the kids and families I work with.  I come to work because I want to inspire my team to wake up in the morning feeling excited to come show up.  I come to work because I feel inspired to perpetuate a health paradigm that isn’t fear based and disease centered.  My purpose, in essence is much larger than the 3 people I love more than anything.

Every day I work with parents who put themselves second for the sake of others.  What I know is that if we compromise our priorities, we create confusion for those we love the most.  If I sabotage the way I eat, if I don’t get enough sleep, if I don’t exercise the way I need to and if I’m not inspired with what I’m doing,  my boys and Darin are left with an unclear beacon.  

A few days ago, exactly a week before halloween, I felt the pull of guilt to keep up with the amazing moms in my neighborhood and stay home on my much needed day off in order to decorate the house with spiders and pumpkins and witches.   I’ve worked my tail off lately and I realize that when I’m tired and depleted, I’m not sexy, fun or full of love.  So, I took my dog and selfishly went surfing instead.  It fueled my fire and my kids and Darin were unquestioningly happy that I took a moment for myself because they get a better mom and wife out of it.   The halloween decorations we half hazardly managed to put up the next day are cheezy, they aren’t numerous or fancy but everyone is happy nevertheless.

There’s so much less pressure in thinking that in order to be a great mom, I just need to teach my boys that their ultimate responsibility is to prioritize their own healthy lifestyle choices, to create their own happiness and that they have a personal responsibility to self inspiring.  The only way to do this is to lead by example.  Call me a dreamer, but the rest of it just seems to just fall into place…at least most of the time.

Nelson Mandela once said  “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same”.  

This is why we have to un-guiltily take care of number one.  As my son’s soccer team would say…. “that’s what’s up”.