From the category archives:

centering

Yom Kippur, Spirituality, and a Pair of Black Chuck Taylor Low-Tops

October 9, 2008

It occurred to me, as Jake ate his lunch at Green Sage today, that having your child drop pieces of pork sausage in your lap may not be the most appropriate way to honor Yom Kippur.
Normally, I would spend this day fasting, meditating, reflecting.  Not, I must explain, in any kind of religious service.  I [...]

Read the full article →

Shouldn’t My Sick Child Be Crying for His Mommy?

September 21, 2008

Mike and I had one of those glorious Asheville Saturdays yesterday.  We took Jake to Plow Day at Warren Wilson College, a small school just outside of town with — as the Plow Day moniker would suggest — a working farm.
Yes, one year of living here, and I consider Plow Day at Warren Wilson College [...]

Read the full article →

The Moment Jake Went Down the Slide by Himself

July 18, 2008

Jake and I decided to go to the park after school on Tuesday. Usually we go home and play with the hounds or draw with chalk on the sidewalk or fast forward through Sesame Street on TiVo until we find good songs about dogs or the beach. But on Tuesday the weather was [...]

Read the full article →

Why Practicing Yoga Is as Simple as Sleeping with a Sick Child

July 15, 2008

I’m assuming there are women checking out the YogaMamaMe community who don’t practice asanas, don’t know what the word means (it designates the physical poses you see people practicing on the cover of Yoga Journal when you’re waiting in the check-out line at Whole Foods), don’t intend ever to practice them, and yet are kind [...]

Read the full article →

MIA Part Three: Not Doubting Your Path

July 11, 2008

Sometimes there are good reasons you don’t have time to, say, write a YogaMamaMe post for two weeks. And I don’t mean “good” in the “eat your spinach, it’s good for you” sense of good. I mean good, like good for my soul, happy, fun.
I mean, to get to the point, Coon Dog [...]

Read the full article →

I’m Really Here, Now (Even in Wal-Mart)

June 23, 2008

What surprised me as I stood in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina, was not so much that I was standing in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina. The exigencies of a Blankie left far behind at school can leave one in some pretty surprising places. What surprised me was [...]

Read the full article →

Mothers, Daughters, and “The Eye of the Tiger”: How a Bad Song from 1982 Moved Me Closer to Stillness

June 16, 2008

On Father’s Day morning, when I started the car in the parking lot of EarthFare (Asheville’s local Whole Foods-ish place I love to shop for groceries even though we really can’t afford it), I had one of those delicious moments that happens when I hear “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio.
Immediately, it was 1982. [...]

Read the full article →

Driving with the Brakes On

June 12, 2008

I had a Very Bad Moment walking Jake home from school yesterday.
We were strolling down a moderately trafficked street — the kind of residential road motorists use inappropriately as a through-way, inducing the residents to have cement traffic calmers installed which end up acting only as a challenge to the faster drivers but at least [...]

Read the full article →

Fixing Everything, Even When You Can’t, or How I Learned to Diffuse My Energy

May 7, 2008

Today my acupuncturist spent a lot of time diffusing my energy. And it got me thinking.
I was probably not thinking what you are — Acupuncture! Therapy! Yoga! This gal spends an inordinate amount of energy searching for the mindfulness in motherhood! And is maybe a little bit crazy to boot. But, [...]

Read the full article →

How I’m Learning to Take More Naps

April 28, 2008

I took a nap with Jake yesterday.
It was an overcast day, and a cool breeze with the smell of rain puffed through the open window. Jake and I were wrapped up together in my duvet. I’d had a lovely, strong home yoga practice that morning while Jake had pedaled about the park with [...]

Read the full article →

How Losing a Little Bit of What’s Central to You Can Be Kind of Centering

April 26, 2008

It hit me somewhere around the time I was half-heartedly kicking my right foot up toward a handstand in the middle of the room. Something had radically changed in my life.
Part of it was that I wasn’t trying very hard. I had resigned myself to never, ever having the courage to attempt a [...]

Read the full article →

How Being Kicked in the Face by a Baby Reminded Me that Energy Is All Around Us

April 16, 2008

I’m really tired right now. And not just because I spent most of the night being hit in the face by my baby.
Usually, when Jake wakes up crying at night, the family engages in a practiced shuffle. Mike and I drag ourselves out of bed. He heads for the daybed in the [...]

Read the full article →

Making the Little Choices

April 14, 2008

I’m on my way to the Carl Sandburg house, and wondering if I learned anything at all yesterday.
It was Saturday, I’d been cutting into my work time entertaining relatives, and I really just wanted to stay home and get some work done. Still, there’s a difference between deciding to get some work done and [...]

Read the full article →

Grandma Versus Jack’s School, or Trusting Myself as a Mother

April 10, 2008

I didn’t apologize to Jake’s grandmother for taking him to school today. This is a sign, I believe, of progress.
An awful lot of what I’ve done as a mother is apologize — for decisions I’ve made as a mother (sure, everyone tells you you’re right because you’re the mom, but do you ever really [...]

Read the full article →

When Family Visits Cross Paths with Our Personal Journeys

April 8, 2008

Any moment now, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece are going to arrive at my house.
I am, I report with pleasure and a little bit of pride, not in complete meltdown mode, despite just now sitting down to write when there’s really no time left to do so. While this was my priority when I [...]

Read the full article →

Breaking from Break, Part I: Why We Are Allowed to Take a Break from Being Mothers

March 31, 2008

It began before I left to take my friend Sam to the airport at the end of his weekend visit. Panic. Anxiety. An unsteady feeling, as if the floor beneath me had disappeared, leaving me spinning my legs in an ethereal nothingness.
I thought about what was causing this feeling half an hour [...]

Read the full article →

When I’m Sleepy I’m Even More Critical of Myself

March 26, 2008

It never really goes away, does it? How many times your brand new baby wakes you up every night and how you get him back to sleep morphs into whether, when, and how to sleep train. Once you’re over the guilt and/or exhaustion produced by your decision, a bout of teething sends you [...]

Read the full article →

How Getting Knocked Off My Feet Helped Me to Grow

March 25, 2008

Yesterday I surveyed the field of unexpected obligations suddenly stretching between me and my YogaMamaMe website and declared myself okay. Getting published, I realized, had become too much of a goal, and I should feel deep gratitude to the Universe for throwing a bunch of other things at me as a reminder that I [...]

Read the full article →

Why Waiting for What You Want (and Maybe Not Even Getting It) Is a Gift

March 24, 2008

So, I’ve been working on this being a writer thing more or less steadily since I quit my teaching job in 2003. And, not for the first time, I feel like I’m on the verge of it actually panning out. All I’ve got to do is finish my YogaMamaMe book proposal, get the [...]

Read the full article →

Learning to Let Go of the Saturday Morning Baby-Free Panic

March 22, 2008

Here it is again. It’s Saturday morning, I’m gloriously still in my pajamas, and Mike has taken Jake on an expedition. We should both be thrilled: he gets the Jake Time of which he manages only snippets during the work week and I get a morning free to practice yoga.
The problem is, [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →