letting instead of making

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, see, it’s what [...]

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Jake and My Heart Free Me From a Scary Rat’s Maze

May 5, 2008

I had one of those moments yesterday, the kind where suddenly everything feels completely wrong. It begins with a weird sense of displacement — in my case, sitting on the floor of my yoga room/office in the middle of my asana practice. “What am I doing here?” or something like it started the internal conversation. [...]

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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 office while [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Being Open to Change

April 2, 2008

I was stuck in the back of yoga class again yesterday. This is not my favorite spot, for no particular reason, other than habit. I like being in the front, in my own world, diving into empty space instead of someone else’s mat. No doubt books (or at least lengthy articles) could be written about [...]

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Breaking from Break, Part II: Back to Being a Mom

April 1, 2008

So, it turns out it’s not as hard as I had anticipated to jump right back into mothering, working, and living at breakneck speed. Except, that is, for those five minutes this morning when I was trying to change Jake’s poopy diaper. He has now decided that a choice between lying down and standing up [...]

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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 later as [...]

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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 website up [...]

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I’m Finding a Way to Practice in the Time My Life Allows for It

March 20, 2008

Today is Thursday, a yoga day. This means at noon I will dash away from my computer to throw on yoga clothes, sweat through a 12:15 class, and return home to shower some time between 2:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon, an exercise that will never cease to feel, just, wrong. I did the same [...]

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