One of the only perks of an early morning train ride is the 30 minutes I’m able to find for just myself. During this time, I usually just spend time in my own head, mentally preparing for the day ahead (or trying to master the art of sleeping with my eyes open) but today I felt like I needed some support and motivation. So I scoured the internet and found a ton of articles dedicated to working moms -specifically a ton of articles telling working moms how they can have it all, the entire dream. A fantastic career, happy children, a loving marriage, and time for self meditation or pampering or the gym or whatever it is the mother wants to do in her “spare” time – there’s nothing a working mom can’t do! Having been back at work for only the last month I feel like I can say with the utmost authority, that that is all a load of crap. Can we do it all? Can we try to manage our day to day lives to find time to dedicate to our careers? To our children? To our marriage? Don’t even get me started with to ourselves- I’m currently writing this as I try to balance myself standing on the train heading into the office. I mean technically, I am “doing it”. I am heading to work. I come home in the evening and find my daughter happy and healthy. I have a husband that I truly love. And yet, I don’t feel like I have it all. Being a working mom comes with a lot of compromises and it’s not ones I would’ve chosen to make. Read More »
Life Gave Me Lemons But Left Out the Instructions For The Lemonade
You know how sometimes you feel like your life is finally coming together? That all the pieces are finally falling into place and you can finally take a moment to breathe easily cause everything is really OK? And then, you know that feeling of when life comes and just rips the rug from right under your feet and now you don’t know how to feel anymore? Yeah..that’s me now. Life just can’t be that easy after all.
So it’s nothing too serious, hopefully, but I swear I could not keep myself from laughing a bit when I took it all in. After all, this was me starting a new, healthier life. I’m all about eating well, being outdoors, keeping myself as healthy as possible. But who knew that that healthier life would also include a diagnosis for eczema. Wonderful. So let me just start from the top…
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a couple of dry patches that were particularly itchy around both of my ankles. To be honest, I didn’t think much of it. I know I have a nickel allergy that causes similar types of spots on me if I wear anything with nickel in it so I just assumed I had worn something, like leggings, with a zipper down there which may have given me the allergic reaction. Not a problem, usually clears up in a day or two and is a minor hassle. Work had been particularly crazy these last couple of weeks with a lot of big projects coming to an end and to be honest, I wasn’t monitoring it very closely. Another week goes by and I notice that the original patches are now bigger and redder and that the itchiness has now spread to other areas of my legs. Now I’m starting to get a little worried. Not to mention, trying to sleep at night had become a big problem. I couldn’t make the itchiness stop no matter what I tried and new rashes began to form. I made an appointment for a dermatologist and I don’t think I was even in her office for 2 minutes before she took a look at my legs, diagnosed me with eczema, told me I’d have to use a topical cream for 2 weeks, and then sent me on my way with a “See you in 2 weeks…”
Umm…what? Was this contagious? Will it continue to spread?? How did this even happen???
Things I’ve Learned Prior To and During My Marriage
So a couple of days ago, Mike and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary. Two years…I can’t even begin to fathom where the time went. In these last two years we have moved three times (and I don’t plan on moving again for a while!) We have traveled to Venice, Barcelona, Malta, Miami, Bermuda, Boston, Montreal, Philly, and bunch of other places. We have had absolutely wonderful times and we have had some downright shitty times too. And while we have only been married for two years, we have been together for the last nine years and it has been quite the ride.
I hadn’t planned on talking about my marriage but I thought that I could possibly provide some insight for those of you that may be entering into new relationships, or are newlyweds, or maybe just have no clue what’s going on and need a little bit of advice while trying to navigate it through. Not that I am so great at it. Far from it. But I do feel like we have come a long way from where we started so we have got to be making some kind of progress! So here are some of the things I have learned through my relationship, before and during marriage:
1. There is no such things as being right or wrong in an argument.
No really – hear me out. Most of the time, you are going to think you are right (and you probably are of course) but your other half will also think you are most definitely wrong. And you guys will argue, a lot. Like a lot, a lot. About who is wrong, right, and everything in between. Things from 5 years ago that have absolutely nothing to do with the argument will come out, there may be some name calling, and then what? You end up staying mad and upset with each other and things will be tense while you each wait for the other person to apologize. Let’s be honest – life is just too short for that. Do you love each other? Do you really want to be separated from this person? Do they make your life better overall, other than this one stupid argument? If the answers to your questions are Yes, No, and Sure – then just stop the fighting, it’s not worth it. Sometimes it really is just better to agree to disagree and move on from there. And of course, I’m not talking about the big fights. But if you’re fighting over who does the dishes more…just move on. Address the issue, get it out there, but move on. Life is short.
What Healthy Means To Me
So I came back to blogging about 10 days ago. It was at a time where I felt like my motivation to do anything really fell at an all time low. Maybe it was just the exhaustion from the move and renovation kicking in. Add work and just life in general into the mix and I just didn’t have the energy to do anything any more.
I don’t remember why, but I opened up my blog posts from a a year and half ago and I started reading and I just thought – I want to be that girl again. I was pushing myself everyday to be better and I had felt so good. Stupidly enough, I let life get in the way and one week off turned to two and so on. It was so easy to fall back into a rut and I am so upset when I think about it now. All that effort and work just wasted.
Part of me thinks I stopped trying to be better because I stopped blogging. It sounds silly, but actually writing down my progress in a such a public way, not only motivated me to keep going, but helped me keep track of myself. My failure before was also focusing too much on the fitness aspect of being healthy. But being healthy is so much more than just working out.
Being healthy to me means finding that balance between work and life. It means not letting the stress from my 9am-5pm job carry over and continue to wear me down at 9pm. It means opening up my fridge and putting together a home cooked meal instead of opening GrubHub or Seamless. It means making the effort to actually go outside and breathe in the fresh air, if only for a couple of minutes to clear my head. It means putting in the effort to be more physically active than I was the day before. It means finding the time to balance being a wife and a friend and a daughter. But most importantly, it means finding time for me to just be me.
Working Mom on the Run 