What once was old is new again!

I imported all the posts from my old blog, "Blissful Mama's Kitchen" into my new blog!  So it's now all easily accessible in one spot!

Resistance is futile

I learned about Karen Maezen Miller's "Art of Mindfulness" workshop a few months ago, and immediately got excited about the opportunity to attend a workshop with her.  It was in Houston and it was only a day long.  I looked up flights on Southwest, and they were about $90 round trip!  Then I became a Facebook fan of Maezen's, and saw that she had a discount code to save $20 on the retreat.  It was certainly in the budget and would not take much time away from A.J.  All the odds were stacked in my favor.  So, I went to register one night after A.J. was tucked in bed.  But I couldn't hit the submit button.  I couldn't commit.  I tried it again the next night, and the next, and still couldn't commit.  Was it fear?  My general inability to make decisions of late?

By this time, the early bird registration had run out.  I tried another night.  But nothing.  My head would swim with all the "what ifs?"  What if I get lost on my way to the retreat?  What if there is a better retreat out there, and I "waste" my time at this one only to discover later I should have gone to X retreat?
Since A.J. was born, I had been at war with time.  I needed every minute that I was not taking care of Aidan to be "worth it."  If I was not somehow entertained, enriched, or relaxed to the perfect degree, then it seemed like a "waste of time."

Well, months had past and I had let go of the intention to go to the retreat.  I thought it was not meant to be.  And made peace with that.  Then about a week before the retreat, I learned that the hosts of the retreat were giving away 4 free passes to the workshop.  I never win anything, so I thought little of entering the contest, other than, "If I was meant to go, I will win."  And I did!  And I freaked!  And not in a jump for joy kind of way, but a "holy s#$(!  What have I done?"  I spent the entire week thinking of why I couldn't go. The flight was too expensive.  I hated driving.  I had to work until 6 p.m. on Friday and it's a 5 hour drive to Houston.  I didn't want to leave Aidan.  I didn't want to leave my family.  And then my amazing husband volunteered to go with me and take our son to the Houston Space Center while I was at the retreat!  And I still made excuses.  I would feel guilty about making my 3 year old son sit in the car for 10 hours within two days just so that I could attend a non-essential retreat.  What if he didn't sleep well at the hotel?  What if he was unhappy the whole trip?  What if he and Greg had a terrible time at the Space Center and Greg lost his cool with Aidan?  Then I would bear the guilt of that too.   What if the trip was "a waste of time"?

All these what-ifs swirled around in my head all week.  But when Friday came, I decided I just needed to go.  And we did.  The trip down to Houston was fine.  Aidan slept at the hotel fine, and loved riding the elevator up and down the next morning.

Greg and Aidan dropped me off at the retreat, and the what-ifs started popping up again?  What if this retreat was a "waste of time"?  I honestly had no idea why I was there.  I knew I was a mess, but didn't know what I wanted to get out of the workshop.  And then the workshop started and the first thing Karen Maizen Miller discussed

Suffering

(This is something I actually typed up several months ago, and just copied and pasted it here now.)

Let me just say it.  Being a mother sometimes sucks.  That sounds a bit harsh, I know.  However, unless I’m honest, I cannot move forward and get past this cold, hard fact.  Sometimes it sucks more than others.  Sometimes it doesn’t suck at all.  There are times when it’s the most heartbreakingly wonderful thing in the word.  It still amazes me how something so incredibly wonderful can be so incredibly awful. 

Anyway, my point is not to simply bash motherhood.  I was having a particularly rough morning with my 2 and a half year old.  We were running late, as was becoming the norm.  Aidan needed to get dressed, so that we could get to his preschool on time, and so that I could subsequently arrive at work within a close approximation of the time that I was supposed to be there.  And that’s when the negativism and the whining got to me.  I was trying to use whatever tricks I had to cajole my toddler into going “pee pee in the potty.”  Once that task was finished, I moved onto getting dressed. 

 After asking Aidan to stand up for the umpteenth time, I gave up and started putting on his pants.  That’s when the itty bitty shitty committee piped up and said, “What are you doing?  He should be putting his own pants on.  Make him do it!”  So, I tried that.  It didn’t go so well.  At one point, I put myself in time out and ended up crouched down in the kitchen crying.  

The sweetest moment occurred next.  Aidan came out of the bathroom, with his pants on, and said, “No mommy.  Don’t cry.”  I was too busy in the moment reacting to the fact that I couldn’t even control my “time out” to see the sweetness that was present.  Frustration, anger, and sadness were all deeply lodged in my chest and throat, and I couldn’t shake them.

This continued on for a bit, until we were in the car and driving along.  I dropped A.J. off at preschool and then went to my part time librarian job; a place where I could go to the bathroom alone and could tune out any potential whining from co-workers without feeling like a bad mother.  While I was there, I was researching something when I came across this quote:

“Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this ‘war with reality’ to be at the heart of the problem.” Stephen Cope

And a light bulb went off in my head.  All the suffering from the morning, the tears, frustration, burning anger, and shame all were a result of wanting things to be a certain way.  A way that they were not.  I had waged war with reality, and Aidan was the collateral damage.

But the strangest part of this story is that I know all this. I’ve been practicing yoga for several years, and this idea was not new.  It is, in fact, one I have seen many, many times, in many, many ways.  So, why did I keep forgetting it in the moment?  

When my son was in the emergency room and then the ICU a few months before, there was no suffering!  I knew what my role was, as A.J.'s mom, and fulfilled that without a thought to anything else.

What do you do to remind yourself to stay in the moment?

New E-Course Through Little Acorn Learning!

I'm hoping to take this interesting new course offered through Little Acorn Learning!  Fingers crossed!

http://www.littleacornlearning.com/Anthroposophy101.html