the bigger picture

Geez, I Haven’t Had the Hip Replacement Yet, or Thoughts on Age and Youth

May 14, 2008

Something occurred to me yesterday in yoga class as I observed the places where I feel just a tad tighter and achier than I did before my pregnancy. “Maybe,” I thought with a rush of horror threaded through with an unsettling warmth of acceptance, “I’m just getting older.” For the past couple of years I’ve [...]

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Trust with a Capital T: How’s That for a Mother’s Day Gift?

May 12, 2008

“Think of what you’d like to do tomorrow,” Mike said Saturday night. “I want to do something special for you for Mother’s Day.” A perfectly reasonable request. But I am not, as it turns out, a perfectly reasonable person when it comes to being feted on Mother’s Day. As Mike headed off for an evening [...]

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There’s Something Bigger Than Forgetting to Buy Antibiotic Ointment

May 9, 2008

It was plainly my fault. Because, I feel deeply, anything that distresses my boy is. Bath time, these balmy spring evenings, has been a tad more fraught than usual. Mike has been arriving home right around when Jake and I sit down for his dinner. So we all head out for the deck, where Mike [...]

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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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Learning to Let Go of Frustration While Walking Through the Mall with Jake

April 15, 2008

It’s amazing how our children can teach us things even in a place so little conducive to spiritual enlightenment as the Asheville Mall. The lesson that needed learning began yesterday morning, when Mike more or less demanded I see a doctor. I didn’t put up much of a fight, probably because I was too busy [...]

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What the Friday Morning Bothered Blues Can Teach You About Time

April 11, 2008

“Is this the kind of day I’m going to have?” I whined as I pinched my fingers in the buckle of Jake’s stroller while rushing to get him to school. YES! boomed something much bigger than me a few minutes later, when Jake dropped the windshield scraper he so loves to carry to school on [...]

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Honoring Where Your Heart Has Taken You

April 7, 2008

I was sitting at the local ball park with Mike and Jake yesterday, enjoying the spring day and the buzz of peanuts and beer and baseball gloves, when “Here Comes the Sun” came over the loudspeakers. Normally, I resist writing essays built around a song that someone else has written. (I haven’t ever written a [...]

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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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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 over the [...]

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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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