Yo-yo mood

I want to work out.

I don’t want to work out.

I want to do yard work, or paint my kitchen, or clean my house.

I don’t want to do…anything.

I want to be with people!

I don’t want to be with anyone.

I’m excited for what’s coming!

I don’t give a shit.

I love my job.

I need to find something else to do.

Ever go back and forth between these emotions? Am I the only one?

WTF is going on inside my head that I can’t figure out what the heck it is that I want??

I’m assuming it’s stress or anxiety or perfectionism or fatigue or fear or all of the above. I haven’t quite put my finger on it’s etiology, and much like that drives me bonkers in my professional life, it bothers me in my personal life.

I feel like as a medical professional, I should have all the answers, but I don’t. I don’t know anyone who does, medical professional or not. But I still feel like I SHOULD know. And it’s frustrating.

I have no wise words to share on this, I just needed to put it out there that if you’re feeling this way, you’re not alone. The yo-yo mood is strong with this one. It’s real, it’s honest, and it’s apparently part of being human. Sometimes I wish I’d rather be an actual yo-yo. Then it would make sense to feel this way 🤷‍♀️

Stress is no April Fool’s Joke

As I sit here on the eve of April Fool’s, I think of what a joke life has been playing on me for years…

I used to pride myself in how busy I always was. I literally did it all. I guess not much has changed, really, but now I’m not so proud of it as I am just exhausted.

I keep thinking I’m gaining ground and then something happens that puts me two steps back again. I’m sure you know the feeling. We just tend not to talk about it. It’s that hush-hush thing we don’t mention, right? We shouldn’t talk about how stressed we are. We should be smiling and posting pictures on social of our wonderful life like we’re trying to keep up with the Joneses.

I’ve lost just over 20 lbs of my stress weight, and silly me I thought that as I lost weight, my body would be feeling better. But instead, for over a week I’ve been on the verge of an autoimmune flare. Almost 20 years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I started having autoimmune issues with a reactive arthritis that crippled me with pain and I missed a lot of work. I would have random joints flare up and be in incredible pain trying to get out of bed in the morning to get ready for work, only to feel like every bone in my feet was broken and I’d have to call out sick.

This past week I’ve had random joint pains again. Previous episodes like this sent me to the ER and urgent care in 2019 and 2020, but this week I haven’t progressed to the severity of those episodes, thank goodness. I have been so scared that it’ll happen again any moment, though… Chronic illness creates a lot of fear. And a lot of stress. The rest of life’s stress tends to seem unbearable when it all stacks up.

Some days I feel like I could conquer the world – those are the days I complete a bathroom remodel or replace a sump pump. I could reenact the scene from Wonder Woman when she emerges from the bunker on those days. Other days I could curl up under the blankets and stay there for days because it all seems like too much. Can you relate? I’m pretty sure many of you can.

So why can’t we talk about these feelings? Why do we have to pretend they don’t exist? Frankly, I’m exhausted of keeping these feelings to myself. I’m a great listener, and I’m always open whenever anyone else needs to talk, but I never want to reciprocate. I don’t want to put my worry on others. I don’t want to admit I can’t always handle it. I don’t want to seem weak. I don’t want to talk when I’m crying! But…I don’t think of others as weak when I listen to them! I don’t feel like others are burdening me! So why do I feel that way myself? Maybe it’s the societal norm. Maybe it’s my history of being bullied and hidden lack of self confidence. Maybe it’s something completely different or all of the above. My point is life is hard. We all live hard. We shouldn’t be ashamed to talk about it.

So find something to joke about in the next 24 hours. Something to lighten the mood a bit. But realize that we’re all in this tragic comedy together. ❤️

Why did I go camping alone?

Why would I do such a crazy thing? Because I needed to do something for me. Yes it may seem a bit drastic, but it was absolutely necessary. Here’s why…

I had several boyfriends growing up, but my first long term relationship started when I was 15. When I was 17, I got pregnant by said boyfriend and I believed I needed to marry him, because I didn’t want to share my child. Well, THAT was an awful idea. We should NEVER have gotten married, especially for those reasons.

In the process of divorce, I met husband #2. He swept me off my feet, but honestly it didn’t take much. In the beginning, we were all giddy and dressed alike and wanted to spend as much time together as possible. Along the way, we had 2 beautiful children and then we grew apart to the point that the divorce was really anything but amicable.

Along came another boyfriend. We had sparks from high school that were re-ignited after hours of talking on the phone working through another ending marriage (he had been there for me through the first divorce as well). Over time, that relationship also was not all it was cracked up to be at first.

So I’ve never been alone. I’ve never truly been single. And while I had many people tell me along the way that I SHOULD be, I didn’t listen. Because I’m stubborn and thought I knew better. I clearly didn’t know better. I’ve gone through years of therapy and finally have learned a few things about being introspective and identifying my issues.

Apparently being bullied to the point of death threats at the ripe age of 13 scarred me more than I could ever have realized on my own. I became a perfectionist, and when the adults that I looked up and respected either took the side of the girls that were bullying me or didn’t believe that I was innocent, my little developing brain thought I wasn’t worthy. I sought love from anyone who gave me attention. I clung to them with all of my soul. And I got into relationships that I shouldn’t have. Well into adulthood, obviously. Only now am I able to see this.

So this solo camping trip was my chance at redemption – to myself. Proof that I COULD do it on my own. Proof that I CAN enjoy my own company. Time to reflect and decide what is truly important in my life. Time to find me and be ok with all of my flaws. But also time to be proud of my own strengths and realize that I am actually capable of the things others tell me I am. Now that I’m in my 40s I can honestly say I feel supported by those around me, and I didn’t always feel that way. Yes there were a few, but that number is far more than I ever realized.

While I was alone on my trip, I was never lonely. I was content. I not only survived, I thrived. And I’ll do it again in a heartbeat.

What PTSD feels like

Ever wonder what it’s like to have PTSD? No? Great, let me explain…

PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder. Most people think of it as a result of being in combat, but I’m not a veteran. Myopia and asthma aren’t exactly great military candidate material. But did you know you can get PTSD from other traumatic life experiences? Bullying, abusive relationships (both romantic and business), even neglect and abandonment. Trauma doesn’t have to be be physical and bloody to leave scars. In fact, emotional scars are probably worse to deal with. You don’t know they’re there all the time. They certainly aren’t visible to the general public. And they’re “easy” to stomp deep down inside while you try to forget about them. But they have a way of rearing their ugly beads.

Take, for example, a simple delay in getting started at a new job. The hiring process may have been rushed and paperwork is now being gone through with a fine tooth comb, and there may not actually be anything wrong – the powers-that-be are just making sure things are done properly. But in the mind of someone with PTSD, there’s clearly something wrong. Somehow, the new employer must have found a reason why not to hire you, and they’re just trying to find a nice way to tell you. They’ve realized you’re an imposter and you aren’t really cut out for the job. Deep down you know that they probably couldn’t find someone MORE qualified than you, but the “deep down” voice isn’t bold enough to speak right now – that voice has been quashed so many times it doesn’t even know if its voice works anymore.

So you start going over and over in your head everything you may have done or said wrong. Did you email too many times? Did you ask too many questions? That’s definitely it – that last question really made you look dumb. No, it had to be asked. Maybe there was an error in one of the transcripts and it looks like your education wasn’t complete. Maybe someone sabotaged the hire. But who would do that? Who knows, but you’ve pissed a few people off along the way…

I know, you’re surprised I’ve pissed a few people off. I’m so docile…

So I lay here in my bed in the middle of the night wondering about everything rather than sleeping. That’s what PTSD feels like. It’s an anxiety attack waiting to happen. It sitting at that simmering point and just not quite getting to a boil. But you don’t sleep and you second-guess everything. And something will finally happen to make you realize you didn’t need to do all that worrying. But for now, the S part of PTSD holds control: Stress. Yay, fun…

Finding motivation

Do you ever just feel like sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine (yes, I said bottle) and a straw and a comfy blanket and just saying eff it?

Yeah, me either 🤷‍♀️

Adulting is hard. Mom-ing is hard. Parenting is hard. Living is hard some days.

Some days I yearn for the innocence of my youth. Those days were so much simpler. My parents worked and supported our family. My sisters made me sit on the floor while they got to sit on the couch. I chased the dogs around our 40-acre property, over and under tree branches, through mud. I made families out of everything – and I mean EVERYTHING. Rocks, corn cobs, tendons off of deer legs when we processed the harvest at deer hunting time… you name it and I probably made a family with it.

In my adult life I’ve made families and they didn’t stick quite as well as my rock families did. I had enough practice, you’d think I could have gotten that right.

In my adult life I’ve struggled to pay bills, cried over lost friends, patients, family members, relationships. I’ve had highs and lows: insomnia, health issues, stress, success, happiness, high energy, low energy.

I’ve noticed that my own children don’t seem to have that same carefree youth that I had. We are always rushing about, they don’t get as much time to play and be kids, they don’t spend nearly enough time outside.

All my best laid plans to exercise regularly and be motivational to others get derailed by injuries, autoimmune flares, depression/anxiety, mom guilt, and the occasional night where I just want to eat a pint of ice cream, do nothing, and probably drink some wine. It doesn’t mean I get to do those things, but I WANT to.

I want to be motivated to wake up early and exercise like I used to. Exercise helps my mood and prevents a lot of my pain. But sometimes I’m in too much pain to exercise, and I’m just not in the mood. I got up and pushed play this morning. The first time in 2.5 weeks. I could stress about how long it’s been. But I won’t. I have enough stress already. I’ll just pray that I can get up and do it again in the morning. Because motivation doesn’t come BEFORE you start something, it comes after and because of doing things.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Remember that phrase from childhood? Or did I just age myself? Remember when there would be those families on town that always seemed so perfect and had everything together, and they always had the best of everything? Remember that envious feeling you’d get when you’d see them? Thank goodness it wasn’t every day!

But now we see them every day. Everywhere. On Instagram. On Facebook. On Twitter. They have it all. They’re practically perfect in every way. And you just want to puke.

YOUR kids lose their homework. They don’t get ready when you tell them to. They wear clothes that have stains on them, because “it’s my favorite shirt”. They may or may not have worn that same stained shirt the day before… The kids don’t listen at the grocery store and you have to count to 3. Heaven forbid you have malted milk balls as a treat in with the meat & cheese roll ups and blueberries in their lunch. Is this just me here? Or do you have the same experiences?

But as we scroll on facetagram or instabook, or whatever social media platform it is we’re mindlessly scrolling when we have a million other things to do, and we see all the perfection, we start to feel imperfect. We start to feel “less than”. And we start to wonder who’s judging us.

I used to live the ‘Facebook perfect’ life. Everything looked amazing on my Facebook page. Even my marriage that was less-than-perfect. And people were a bit surprised when we got divorced. Well, I wasn’t. I was in the trenches. I knew the truth. And I wasn’t surprised. And you know what? I’m not alone. People are living their truths every day, thinking they’re less than other people because of what gets blasted in our faces daily.

So why do we still feel the need to keep up with the Joneses? We SHOULDN’T! We should be free to live our own imperfect lives. Because it’s our lives, after all. Whether you’re a bento box mom or Uncrustable with a GoGo squeeze applesauce (real lunch that was packed this week), you’re still a great mom. Just ask your kids.

Finding yourself

Do you know who you really are? Do you know what makes you tick? Do you feel “stuck” in life? Did you answer these questions in your head as you read them? Then keep reading.

21 years ago I became a mom, then I became a mom again 10 and 6 years ago. And I guess I can say I’ve identified as mom and/or wife most of the time since then. I mean, sure, I had things I liked to do, but my kids always came first and my wants/needs took the back seat. Hell, if my kids eat all their food and they’re still hungry, I STILL give them food off my plate. Good weight loss program, I suppose.

I’m not saying I no longer want to or do pay attention to my kids; on the contrary, actually. I have realized I need to do things that are good for me in order to set a good example for my kids. I used to use the excuse that I couldn’t work out when I wanted to because I didn’t want to miss out on time with my kids. But now I’ll have my kids work out with me. Even if they don’t actually do the workout, they’re in the same room as me and we can talk and giggle together while I’m getting sweaty. And when I need to be on the computer to get some work done, I can give them some of their much coveted electronic time as well, and we can be sitting together on our devices. That way they get what they want, I get what I need, and we can spend time playing card games when I’m done.

It’s easy to lose focus on yourself. But at some point you start to feel empty. When you find that thing you love and that makes you tick, you get rejuvenated, and you’ll actually be a better parent. You’ll be more fun again. Just ask my kids.

You have not failed anyone

I grew up in the church, always active in the church – as a small child I was a “clown for Christ” (yes, a CLOWN! Yikes!), then I was a part of our bell choir, regular choir, New Life teen band; I once referred to myself as a “dork for Jesus”. In my early 20s, you could still find me in our church choir, but in a much larger church and much larger choir. Then in 2007 we moved to Iowa, and I haven’t called a church “home” ever since…

Whether you’re a church-going person or not, you have SOMETHING that you do religiously. Maybe fishing or hiking is your church, maybe serving others is your church, maybe you don’t do anything at all or you don’t believe in God. Whatever the case, I ask you to continue reading. Because there’s a point to this message.

I know when we moved away from Minnesota, I was comparing every church to my Minneapolis church, and nothing compared. Not even close. So I struggled to find a church home because of comparison. It’s probably no surprise that I struggled in my marriage because of comparison, too. We seemed like we were doing ok. I would see the struggles in other relationships and think ours weren’t as bad, or so I thought. I didn’t really know what a good healthy relationship these days should look like.

When we moved back to the Minneapolis area, we used the excuse that our old church was too far away and we wanted the kids to be able to be in church school with their regular school friends. But we still didn’t find a local church home. Nothing met the standards we had set from our Minneapolis church. So we continued not to go to church, and I continued to have a growing void in my life. In my marriage, in my relationship with God, in my relationship with myself.

In the words of one of our marriage, and then uncoupling, counselors, I had grown disgusted with our marriage. It was not what I had imagined, and I fought by myself for a long time to try to keep it alive. To no avail. Because a marriage isn’t sustained by one person alone.

I had started working on personal development because of the lack I was feeling in my life, and as I read books and listened to podcasts, I learned a lot of things about myself. I tried to improve these things, but I couldn’t do it by myself. In the process of divorce, I stopped going to our uncoupling counseling, because it was just making me more angry, and started going to my own therapist. In a previous blog post, I identified that we traced the start of my personal issues back to when I was 13. When I had adults in my life that I looked up to and respected, not believe what I was saying and instead support the people who were bullying me. For 26 years, I’ve been waiting for an adult I admire and look up to, to tell me that I hadn’t failed them and I was worthy of love and respect.

As we went through the tedious and angering steps of the divorce, I avoided the church. I became ANGRY with God. How could He have led me astray with my marriage and let me keep my blinders on for so long? How could He keep putting health issues on me and adding more stress to my life? God only gives you what you can handle? I call B.S. I’ve gotten WAY more than I could handle in the last few years. And then some.

After meeting with friends recently, and having started to feel the need/desire to go to church again, I finally sent a message to my old minister, the one that had married me and my ex-husband, requesting a time to sit down with him. He had time that week. I was shaking as I drove to see him. I got in his office and almost immediately started crying as I poured out a synopsis of what happened to my marriage. And I admitted that I had let my pride get in the way of coming back. I didn’t want to admit that my marriage wasn’t successful. I felt like I had failed him and God because I hadn’t stayed married. He told me the words I needed to hear – I hadn’t failed him or God, and mistakes are human. And anger is a natural feeling and was expected given all I’ve been through. And that God hadn’t left me alone all this time, but He had suffered through all of it with me. And He still loved me. He told me I’m still a good person with a lot of inner strength. He invited me back into the church, and encouraged me to get back into the choir.

I’ve needed to hear those words for 26 years. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I’ve felt a peace that I can’t even recall when I’ve felt last.

Have my friends and family and my boyfriend told me I’m loved in this process and that I’m a good person? Of course they have. So why didn’t that do the trick? Because it was adults with authority, adults I looked up to and trusted to help me grow up into a responsible adult, that had let me down when I was 13. I needed someone with that same authority figure to fix it. I’m so thankful for my minister. I’m thankful for the words that he said, the meaning and love behind them, and the sincerity with which he welcomed me back. None of it is a magic wand that will make everything amazing overnight, but it certainly makes the road ahead that much more bearable.

What is it that you need to be able to truly feel that you are worthy, and to start believing the positive words that others tell you? Because you haven’t failed anyone. The only person you have to explain anything to is yourself, and you’re already forgiven.

On being present

I used to be a tech-aholic. I had a smart watch for monitoring my workouts, I turned on my phone running app to monitor my runs also (yes I’d monitor on my watch AND my phone, because they weren’t always the same), AND I’d strap on my heart rate monitor to keep track of my zones. And if I forgot to push the start button on my watch or phone? Let’s not even go there…

So now you get an idea why my boyfriend had to stop and pretend he was marking a day on his calendar as we walked at the zoo the other day. I had started walking the path, intermittently holding the hands of my boyfriend and/or my children as we went, and I didn’t look at my phone or push a button to mark the starting and stopping. WHAT?! You’ve GOT to be kidding me…

I NEVER would have done this in the past. I had to mark these trips on SOMETHING to get credit for it. If my watch ran out of battery in the middle of the day, I’d get VERY cranky because it wouldn’t track my every move! I mean, why even walk anywhere if you can’t track it?!

But in the midst of my autoimmune troubles lately, I’m really working on decreasing my stress and just being. Being present, loving, breathing, laughing with my children, not even getting pictures of EVERYTHING they do to chronicle our lives. I realized after tucking the kids into bed tonight that I haven’t taken pictures of them in two days. I’ve just been with them. We cuddled on the couch, we read books, we giggled. It’s been wonderful.

I’m still working HARD to have this become the norm. My stress level has got to decrease BIG TIME! It’s the only thing I can really control right now. I can’t control much in my life, none of us can, but I CAN control how I respond to things. And I want to enjoy the days I have with my kids. I think it’s safe to say we’ve enjoyed the last few days, even though I have very few pictures to prove it. You’ll have to take my word for it. Or theirs. 🙂

Shoulding all over myself

I should be stronger. I should be smarter. I should be skinnier. I should run more. I should exercise more. I should spend more time with my kids. I should work harder. I should, I should, I should… Shoulding all over myself.

I heard this phrase in a podcast today and it struck a chord with me. I hold myself to such high standards that I have a hard time reaching them. I’m not perfect. Nor should I be. But I still hold myself up there. And when I don’t meet my standards, I feel like a failure. Why? Largely in part due to the trauma of my youth, partly due to society’s high standards.

There are expectations that everyone holds. The worst are the ones we set for ourselves. We are our own worst critics. I had friends point this out to me recently. They reminded me of all the good things about me, all of my good traits. And I have a hard time hearing those good things. It’s easier to hear that you’re NOT good enough, that you’ve made a mistake. But when you hear all the good, sometimes it’s embarrassing.

We’ve got to stop shoulding all over ourselves. We’ve got to start being ok with who and what we are. It’s starts with me. Will you start with you?