What About Me?

So there’s lots of new faces around here. I’ve been encourage to do an “Introduction to me” post.

Here’s the problem I’ve always had with that… who am I?

If I don’t know, how can I share with others?

I start talking about myself and end up talking about my kids every time. Why? Because they ARE my life. They are grown, and still they are my life. However, I’ve begun my own journey in the last couple of years. So maybe I do know a little more about myself that I thought. Let’s see.

I always wanted to be a stay at home mom. Not to “not work”, but to cultivate the relationships, bonds, and lives of my kids. I truly feel it’s one of the MOST important jobs we are to EVER do. We are raising those that will run this world. Take care of this earth. Raise their own some day. They not only need to be taught how to live and survive and right from wrong, they need to be taught how to relate to others. To care for others. To love others.

Now that my children are grown, I’m on a journey to rediscover myself. You always hear about parents making their kids a priority over themselves and who they are, but you never truly understand until you are in that position. And that’s exactly what I did.

So who am I???

For now, let’s start on the surface:

I love music! All kinds of music!

I have a handful of favorite tv shows. Friends is definitely at the top of the list. Right up there with it is One a Tree Hill & Charmed. I like so many different genres and many other shows, but those are definitely at the top for me. One of my childhood favorites was Wonder Woman. The original. Wonder Woman. Like the Lynda Carter version. There will never (for me) be another Wonder Woman like her.

I love to cook for my family. Well, when I’m feeling it. The day to day rigor of – work, come home, fix dinner, work some more, head to bed – gets to me often and I just don’t feel like it. But when I have time and am in the mood, I love it!

I love, love, love to read!

Fun fact : I own every Nora Roberts book she’s written under her given name. I love her writing style and the way she develops her characters and their relationships. You truly feel like you’re a part of the story.

I’ve also been making small strides to get back to caring for myself:

I’ve recently increased my water intake to 1/2 my body weight in ounces/day. Currently (as I’m writing this post) I am on day 60! I definitely see some differences in the way my body feels.

I’ve also developed routines for each morning and each evening. (I’ll elaborate on those in another post) Before I would clean my face when I felt like it, or take my vitamins when I remember, but developing these morning/evening routines have been a huge factor in my development of self care. My youngest, Mallory, took a course in school where she learned all about deficiencies and tried to help me figure out what was the most important for me to take lol. I’ve also had a doctor’s input in that area.

I want to evolve my self care to accomplish a more healthy lifestyle. And I’ve made moves toward this. I stretch every morning and every night, Megan even gave me some suggestions for this one – being a dance instructor and all. Stretching is so important for our bodies.

When I started this journey of rediscovering myself and taking care of myself, my kids were (and are) all onboard. My son, Jacob, has even talked with me about the importance of this for me. They are seriously my biggest cheerleaders and it’s really great to experience. It makes me realize just how wonderful they’ve become and how “worth it” it really was to stay at home and raise them because we were able to build lasting bonds that go both ways.

This is (and I am) definitely a work in progress.

In order to be fully transparent, this whole post has been a struggle for me. Nudges from each of my kids have pushed me to hit the publish button. It has always been very easy for me to show love to others. To pour time and energy into others. But it’s not been as easy to do that for myself. I’m always evolving and self care is getting easier and easier. Showing myself love in that way is becoming more natural for me. However, talking about it, sharing things about myself is never easy. The tightening in my chest and procrastination was all too real with this post. I’m pretty much an open book. I will share just about anything with anyone. But writing about myself just feels so vulnerable.

I hope you stick around each week for the fun posts, but also check back in because I will be updating my progress on this self care, self discovery journey I’m on.

Until next time…