It starts with a sponge

Lately I’ve been needing to be reminded of my own teachings.  Needing someone to tell me the things I tell my students.  Someone to make me hear the truth of my own words.

 I preach self care. I deeply believe in the power, the necessity, the beauty of giving from a full well.  And I do try to practice what I preach.  Yoga, meditation, regular chiropractic care and massage.  My current non-negotiable (next to coffee) is a daily shower.  I arrange my day in such a way to make this happen.  I can generally ensure my daughter’s contentment along with safety while I am in the shower, but occasionally she squalls.  And that is the price of a sane and human-feeling mama. 

I understand how to find small moments of restoration though breath.  Through meditation.  But I’ve realized that I’m not attending to the foundation of wellness.  The Upanishads say “From food are produced all creatures which dwell on earth.  Then they live by food, and in the end they return to food.  For food is the oldest of all beings, and therefore called panacea.”  We are what we eat.  Food is medicine.  My daughter’s source of food – the breast – is also her place of deepest comfort and contentment.

I don’t think I’m eating enough.  I’m not one to count calories, but I’m noticing myself constantly hungry.  A low level low-bloodsugar crankiness pervades too much of my day.  I crash emotionally in what I recognize as a low bloodsugar crisis entirely too frequently.  It is not that I’m not eating.  But I’m eating the way I ate before I got pregnant.  And as an exclusively breastfeeding mom, that is just not cutting it. 

For health reasons, ethical reasons, financial reasons and pure preference my kitchen is one that is full of whole foods: garden veggies in the freezer, fresh veggies from the grocery, bulk grains and legumes, blocks of cheese, canned tomatoes, and so much frozen salmon.  (There’s also a basket of chocolate and I go through ketchup like nobody’s business, I’m not stepping up onto a high horse here!) And frankly?  It is more appealing to retreat to my studio to play with yarn and eat a few almonds, or curl up on the couch with a baby and a quart of water than it is to make the meal I know I need to eat.  It is a weird place for me to be in.  I have taken so much joy in cooking for so many years, and I don’t right now.  It is not that I dislike it.  I’m just not inspired. 

It simply means I need to become intentional about it.  I need to make it easy for me to eat.  Dedicated deliberate work can sometimes get you farther than inspiration ever will.  Inspiration cannot be forced.  But it can be courted, enticed, invited.  You do the work, the craft … and silently, suddenly inspiration may slip in.

And so it is 2 am, I am awake with a fussy baby wrapped on my chest and I am stirring flour into yeast and oats and water.  100 strokes.  A wooden spoon in a bowl of goodness.  Bread starts with a sponge.  An inviting habitat for yeast to flourish before the heavy lifting of leavening whole wheat flour begins.  I am making oat bread, a staple of childhood memories of deep comfort. Oats also happen to be good for milk production.  It’s a hearty, healthy, delightful bread that is best hot with butter. 

I am also taking this as license for daily hot cocoa with whole milk, and plenty of cream in my coffee!

Reading Resolutions

I read.  A lot.  Books give me joy.  Reading books, smelling books, listening to books being read aloud, talking about books, sharing books, buying books, walking through aisles of books, looking at walls covered in books, stacking books next to my bed…. 

My current favorite thing about books?  The way that my 9 week old daughter smiles with delight as her papa reads her a book on his lap.  She coos at the pages and chortles. Last time I tried to read to her?  Squalls of discontent.  Boobs are apparently still better than books in her world.

In a way, books - and reading - may be even more necessary to me this year than in years past.  I took one hobby (yoga) and turned it into a business, a job, a career - calling it may be, but something I do solely for myself it is no longer.  And then more recently, I took another hobby (weaving) and also turned it into a business; a fun one, a joyful one, but a job nonetheless.  And mothering?  Mothering might be my primary activity these days, it may be mostly fun, and infinitely rewarding.  But it is hardly a thing that I do for myself alone.  I feel like keeping something that is just for me, just for joy, just for fun, is important.

Goodreads reflects that I read 79 books in 2015.   Not half bad for a year in which I was pregnant and not-infrequently exhausted and sleeping 18 hours a day. My goal was 100, and I’ve set the same goal for myself this year.  I expect that I’ll vastly outpace myself and clock in at well over 100 books in 2016. 

Because here’s the thing.  Kid’s books are books.  Those numbers for 2015?  They include a Jan Brett book or three.

I’ll read novels and books on yoga and health.  I’ll read “Big Magic.” I’ll finish Harry Potter in French.  I’ll read for my own amusement and pleasure.  I’ll read to feed my own soul.  But always and increasingly, I’ll read to Avery.  We will read about trolls and treasure hunts, about ridiculous rooms with big green walls and hideous red carpets, about mice and cookies, and about moose and muffins.  

Those are books.  They count. (Though only once.  Even if I read “Llama Llama Red Pajama” 12 million times, it only counts once!)

But just to spice things up a little, perhaps to nudge me past my comfort zone, I’ve printed out a few reading challenges that have been making their way around the interwebs.  This one from the Modern Mrs. Darcy is short and sweet and fun.  This one from PopSugar is lengthy and honestly, the one I’m least likely to complete.  Because political memoirs and dystopian novels?  Not my cup of tea.  I turn pages primarily for the joy they bring me.  Then there’s this one from Book Riot, with the most diverse categories of the three.  I’m excited about this one.  Or most of it.  Again with the dystopia.  And horror?  Does medieval dismemberment porn in saint’s lives count?  I could read one of those again.  While I’m certain I could find phenomenal literature for adults, I’m really hoping that I check off “Read a book by or about a person that identifies as a transgender” with a kid’s book. 

What about you? What are you reading?  What do you recommend?

So far this year, I’ve read “On the Night You Were Born,” “Je t’aimerais toujours,” and the first few chapters of “Surrender to the Devil.”  If you were to judge by Regency Romance, Lucifer was a bona fide blue blooded Duke. 

Taking Leave

I make a living holding space for people to take time for themselves, guiding people –women especially – to listen to and to honor their own deep inner wisdom.  I advocate for self care.  “May you give not from an empty well, but from a well that is overflowing” is my tagline as a teacher and a healer.  It is what I remind my students of, what I encourage my clients to realize in their lives.

Sometimes I forget that it also applies to me.

When I got pregnant and started setting money aside for “maternity leave,” I gave lip service to the idea that I would stop teaching if and when baby needed me to.  But really, I planned to keep teaching until baby arrived.  I mean, I teach gentle yoga.  And prenatal yoga.  And women have been working and having babies for millennia.  There’s no reason I can’t continue – mindfully and gently, but pretty much as normal – until this baby arrives, right?  Wrong.

For the most part, this pregnancy has been a beautiful experience.  Emotionally, spiritually, energetically, creatively.  Pregnancy looks beautiful on me.  It feels beautiful on me.  Except for one thing.  One at times excruciating thing.  I’ve had the *ahem* opportunity to experience pubic symphisis pain for the last several months.  (For those of you unfamiliar with what this is… basically:  The pubic bone is actually a joint.  Pregnancy floods the body with relaxin hormone to help pelvis open for birth and body to be able to grow with baby.  One of the places where pelvic opening happens is at the pubis.  Sometimes the two bones get out of whack with one another and it hurts a whole lot.)  I made it a priority to take good physical care of myself through this pregnancy: regular chiropractic, massage, Arvigo Mayan abdominal massage, acupuncture.  But none of it helped the pubic pain for more than a few hours.

I powered through.  Taught class.  8 of them a week.  I had a commitment to my students, right?  
But I found myself dreading the next class, sitting in my car outside the yoga studio unwilling to go in.  Finally one class I shifted position while guiding a meditation and literally started crying – in the middle of class! On the teacher’s mat! – from the pain in my hips.  I realized that I had to stop teaching.  I needed rest and space more than I needed the money or the extra month of connection with my students.  I’m so grateful to my fellow yoga teachers, to the owners of the studio where I teach for swooping in and supporting me in this decision.  

It was really really difficult to give myself the permission to take the time and the space and the rest that my body, and this baby, were demanding.  I felt guilty.  I felt selfish.  It’s amazing how pernicious the ego can be.  Expecting and demanding I live up to some standard that I’d not fully consciously set for myself.   When I made the choice to start my babymoon nearly a month earlier than I’d planned?  Full-body sigh of relief.  

And let me tell you, it has been the right choice.  It has been a couple of weeks now since I taught my last class.  My energy is better.  I’m able to take things at my own, slow, baby-induced pace.  I’ve been spending so much time at home.  Making things in the studio.  Rearranging the downstairs living space.  Sorting baby clothes.  Nesting.  I needed this time.  This space.  This rest.  And you know what?  My hips hurt less.  Because I’m no longer tempted by all the inappropriate-for-me yoga poses I was teaching my students.  No longer running across town to get to the next class.  No longer requiring that the deep inner rhythms of pregnancy modulate themselves to those of the external world.

I’m a huge advocate for parental leave policies that support the realities of life, pregnancy and birth.  Scandinavia is on the right track, y’all.  So is Italy.  Minimum 6 months paid leave for moms?  Should be standard.  Current US practices?  Ridiculous.

And yet, somehow, I felt guilty giving myself the same time and space I advocate for others to have.  Felt guilty for my privilege of having a supportive working spouse and just enough money set aside that we won’t default on our mortgage for me to take a few months off.  Because I know there are women who work up to the day they give birth and are back at work 2 weeks later.  My heart bleeds for them, and for their children.  I cringe at the reality of the toll that takes on their bodies, on their physical and mental health for the rest of their lives.  And so I felt guilty for giving myself time off not only after the birth, but during this last month of pregnancy.  I’m endlessly thankful for good friends who call me out on unreasonable guilt.  Who remind me, if not in so many words, to be the change I want to see in the world.  How is it helpful to the cause of reasonable maternity leave to push through my own need for leave?  And you know, I am a teacher.  I’m a teacher of prenatal yoga, and as such a model for how to use yoga to support the journey of pregnancy…  what am I saying to my students if I deny myself the space and depth of connection I hope to guide them towards finding?  

Besides which:

Baby may still be on the inside, but I’m a mom now.  And it’s as true for moms as it is for healthcare workers… you cannot pour from an empty cup.

“May you give not from an empty well, but from one that is overflowing.”
-ancient sufi prayer