Getting better, I think?

Haven’t had the heart to write here for a long time.  As soon as I hit “publish” on my last post, I was overwhelmed with a huge wave of sadness. It’s like as soon as I publicly claimed I was doing really well, it cleared the feelings on top of the real feelings. I became acutely aware of how “not okay” I really was.  By the next day, I was a complete mess and the only phrase that was repeating itself in my head was, “I am not okay.  I’m not okay!!”

I decided not to blog for a while and just wear all of these feelings for a while on my own.  I bought an old school paper journal that’s just for me, and wrote about stuff I will just classify as really raw emotion.  It sucks to live in real time.  Why can’t I deal with a bad thought only once--why does it keep repeating itself? Why am I so restless--I can’t focus on anything? Why do I snap so fast with people—I have zero patience and get triggered so fast? It occurred to me tonight that I have not carved any pumpkins for Halloween with my kids this year.  It was such a big deal to me as a kid and for the last 5 years I have had my kids, but this year I honestly don’t have any energy to celebrate. Not Halloween pumpkin carving is such a first world problem, but I know behind this is something that has to do with grieving.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have some peaceful moments and days where my brain actually stops racing and the sinking feeling in my heart stops. I soak up these times and pay attention to what caused this. I can’t believe I used to always feel okay! I was doing pretty well and that was a great foundation to go to work from, to parent from, to do anything from.  Now, these moments are rarer, but perhaps the hidden blessing is that I really do cherish happiness because I know how crappy it is to feel sad day after day.  Crossing off so many things on my “Finding Joy in 2015” list I shared in my first blog post this year makes me pretty happy.  Peru was a life changing experience. Celebrating my dad's 70th birthday in Hawaii as the only "single parent" in the family reunion made me feel capable and strong. Coaching run clinic has been my reason for getting out of bed on Sundays this year.  Putting away all my wedding photos was surprisingly not difficult for me, but I totally lost it (in a good way) when I saw the new family photos of me and the kids for the first time and I probably stared at them for hours that day.  A couple weeks ago I travelled with a friend and tried to leave everything that is my reality behind—and it worked.  For one week I totally let go and shut my fretful brain down.  It felt amazing and I want that feeling again! It is scary to me that many of the things that make me happy these days are travel-based, and require me leaving my reality which is not sustainable.  I feel like I need to generate my own sense of peace in the middle of real life, but I’m not sure how to do that over and over—yet. 

There is progress, I know it! One thought that has slowly started to leave my brain is blame.  I don’t blame anyone or anything for how I feel. What happened, happened.  “It is what it is,” and there is no going back now. I know staying angry is just poisoning myself. I also know that I don’t need to be in a relationship with anyone right now.  That would be kind of like putting myself on drugs.  I definitely am scared of the prospect of not having anyone to share meaningful things in life with, but for now I am pretty clear on how much I can handle.  Yeah, it hasn’t been the best year.  But it could be worse; I am above ground, and for that I am grateful, and I need to keep marching ahead.  I have realized that this is all part of the process of grieving the loss of something major in a person’s life. Some days are brilliant, some days are dark, and hopefully the good days happen more frequently over time.  And to all of you who have been so encouraging and inspiring to me this year, thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring—it really does get me out of bed. 

ps. Gwen Stefani just became my hero--heard her new song this week and cried heaps:

 Used to Love You - Gwen Stefani

Oh my god I feel alive! 

That doesn’t mean everything is perfect—far from it, actually.  But I am learning that treating everything like an adventure gives me so much energy. It’s like I’m back from the dead, and it feels f-ing great. 

In the past three weeks I have had hundreds of moments where I shake my head happily and think, “Wow, this is my life!” It helps that for almost two of those weeks I was trekking through magical Peru.

Peru is now probably my favorite country that I have visited. It is up there with maybe one or two other vacation experiences I have had in my life. Hiking in the Andes was exactly what I needed to do right now and I was ready for it; it was physically challenging, it was remote and felt like I had departed from anything familiar in my life, the scenery was stunning, the culture was amazing, and the people I met along the way also felt really uplifting.  I initially thought I was setting out to cross seeing Machu Picchu off my bucket list.  But what was totally euphoric was reaching the summit of the Lares Trail at over 4800m and feeling like I let a lot of shit go once I reached the top.  It was like the perfectly cheesy metaphor for my life.  Climb a mountain, experience hardship, reach the top, don’t look behind you at the past, turn and face, and walk down towards a beautiful scene of the future.  But that is exactly how it felt to me.  It was very very hard to walk uphill in that altitude, and it felt amazing to get to the top and have a moment to relish to myself.  I actually said “goodbye” out loud to some things and some people in my life when I looked down at the trail where I came from.  Our guide told us that when we reach the summit, we offer thanks to God (or the Andean gods) and hold up three coca leaves, pointing them in each direction, and then make a wish.  I don’t think it’s bad luck to tell you what I wished for so I’ll share it with you!  I thought in my head, “I want to experience love—real love.”  And as soon as that thought came out of my head I disagreed with it.  “Actually,” I thought, “I want to be truly happy and joyful. Whatever that looks like, I will not define it or put a name on it now.”  And then I literally ran down the mountain for a while and into this crazy, beautiful valley, and I knew I was a little bit different than when I started out at the bottom of the other side of the mountain.

I think what was a little bit different was that I realized that I was ready to move on and it’s not with fear. I had been doing a bit of the “fake it til you make it” in telling people I was ok and that I was strong.  But I knew I had made it after being in Peru.  I realized that my heart is open now and it’s okay if I take the risk of getting hurt—I shouldn’t expect it, but instead just go with something that intuitively feels right and just be happy with what is.  I realized that everywhere I go, I will have friendships and connections with everyone if I am open.  It doesn’t have to make sense to me, it doesn’t need to be labelled, and where it’s headed doesn’t need to be contained or controlled.  On the long plane ride home I watched “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” movie that ended in this quote: “There’s no such thing as an ending. Just a place where you leave the story. And it’s your story now.  You have no idea now what you will become.  Don’t try to control it. Let go. That’s where the fun starts.  There’s no present like the time.”  I cried and watched this quote twice.  I realized that being on the journey is my goal…life happens along the way, not at the end of things.  It is the same when I run a half marathon—the training is the best part and race day is just one day.  Relationships are the same way—the process is all you’ve got.  There are a million end points that are options for us as we set about life.  Perhaps I’ve been a bit near-sighted in trying carve out the path to one end point only in so many things I do.  So. No more of that! 

 

 When I arrived home to reality, I made the choice that I could either be in vacation withdrawal and check out a little, or I could get busy making normal life an adventure.  In my last blog post, one of my plans for this year was to default to saying “‘yes’ to invitations to do stuff.” I used to politely decline most things—but this past week I have been richly rewarded for going with "yes"…I watched a scary-to-me movie in the theatre (and screamed out loud at what was probably not anything scary to anyone else—but for those of you who know me I hate thrillers and horror movies so much and avoid them like the plague), I got to meet and personally thank the woman who took care of my children during a family emergency earlier this year, I learned how to tie stand up paddle boards to my car and get them down to the ocean without killing myself or destroying them as they flew off my vehicle, I ran 14K last Saturday because I was invited to do it, I drank a lot of wine and bonded with some amazing women from my run clinic—and got really helpful advice, I drank a lot of beer with an old colleague and laughed until I cried, and I taught one of my best friends and a random jogger on the beach to paddle surf. Six months ago, I would have said no to all these things and would likely have been at home yelling at my kids or working overtime (or both).  Don't get me wrong...I still do these things and I have moments of overwhelming loneliness, but I'm ok with feeling those things too.  It is what it is, and it's all part of the adventure!

 

 

 

 

finding joy in 2015

Hello again, I have missed all of you!  I’m so excited to reopen this blog and invite you on the journey I find myself on—it’s unexpected but it is all going to be good, I just know it.  I’ve thought long and hard about when would be a good time to start writing again, and I feel that now is as good a time as any. 

The very short version of events that have transpired in the past year: I am now becoming a single mom of two little guys. I did not ask for this status, but after intense sadness, anger, confusion, and all of the things that come with a marriage that comes abruptly to an end, I feel like I’m coming out of the dark cave and I am filled with hope that the future will indeed be bright. I know it will be because it’s within my control to make it so. And, I want and need and deserve that more than anything.

My biggest goal moving forward is to find joy and experience it….a lot! Looking back over the past few years, there wasn’t a lot of joy going on in my life.  It’s like a little cloud followed me around wherever I went and I couldn’t shake it. Something was wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I thought it was maybe about needing a new job.  So I went and got myself a promotion, but life didn’t feel any more joyful.  I thought maybe it was time to buy a new house.  So we went and bought ourselves a new home.  But things got more stressful.  I thought maybe I needed to work out more and run more half marathons.  So last year I ran 4.  But there really was something vacant in my eyes as I looked at everything that was supposedly good happening in my life.  You know what it was?  My heart was asleep. I went through the motions of life without any passion.  Then I got the biggest wake up call of my life and now I know what I need to do: it’s time to get busy living and doing those things that bring joy to my life.

Working with my coach (check out evergrowthcoaching.com…Bay is awesome) I worked on a plan to figure out how to get some joy in my life, and here are  just a few things I’ve done and got planned for the rest of this year:

• Travel to Peru with my sister (coming up in 5 days!)
• Train for and run the Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco in October
• Say “yes” to invitations to do stuff (coffee, beer, running, concerts, etc.)
• Celebrate my dad’s 70^th birthday in Hawaii in August with my sons
• Own my own vehicle, and learn how to do basic maintenance on it
• Make my house (wherever/whatever that is) my home
• Take family photos of me and my 2 sons
• Visit a gulf island I’ve never seen before
• Get my group fitness instructor certification by the end of the year
• Take an art course
• Be accountable for my finances and spending
• Start my blog again
• Start coaching and training runners.  Pace someone in the Times Colonist 10K race to a new personal best time (this happened in April and was so rewarding!)

Call it my revised bucket list or just a list of everything I really have been meaning to do in my life but just didn’t do it…until now.

 So…please join me on this new journey. I’m going to work hard, work out hard, travel hard, love my sons hard, and basically live hard! And then blog about it. 

 

 

turning bad energy around

I’ve picked myself up and made a decision this week to start my health journey…again.  I’ve gained 12 pounds since returning to work in November.  I have abandoned clean eating habits. I have agreed to take on more than I can reasonably handle in my job and let the stress manifest itself through bad eating and skipping gym work outs. I wrote previously about being in a rut and not knowing how to turn all the negative energy I had running through my system around.  There are a few things I’ve done this month to make that change:

• In my new job, I find myself responsible for my organization’s wellness program. What a great fit for me!  We currently have our annual wellness event going on right now and it has included a health clinic for employees where you can sign up to have your blood pressure, cholesterol, and BMI measured.  I have never had my cholesterol levels calculated and to my surprise my total cholesterol is high! Whaaaat? I thought I ate pretty decently but maybe it’s time to look at changing my diet with the goal of lowering my cholesterol—a new challenge!  Also, sadly my BMI is back in the “overweight” range.  Again, whaaaaaaat?  That’s not ok with me. So I’m using this experience to kick start better eating.
• I attended a unique coaching course as part of my professional development through my job where we learned how to use art and sketching to coach clients. While this was meant to be a train the trainer course, I used my own issues about not being successful in losing weight and moving past that focus in my life. I was brutally honest about myself with my fellow course participants, and they helped me articulate what the problems really are, and what I need to do about it. I left that course having a lot more clarity.  Basically I realized I am really hard on myself. I am goal driven to the point of being handicapped by my goals—I get really focused and go all out. When I don’t make my goals I just give up out of frustration.  I also put words to why I feel so devastated about going back to work from maternity leave: my current line of work is not in alignment with my personal values anymore. My values have shifted since having kids.  And it’s important to me to align what I do for a living with what I value. So now that I have pinpointed what’s at the root of my unhappiness these days, I need to go about resolving that.
• It was recommended to me after getting my high cholesterol numbers that I should get a nutrition coach.  I’m all about coaching!  And it’s a free 12 week program that is offered through my organization. I am signing up for this next week. I also set up a meeting with another performance coach to talk about aligning my work with my personal values.
• This month I also made a decision to cut back on working in the evenings and weekends.  A lot of it is unavoidable.  But I am going to push back when clients ask for deadlines that have me working until midnight most nights. It’s not worth my health and weight loss goals. The briefing note coming a day later will not bring down the sky. 
• I’m sticking with my run clinic. I’m running my 4^th half marathon at the end of May, and have trained my way through a hip injury this winter. I can run 16K in just over 90 minutes.  Getting back into running after an injury has been an important exercise in discipline.

I’m recommitting to making 2014 my year to hitting my goal weight.  That is my primary goal this year, and I’ve been pushing it aside until now.

how it really feels to finish mat leave and go back to work

I wrote this post a month ago and chose not to share it with anyone. But how I felt a month is important to acknowledge so I have decided to share now. Things have changed for me since I wrote this and I will update very soon!

I will be blunt.  I am not in a good place right now.  I have not written a blog post for four months because I know it is going to force me to articulate some uncomfortable thoughts I’ve had recently going on in my life.  Time to write no matter what space I’m in. I remember the last words in my blog were something about being excited about what lay ahead now that my year on mat leave was coming to an end. Truth be told, I was not excited at all but thought, “maybe if I say it, I’ll believe it.”

I had no idea how heartbreaking it would be to return to work. For the first two weeks, I had tears streaming down my face as I entered my office building.  I would be wiping them off my face as the elevator opened to my floor, telling myself  "get it the F*** together already!"-- so mad that I was this upset about something that every other working mom does.  I am not a crier and I pride myself on being really strong. But this time, heading back to work felt wrong on many levels.

Suddenly there is almost no time for just me.  I’ve gone from working out 6 days a week to 3-4 times a week. My eating habits are BAD—not enough water, too much sugar and carbs, way too much caffeine.  I work almost every evening (a few times until 3am) and weekends, just to be ready for the next day. Truly this is not by choice—I took on a new job with high expectations and it has sucked every free hour out of me for the last 2 months.  I get 6 hours of sleep a night if I’m lucky. I am still getting over a sinus infection I picked up at Christmas—worst ‘cold’ in my life. I had to see a specialist about a hip injury caused from running this fall, and was told not to run for 2 months, and when I could start again I can only do it twice a week.  Running used to be my sanity regulator and with that stripped away it was the last straw.  It’s like everything fell apart between November and now: my body, my good habits, my focus, my happiness. I am on the verge of losing it every day—I cannot keep going on like this.

So here it is, March 1^st, and I find myself 10 pounds heavier than when I finished mat leave in November.  My clothes are tight…why did I work so hard last year just to gain all this weight back?  For the first time in 3 years I’ve thought about not showing up to the gym because why bother, I’m destined to be fat for the rest of my life.   My brain knows all the things I need to do to pull myself out of this rut: take one day at a time. Just show up to the gym.  Pick one thing for the week like drinking 3L water a day and just focus on one small change. Make sure I have healthy food in the fridge so I can make good choices. Blah blah blah.  I just feel so defeated I don’t even know how I can start doing these things again.

Ok. There ends the doom and gloom.  I may feel like the universe is hammering me from all directions, but really, I'm very much contained within the first world problems realm.  I do have one super amazing piece of news that has happened since returning to work.  Along with 2 other amazing women, I ‘won’ my gym’s ambassador challenge for 2014, meaning BDHQ picked me and 2 other women they believe in to be ambassadors for them and in exchange, I get free classes and personal training at both their locations  all year long. here we are at 730am on a Saturday morning about to get our butts kicked at bootcamp...

 I have no excuse—2014 is my year – the year I hit my goal weight, get super fit, and connect to the awesome BDHQ community. I love love love this challenge and I really am up for it. It’s time to face my biggest fear, which is never successfully losing weight and reaching my health goals.  Time to stop victimizing myself and overthinking everything, and just get it done.

in the last days of mat leave

There is a little bit of sadness this week as I do things in my year-long routine for the last time.  There is no regret, just sadness that this amazing year is coming to a close. 

I teared up today as I put Liam back into his car seat after our last outing together.  Every Wednesday for this past year, I have gathered up both kids and all their stuff and taken them on an adventure.  Sometimes it’s to the soul sucking indoor playground, but most of the time it’s been some sort of outdoor adventure.  “That’s it, Liam,” I said today as we got into the truck and drove away.  He had a little pout on his face and it broke my heart a little bit to think that at the same time a week from now I will be in some sort of office attire in a cubicle while he is in daycare. 

today was our last Wednesday adventure all together, out and about the town

almost every Wednesday included my good friend and her kids. here we are last week on our last big group adventure

On Monday I ran for the last time with Alex in the stroller. Every Monday for 9 months we have run the same route. When I started in January I could only run for 4 minutes at a time and did about 6k.  Now we do a little over 10k in under an hour.  As usual he napped and I listened to the rhythm of my footsteps plodding along the galloping goose and practiced just being in this beautiful moment. It was sunny and 15 degrees. People paddling kayaks, walking dogs, all the industrial activity across the inlet going full speed. Yes, this was just our morning jog but the fact that we did it in rain, wind storms, 30 degree heat, without fail on Monday mornings made it meaningful this last time.  

 

Tuesday was my last class of BDHQ’s baby bootcamp.  What an odd feeling to know this is it. Of course I will continue to work out and stay in touch with the friends I have made there but the breaking of a comfortable, healthy habit is kind of hard. 

 

These last three days have defined what my mat leave was all about – being really disciplined about doing something with the boys outside every day, learning to take care of myself as much as I took care of a new little life, bonding with my 3-year-old and meeting him on his active terms, and always challenging myself to ensure the routine didn’t get mundane, whether that was running faster or longer, finding a new adventure on which to take the boys, or whatever made sense to get better.

 I am thinking about why this year was so amazing, and in short, it’s because I worked hard to make it and perceive it that way.  I don’t think happiness happens to a person; you work on having an attitude that makes good thing happen in your life and deals effectively with the bad things that come your way. On my first maternity leave I returned to school to finish my masters when Liam was 4 months old.  I basically just survived—it was all about getting him down for a nap so I could study or finish an assignment.  In retrospect, it was not a healthy situation at all.  This time around I gave myself a major attitude adjustment.  I feel like a different person because of it.  I decided this year that I want to live my life with integrity and give out the most positive energy I can to others. I can get really wrapped up in achieving goals, and come across as really serious, sometimes a bit too judgemental and critical of others and myself.  I started thinking about how I could look for the best in everyone I met. How I could leave them better off when we parted ways. I decided to live in the present moment, not live for some future time (when I’d be thinner, happier, less tired, etc.).  I chose to be thankful for being tired, because it meant that I had children in the first place, and that I was able to take care of them.  I learned that when you intentionally set about your positive attitude, you acquire one.
Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to Alex shortly after he was born.  It sums up how I feel about bringing my boys into the world and why it is so hard to tear yourself away from them a year later.

"We found out through an ultrasound you were definitely a boy. I thought, 'Ok, I will be living with 3 boys for the rest of my life and I better get on board with being the only girl in the house from now on!'  But the moment you were born and they handed you to me, I loved you so fiercely I could not imagine having just had any other child but you. I have my two beautiful and precious sons and your dad, and that’s all I need. You were perfect, and those were my first words after you were born. The moment your baby is born is what your dad and I call one of the 'heaviest' moments in a person’s life—heavy with emotions like joy, excitement, relief, fear, curiosity... Alex, I would do all of this all over again to have you. I really believe God picked you to belong to us and I wouldn’t want it any other way.   My heart grew a bit bigger the day you were born. I can only imagine what we are going to go through together on life’s journey, and whatever it brings, and whenever you are reading this, please know that I have loved you since literally day one!"

And so ends this chapter.  But like all things it means a beginning of something else, and I am excited to see what next week brings.

losing 10 pounds the wrong way

My stomach is eating itself right now.  Each day for the past four days I’ve eaten about 500 calories, drank 3 to 4L of water, and worked out in an attempt to drop 5 pounds.  I entered my gym’s 10 pound challenge 8 weeks ago, and the final weigh in is tomorrow morning.  If I don’t make it, I lose the $150 I used to enter the challenge. If I weigh 10 pounds less than I did 8 weeks ago, I get my money back plus the cash of anyone else who entered the challenge and didn’t make it.  As of right now I have 2 pounds to cut…basically by dehydrating myself.  I know my intentions going into this were good—I wanted to lose 10 more pounds before finishing my year of maternity leave, weighing less than I did before getting pregnant.  It started out well; halfway through these 8 weeks I was down 5 pounds, having lost the weight in a healthy way.  Then came the week of the half marathon.  I don’t know what it is about running long distances but anxiety plus the need to store energy for the run means eating lots and lots of carbs.  Then race day happened. Most of you reading this know that I ran my little heart out—and made my goal of finishing 21K in less than 2 hours. 1 hour, 57 minutes and 5 seconds to be exact.  I lost 4 pounds that day, just from sweating.  Then, my body went into a weird mode of gaining a bunch of weight, I guess because I needed to heal and it was storing energy to do that.  So here we are today…I am starving on purpose. It’s on my mind about every 5 minutes.  I know this is crazy and I am being stupid. Here are my lessons learned from this experience:

1)      When I set a goal and commit to it, I do it at all costs. This can be a good thing and a bad thing! Next time I set weight loss goals they will NOT be tied to money.

2)      Starving yourself is hard work and takes discipline.  Some people might be proud that they look good because of the discipline they employed in not eating. But wouldn't you rather put in the hard work doing something healthy and fun? From experience, I know it is WAY more fun to run a half marathon than under eat. 

3)      I promise you, I will never do this again!