Charm in the City

A collection of life's charming moments


  • The two most powerful warriors are patience and time, and both of those this past August were tested big time for me for many reasons, but today I am going to give one of those reasons their moment to stand alone and be celebrated because “though she be but little, she is fierce” and so… [Continue Reading]

    Its about TIME

  • I’ve been sipping my tea on this topic for quite some time, but it is coming up more often than I would like to admit the closer I get to moving. Everyone has friends that you were once so close to you couldn’t see any part of your life happening with out them, then you… [Continue Reading]

    I noticed I was missing a voice that used to cheer in my corner…

  • Its the end of the school year, and I am having a moment of awe and glory thinking back on how far we have come and how much we have been able to power through with facing some unique learning difficulties with LJ. Its hard to grasp where we are without taking you back to… [Continue Reading]

    Power through like a “G”

  • If you didn’t already know, my family and I are in the midst of a huge move that will take us to another country for a few years. With it comes excitement, angst, wonder and flat out fear. Yes, there I said it, got dammit I have legit FEARS about this move. I’ve spent that… [Continue Reading]

    Houseless, but still feeling right at home

  • So this past Mother’s day was a trial for me, an adjustment of sorts with this new normal after the loss of my AbFab Grandmother (Absolutely Fabulous…if you didn’t catch it the first time) I didn’t post my usual tributes, I didn’t do much that day at all. I did enjoy some much needed me… [Continue Reading]

    If I could just write you a letter….

Its about TIME

Mommy & Me 2 - dark skin 2 jpgThe two most powerful warriors are patience and time, and both of those this past August were tested big time for me for many reasons, but today I am going to give one of those reasons their moment to stand alone and be celebrated because “though she be but little, she is fierce” and so much about this little being deserves to be doted upon.

For some of my readers who may not be aware, August happens to be a month of awareness and celebration of Rainbow Babies. “A rainbow baby is a baby born shortly after the loss of a previous baby due to miscarriage, stillbirth or death in infancy. This term is given to these special rainbow babies because a rainbow typically follows a storm, giving us hope of what’s to come.” I happen to have 3 of these special little babies, all of which have an amazing story of their own and we are so grateful daily to have the privilege to raise. But our middle rainbow celebrated her 3rd Birthday at a time where my life was being pulled in so many different directions and she just grabbed my hand in a hectic moment, looked me right in my eyes and said “its about time”.

That moment happened to be the day I was reminded it was a celebration of rainbow babies ironically and it struck me deep in my core to hear her say those words because her entire existence was “about time”. I didn’t get the chance to touch on it the way that I ought to in August, but there is something to say about watching a child flourish that you were told wasn’t viable to begin with. I vividly remember sitting in a hospital bed after a number of tests and having a doctor run through a course of action for terminating a non-viable pregnancy with me and after already been through this before there was something in my soul that told me that this just wasn’t right. I was literally being presented with this one course of action again to take methotrexate, a drug that I had to take previously while in the midst of an ectopic pregnancy. I was told that yet again I was pregnant, it was ectopic and to prevent further damage to my fallopian tube I could take this drug to prevent the growth of this fetus.

I remembered all of these risks from the time before and I called my husband who was at home with our daughter and frantically regurgitated this information to him after the doctor stepped out of the room. Somewhere in this very brief chat with him I went through about 80 emotions, I was tired, I was in pain and I just wanted a better answer than what I was given. I was dejected, and really downright depressed that I was here again. My husband, seriously, God blessed this man with the ability to always be right on time with his words and said your health is my priority but what do you feel is the best option that they gave you? And I had to stop… and pull myself out of this frenzy, because the reality was….I didn’t feel that they gave me any options, what I felt was that I was being told what I was going to do. In that moment I got an added sense of strength and I told him, I feel like I need time, and he said I support you and tell them that’s what you need. And I did. Nothing about this felt right to me. Yes I was in pain, Yes I wanted some answers, but I also needed time to figure out if I actually had any other options not just this course of action because it was in my record that I had to do this once before.

It was a while before the doctor came back in, so long that I had the chance to call my OB’s office to see when my regular doctor would be back in town. I was notified that it would be another week, something told me that even though that was a long time that I could wait to be seen. (and by something, I really mean someone, God sent a dose of faith my way this particular day that I will always hold on to) The doctor came back with a nurse and was ready to go ahead with this shot and I had to interrupt and simply asked, could you go over the risks I could be facing if I waited about a week to make this decision? When I tell you the sheer look of disdain that I received from this doctor just by asking was enough for me to not even listen to the answer to my own damn question. 20160811_182826_1470954560308_0I quickly said , “thanks for the info, I’ll just go home and wait to see if it worsens” he snapped back “I have to warn you, you could lose this tube and your life!” and I just nodded in agreeance, signed the papers and said I plan to follow up before either of those extremes were the case. I hobbled my pain ridden bleeding body back to my car and cried all the way back home. My tears at this point weren’t because of the pain, I cried a cry of relief because I felt like I had just escaped making one of the worst decisions of my life. 2 weeks later I found out why.

DSC_4055You see they had misdiagnosed my very viable pregnancy as a non-viable ectopic pregnancy. My very living breathing child could have ceased to exist at the behest of a Doctor at a hospital that I decided to never willingly be seen at again who just didn’t take his time. Two ruptured cysts were the cause, but the misdiagnosis could have been fatal for this beautiful little rainbow baby that just celebrated 3 entire years on this earth. Every breath that she takes is a constant reminder of how precious time really is, that you have to value time, and while time waits for no one you have to take the time you are given and make the best (decisions included) out of it. I really started to reevaluate a lot of my time, and what I do with it and for the past couple of years I’ve been putting forth some legitimate effort in making sure there is quality in the time that I have. Her name is Lolah Jane, she came here with the gift of time, its what she’s wanted me to understand day in and day out and whatever Lolah wants (time included) Lolah gets.

I noticed I was missing a voice that used to cheer in my corner…

me time 1 - dark skin jpg.jpgI’ve been sipping my tea on this topic for quite some time, but it is coming up more often than I would like to admit the closer I get to moving. Everyone has friends that you were once so close to you couldn’t see any part of your life happening with out them, then you half way blink and be damned if Life didn’t just happen without them! And hey, maybe you are like me left wondering exactly…why? I kind of want to get into a bit of a back story, but then again, for fear of legit rage over acknowledging how things got this far, I don’t. Yet…here I am still typing so I guess we are about to get into this shit.

What I am talking about is what was going on a 15+ year friendship at the time. Here we all are, hitting major milestones, graduating from college, starting careers, starting families, starting master’s programs, buying cars, and houses and cheering each other along every step of the way, so I thought. So, I really thought, until one day I realized there was one voice no longer really cheering in my corner, as a matter of fact, outside of an occasional need for minor financial assistance here and there I hadn’t really heard from them at all. It was odd no doubt, but initially I thought, we all do have so much going on, big moves on the horizon, demanding jobs at times (mine in particular) so I started to believe that maybe I wasn’t as available as I once was. FALSE, but I’ll get to that shit in a minute.

So I began to back track, trying to figure out where things got grey and I was taken back to my wedding, YUP, I smile because I still look back on that day as legitimately one of the most joyous, easy going, blissfully fun days of my life. However, my bridal party didn’t necessarily have the exact same recap I did when dealing with some of the events they threw for me leading up to the nuptials. And really, had I not started to inquire some time afterward, I may have never known. They were so great in the sense that they didn’t want to bother me with any of the shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes that I could still 8 years later not know a thing. But I can’t un-know these things now, and there was some behavior from my friend that just wasn’t indicative of someone who you legitimately loved and thought would have been really supportive of such a big step in life and the occasion. But LAWD, apparently that old saying IS true, weddings and funerals bring out the worst in those you thought were your best.

So I had to soul search for a moment. Was there something I did that led to this? I always was the one that reached out, called no matter what shift I was working just to see how things were going, always made the effort to get together for birthdays, extended the invitation for family cookouts, I tried to support all of the high moments, and even more so tried to support the low because to me that’s what a friend did. Even when I didn’t have a ton of time, I made the time. So I decided to make more time, maybe I was making this too much about me and I was missing something critical that was going on. And yes, there was a lot going on because…well… adulting sucks and every now and then we need a friend to listen and be there for the curve balls that it throws you, and I dove in to try and be there for all of the pivotal moments. Until I was facing a pivotal moment of my own, we were expecting and after an ectopic pregnancy I was excited but terrified, and I just wanted to hop in the conversations and say Hey! I have some news, I have some angst and I have some legit fears, and….well…I never even told them first like I seriously wanted too because It hit me like a ton of bricks, I was not a concern. Isn’t that a wild realization?! I couldn’t even remember the last time I had received a phone call just to see how I was doing, and to make sure I wasn’t completely losing it, the millennial in me scrolled through my call log and time after time I was the outgoing call, they were never the incoming. Why was I expecting someone to be the same kind of friend that I was, and actually the kind of friend that they were many years before, when it was clear that the dynamic changed, my value in this equation changed and I was a little late to want to acknowledge it and see it for what it was.

Now I know what you are thinking, that I decided to have some heart to heart deep ass conversation about my feelings and how I wanted more out of this friendship than what I was getting because it was worth fighting for. Nah, like on so many levels I was muted for real. I didn’t even address it, you know what I did, I kept calling, kept listening, kept being the same friend I had been, and like a lot of people still holding on to a failed relationship for the sake of what their family might think, or their other friends might think, I was holding on to this friendship because I had invested so much time, literally still had so much love for them and their family that I was willing to give still way more of myself than I was getting in return. And in case you were wondering, they found out about my pregnancy after we made it past the 13 weeks, on Facebook, because out of those 13 weeks I didn’t even get asked one personal question, not even a “how was your day?”.

Things got complicated after that, conversations got brief, our baby shower came and went, they came but were barely involved…I delivered a healthy baby girl and they didn’t even come to see us. One of my best friends since I was 12 years old didn’t even come to see me and I almost let myself feel  a kind of way about it, but then our best friend’s grandmother passed away, suddenly, and when I say it hit hard. IT.HIT.HARD. She loved us all like we were her own, and had, literally since we were tweens, she never treated either one of us any different than she did her own granddaughter who had been our best friend forever. Nana was there for everything, our birthdays, recitals, graduations (high school and College) she took us to lunch, brunch, and sometimes just out for the sake of being out because that’s what grandmothers do. I never wanted to have to make that call, I never wanted to hear Nana passed away, let alone say it, but I didn’t want our best friend to have to say it again, so I picked up my phone. I remember this shit like it was yesterday, because I had to sit down, I was waiting for them to answer the phone, and they didn’t. I called again and they answered, a little rushed and not even a Hello, it was “I’m at work, I’ll call you on my lunch…”I had to blurt it out to get a word in, “Nana passed away I am on my way over to her house, she is going to need us”, “I’ll call you back” but they didn’t. I didn’t hear from them that day or the next. I went to be with my friend and her family because that is where I needed to be, I knew what she meant to me, and unequivocally knew what she was as the matriarch of their family and how devastating of an impact this was going to have on them, my extended family, and I was heartbroken over the fact that there wasn’t much I could do to help take this pain away. This was October of 2012 and till this day I don’t know if they ever picked up the phone and actually called to give condolences, hell even called to see if there was anything they could do to help them through this grief. And I don’t bring it up, because even in 2019 it is still hard for my best friend to talk about the loss of Nana, but when they didn’t show up to the funeral AFTER I made sure they had all of the information, for the woman who had done so much for us both, THAT was my breaking point. And no, for a while, I didn’t call.

It wasn’t until my oldest daughter was about 8 months old, that I even got a physical phone call from them, and that was because they had a loss of a parent. Of course, like any person would, I was there, because that was a hard moment, a low moment, and no one should ever have to maneuver that alone. They did, after the funeral and some time passed, come and see my oldest for the first time, and what I now know will likely be the last, because see, I haven’t seen them since. I still called a little while after that, to check in and after the loss of another vital family member of theirs and I made sure to try to keep up with them, but one day I decided to see if they would reach out and keep up with me, I had a lot going on as well and well, its July of 2019, I haven’t seen or physically spoken to them since 2013. I’ve texted for birthdays and some holidays, but the last was October 2017, and I barely got a response back and haven’t heard anything since.

To answer the question that I have gotten from a lot of people, a lot of other friends and some family over the past couple of months, I don’t know what she thinks of me moving to Germany or how she is going to handle having a “friend so far away”, because I lost that friend years ago, and not for lack of trying, and not because I didn’t love her, but because I simply decided not to pick up the phone and call, and not making one phone call turned into 6 years of nothing. After all of that, I’ve said it, 6 years of nothing and I would be lying if I said it didn’t still hurt a smidge. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care at all that our friendship to them wasn’t worth even a phone call back. So I wont lie, but I have learned something valuable about friendships, cherish the ones you still have, and invest in them and hopefully they continue to invest in you too, good ones are really hard to find, and even harder to sustain. And I know friendships have ebb and flows right, and it may not always be what it once was and I am ok with that. I even have some that we were once super close and even though things have changed because life took us in different directions, we do still at least communicate, we haven’t written each other off and keep in touch when we can and for that and those friendships still, I am thankful. I have been utterly blessed to still have many that I’ve gained and maintained along the way.

Power through like a “G”

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Its the end of the school year, and I am having a moment of awe and glory thinking back on how far we have come and how much we have been able to power through with facing some unique learning difficulties with LJ. Its hard to grasp where we are without taking you back to where we have been. I drafted the following on Sept. 5th, too frustrated to finish it that day in its entirety, but now that I’ve made it to the end of one more school year, I have to put it out there.

There is something to be said when your child is in distress and you haven’t the slightest idea of how to help them. My daughter had a moment, a sensory overload so to speak which left her on an island of her own in a pure uncontrollable melt down literally over writing the numbers 4 & 6. I use this analogy of an island, because my husband and I desperately tried to reach out and help her, physically and emotionally trying to cross really rough waters to get to her but in her own isolation, behind the layers of this meltdown she was unreachable. It was incredibly hard to watch, it was even harder to hear, and most importantly it was 100% heartbreaking to feel. When your child is experiencing a moment like this, you can’t help but feel it as much as they do, but as an adult on the outside looking in, it’s sometimes felt with an added seasoning called frustration, glazed in anger which boils down to a lack of understanding.

Welcome to the world of sensory processing disorder, a world that we have been trying to maneuver through for the past 3 years. I have to be honest, I don’t fully understand this world at all, it has such highs and lows and for the most part, we have gotten her in to such a great routine that we rarely have these types of overloads, but when we do even I feel like a failure, because I always find myself wondering “what the hell did I do wrong this time”. I admit, I get frustrated because I don’t know how to immediately help her through and then I get angry at myself that I let her see me get frustrated. I don’t want her to think I am frustrated with her because obviously it’s insult added to injury and I am not frustrated WITH her, I am frustrated that I was unable to prevent her from getting to this overwhelming point and angry that I can’t quickly resolve the problem because I don’t want to see her so hopelessly out of sorts.

Sometimes it seems like it stems from the tiniest tasks, like today, simply writing the number 4 and the number 6, but really it’s much bigger than that. A child her age isn’t able to articulate the root of the problem, that could have been sending her spiraling out of control. For starters, it’s a brand new school year at a brand new school. A school she now knows she will only be in temporarily because she will be moving to a brand new country. She knows none of her peers, not one familiar face her age. She hears not one familiar sound because this school has bells. Bells that ring for everything, like the start of school, the end of homeroom, the start of lunch, the end of lunch, and the end of the day. There is an intercom for announcements and any other message throughout the day. Even though she is loud by nature (sensory nature) her world prior to this was very quiet, her old school had none of this and the second day introduction to this in part was a bit overwhelming. She took it all in stride, but then came home to a Giant moving truck the size of two houses out front of our house because our neighbor is starting her pack-out for her 3 year TDY. That hit her like a ton of bricks because even she said, “this will be us really soon”, as she gazed at an entire house worth of inventory being loaded and hauled away.

Her world is changing quickly in front of her and I had the nerve to ask her to sit down and do homework. I say it in jest, but seriously, I should know by now that my little empath takes it all in, she sees and feels everything and in her little mind has to process it all while trying to manage her own needs and it manifests into what we had today. It manifests into the inability to write the number 4 and 6, something I see as so simple of a task, she saw as so complex that one crooked line in her number 4 and she was instantly defeated. I have to constantly remind myself that as a parent it’s OK to not immediately correct everything, she wants perfection the first time and my failing forward moment as a parent is because she thinks we EXPECT perfect the first time and that’s just not the case. We want her to try her best, and I have to remember that I have to accept what is the best she can do at that time.

Fast forward a school year and our girl has come out on top. With the help of a lot of work at home (morning work out routines for vestibular stimuli), occupational therapy, patience and love, love, and more love, her symptoms now are to most people unrecognizable. She has made the principals honor roll every quarter, is a swim champ, robotics enthusiast, budding Lego/Robotics superstar and Queen of the monkey bars.DSC_0911.JPG I just look back at how crushed and defeated she was in the early weeks of this school year, and how confident and accomplished she is at the end. Deep down I know there is a possibility that we could face similar challenges at her new school, in a new country, with a new language, however I am confident that together we have developed some tools to help her articulate her needs and enough patience and understanding to help her get those needs addressed. I can advocate for her better now than I ever could before and her improvements have helped me push to make sure that everyone is on her same page as we move forward. I want her to continue to feel as if she conquered each day like a Boss, and to never have her cry in frustration about feeling “powerless” because she didn’t have the ability to hone in on her own sensory needs. I know how frustrating life can be as an adult and I have strived to handle it to the best of my ability, but can you imagine having those same frustrations as your 6 year old self, not knowing what you know now? I can, and I can assure you, even without Sensory P.D., I wouldn’t have handled half of my challenges as well as my oldest has and she is powering through this diagnosis like a “G”.

Houseless, but still feeling right at home

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If you didn’t already know, my family and I are in the midst of a huge move that will take us to another country for a few years. With it comes excitement, angst, wonder and flat out fear. Yes, there I said it, got dammit I have legit FEARS about this move. I’ve spent that past few months knee deep into learning a new language while ultimately making some dynamic decisions about this move. The language brought up a whole other set of fears/insecurities (and that’s a suitcase to unpack on a different day), but what to do with the house brought up a conversation I feared facing for quite some time now. We built this house to grow into, not that I intended it to be our forever home, but I’m not going to lie, I did plan on many more milestones celebrated in this house than we are ever going to reach at this point. We ultimately decided selling our home was going to be in our best interest vs. renting it for what could end up being an absurd amount of time. And to further solidify our position on this, one of my neighbors made the decision to rent their home during their current tour of duty and almost an entire year later it still sits for rent, so I am not really regretting this decision but rather grappling with coming to terms with what this really means.

Our oldest has had a moment of understandable fury and cried “but if you sell my house, we are going to be homeless!” Notice how she exercises ownership yet has not one job but the self-appointed one to undo everything that I try to do to keep this house in order, but I digress. I quickly said “we will not be homeless, we will be house-less, and there is a significant difference” *insert the puzzled look of a 6 year old now lost in the abyss* “ what I mean is, we will always have a home together as a family no matter where we are living, you will have the comforts of home even outside of this specific house.” It took me having to say it to comfort a child to Hear those words and understand it at the same time. I WILL have the comforts of home even outside of this home that we started here in Baltimore. Military families do this all the time, I’m good friends with many and for them it doesn’t get any easier but even through that they have candidly become very underwhelmed by the whole process. And maybe in time I will too but for now, this is Me, in the struggle.

Bruh, there is a lot that goes in to selling a home and I’m not certain I want to own another for a very, VERY long time. To add a smidge of clarification, I don’t want to own another for a long time because I don’t want to have to consistently get a house ready to sell every 2 to 3 years. I don’t think I have the mental capacity to perfect the art of having three children while simultaneously maintaining my home to look like reveal day on Chip and Joanna Gaines Fixer Upper for showings and open houses. I try and fail miserably every single time, and it hits differently when you own it. I’ve had the ability to make it as personal as I liked, without rules or restrictions so now that I must depersonalize it to benefit some potential buyers’ neutral taste, to put it plainly, it savors strongly of bitterness. And by bitterness, I mean me, I’m Bitter. I want people to like my house the way I like my house (albeit a little less toy ridden than it’s current state, but still…), I put time, effort and about 8 years worth of on again off again restoration projects to make it eclectically our own. It’s a reflection of us and I think we are pretty damn dope, so love us dammit, love our home as is! But, begrudgingly I am taking the realtors advice and taking my personal stamp off of my personal property. BoxI am putting this out there because I am now condensing 8 almost 9 years of stuff and having to identify necessity vs storage; what stays, what is sold and what is donated. So here is my question, if you had to sum up what makes your house (dwelling) a home, what would that be? For my oldest it was the polka dots on her wall and her hat display behind her door (forget her whole family or whatever). For my husband, its family (smart answer) but also, its his little comforts, like the Tempur-Pedic pillow which goes with him everywhere, LL Bean slippers perfectly worn on one side ready for his feet by the bedside, and for me, other than my family, I am still trying to figure that out. What really makes my house a home anywhere in the world? I am sure this first long-term tour will further identify exactly what that means, but so far, what I do know for sure is even without this house at least with my family I will always be at home.

If I could just write you a letter….

Heart_01So this past Mother’s day was a trial for me, an adjustment of sorts with this new normal after the loss of my AbFab Grandmother (Absolutely Fabulous…if you didn’t catch it the first time) I didn’t post my usual tributes, I didn’t do much that day at all. I did enjoy some much needed me time via an indulgent bath using my gift of free Time and Bath salts from my husband and children, but it was nothing like how I’ve spent the past decades worth of mother’s days. I was missing my grandmother something terrible, and basically, my grief has so many layers that I’ve literally lost count. A part of me just didn’t know what to do, I did still get her a card though. She LOVED cards, the more colorful the better, she would line them up in the center of her dining room table along with her flowers for weeks (you read that right…WEEKS) after Mother’s Day was over. So, I placed her card next to her Urn on my mantel and quietly let her know just how much she is missed and went about my day as best I could.

The day after, I was cleaning up the dining room table and was in the middle of fussing about these random remnants of popped balloon pieces on the table and floor… I didn’t know where they came from or why, but mid rant I picked up a little note card and on it was my eldest daughters BEST and neatest handwriting. It simply stated G.G. (for Great Grandma) Happy *Muthers Day, You were my best *frind, I love you and I miss you and I just want a *popcicel (Popsicle) with you again, Love your *frind London. gg and london (2)I immediately shut up, I mean I shut the hell up. In an instant the adult on the outside of me was shattered and the child deep inside of me was crushed. I figured out what she was trying to do, she wanted to send her grandmother a note to heaven attached to a balloon, but she didn’t want to ask for help (popping several balloons trying to tie them), because in her own way she just wanted to get a private, very real message to her best friend, and the thought of what that had to mean to her literally broke me. I know what it’s like to miss her, and I had her for well over 30 years, and here was this 6 year old just wanting a Popsicle on the porch swing with her G.G. again! What do you say to that, what can you even do? I kept running this over and over in my mind, do I tell her I found this note? Do I show her strength and not get emotional about her needing her G.G.? Should I let her see how destroyed with grief I am about it? And not simply because I miss her, but because I know she misses the simple moments doing what they loved to do. I grieve the reality that she won’t get the 30+ years I had with her, the countless snowballs, the storytelling’s, the weekends at her house, the hours of playing on the swing set while she watched from afar, the cookouts, the family newsletters, I grieve it all and I’m not ashamed to say I still cry about it.

So I decided to do a mix of things, I squeezed probably the last ounce of helium left on earth out of a leftover tank we had from a birthday party last year, filled a balloon, tied her note to it and sent that up to heaven for her. Before the environmentalists get upset, and before Party City has a conniption that I had hidden helium stashed away, I had to do this her way, and in a way, I had to do this for the both of us. Second, I told her (without displaying my ugly cry, snot and tears, although I was ALL of that on the inside) you can have your Popsicle with G.G. without her being here, she hears you still and she got your note, I sent it Balloon Express. Envelope_OpenWe didn’t have a conversation about it, it wasn’t necessary at that time, but the relief on her face told me everything I needed to know, she hugged me, ate a Popsicle and smiled the entire time. I am blessed to have such an empathetic, loving little being wrapped up into this 6 year old God saw fit for me to mother, she teaches me something new about life every day. And she is blessed to at least still have a great grandmother here on earth that she still shares an incredible bond with. Something most of us never got the chance to say or experience, she will grow up remembering she was loved and cared for by both of her great grandmothers, they stepped in and made sure she was taken care of when her father and I had to work the craziest of hours, overnight, during the day, on the weekends, she never had to worry about how her needs would be met, and we never had to worry either. She was spoiled in the best way, having received so much love and is continuing to make so many memories with the one she has left. Just wondering, if anyone has an answer, by the time you got to what felt like the end of the tunnel with grief, how many layers do you think you peeled back? I am interested to know, you know, just asking for a friend.

Insert Frank Costanza *Serenity Now*

active girl - dark skin 6 pngI have a bit to unpack today. First, this theory that work-life balance is a realistic concept, and Second, the validity of Self-Care and what that actually means. I have spent over a decade in search of just how to balance work-life. Seriously flipping through article after article, talking with friends who appear to have a much better grip on life than I did at the time, playing 21 questions with whomever would entertain my thoughts on the subject and here is what I have found…Balance is not the right word. Suggesting that work and life can somehow fit on a weighted scale and come out weighing the same and seemingly “balance” is a fallacy. What I have come to realize throughout the years of chasing this idea of balance, that work (my work in particular) isn’t as consistent as some of the friends I polled for their ideas on the balancing act. That is a major factor and could become an entirely different piece when you really delve into the difficulties of time management and scheduling in reference to those of us whose careers are in public service. Nevertheless, it is something worth addressing.

When I think about balance my mind always jumps to food (have a well-balanced diet they said…yet here we all are struggling to find the time to barely have a working lunch, let alone a healthy and balanced one). This may or may not speak volumes for those that know me, but there are certain foods on my plate that can’t touch. For instance, at a Holiday dinner, my greens typically are plated alone (I like them vinegary) because if they are plated with the rest of my meal and my plate shifts it could add a bitter taste to the otherwise savory side dishes that remain and RUIN my holiday (that came off extreme, but I am 100% serious).  Irregular work hours can add a bitter taste to the flavor of your day and I haven’t really come across HOW one can balance the flavors, but more so Manage the flavors by only allowing the things that blend together well overlap, and those that don’t must remain separate. For instance, while at home I can cook dinner and help my daughter with homework, those two flavors blend well enough as to allow the activities to overlap and occupy the same time slot. However, helping her study for a test requires my full attention (the greens) and must be separate from everything else.

If you have a moment to examine my little pie chart titled “Not enough hours in a day” Picture1you will see that on a good day, work would be the “Greens” of my day. It would eat up a lot of undivided time and attention, and that is with getting off at my designated time, which again was not the norm. At the close of my day you see that my Plate already is not balanced, and in life there isn’t much you can do about that, so I had to abandon the theory of balance and actually manage the time I had left to the best of my ability.

That small slice of orange was typically the waking hours I had left to spend with my children before it was time for them to go to bed.  Yup, that was it! A measly 3 hours was all that they got after 14 hours of my absence throughout the day. It took creating the pie chart for me to really grasp the full scope of how crucial time management really is and how to prioritize the time that I do have to ensure that my children get all that they deserve of me. But HOW do I do this and not have my house look like a laundry bomb exploded and a hurricane of toys ran through the main floor? I still don’t have an answer for that. Maybe try and fit it in to the grey time slot, after a full day, and then time with my children, dinner as a family and catching up on conversations with my husband (because for the love of mankind I need this, a sensible adult conversation from someone who gets me) at the end of the day. Thankfully a lot has changed since I first created that pie chart, and I am working more and more on reaching goals I set for myself and my family, but with all things there is room for improvement and I have a ways to go before I am where I would ideally like to be. Oh, and I almost forgot there is sleep. Yes, that illusive little sucker that seems to slip through the cracks like sand. That slice of my pie is a dream, better yet, it’s a goal that I continue to work toward to try and get that amount of sleep. I haven’t reached that yet either because I am still working on my balance time management.

Now on to this Self-Care idea that graces the pages of every magazine and is constantly popping up on my Pinterest feed. For the love of hot baths, how do people find the time for the kind of self-care that I keep seeing heavily promoted? What does self care mean to you? I would love to know. Self-care has become a very transient being in my world, when a quiet ride in the car with the windows down and the radio off is about all that I am able to manage. Would I love to have a legit regimen? I sure would, but I am still working on that balance prioritizing my time to make that work. It’s a goal of mine for 2019 and I think I still have time left in the year to figure that out.