The circle of life
Parenting is a circle. Some days the circle is leisurely. No demands and everyone is well. Then in a flash it’s a full race putting out fires in the circle.
This was an apt description by a beautiful lady who was stretched between two opposing caregiving demands. Her child in hospital and miles away but constantly on the telephone her demanding parent needing reassurance that she was not abandoned.
Imagine how great it would be to have just one extra hour in the day to get done exactly what you wanted to complete. Now, let’s take a look at how much time you spend in a day worrying about the things you’re not getting done. How much time do you spend convincing yourself that this is alright? Or what about the energy you expand on being frustrated and angry that you’re not even close to getting the things done you used to.
For me, I would start out gung-ho with a plan and an agenda of how I was going to get everything I needed to do done. Then usually a “crisis” would come up which needed my attention more than my schedule did. Now the crisis didn’t have to be very big like a cracked tooth or a school invent, but usually it’s something that just needs all my attention. Slowly but surely the things that I had put on my schedule were being left undone. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy doing some of the things that interrupted my day, but I didn’t love all of them. What would happen is that I would start worrying late into the night and wondering whether or not anything was ever going to get finished.
I started waking up earlier in the day just so that I could get in some of the things I wanted to do for myself, such as meditating. At the end of the day there was never enough time to finish cleaning up the house and making sure that the lunches were ready for the next day or making sure that my mother in law was dressed for bed. This all led to me fretting and worrying into the night trying to get everything done. Waking up earlier, and stressing at night, inevitably led to shorter nights.
Then came the breaking point. My days as the family octopus and go to girl had met their demise. I was sleep deprived, angry and overburdened by everyone’s imagined and real demands. I had completely worn myself out. My body started to give out, and I was bed ridden with the flu. While I was in bed unable to perform at my usual efficient level my brain had gone into overdrive. My inner critic went to town on a litany of abuse for not being there for everyone. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t control the superwoman driving my bus anymore. I had wound up in the ditch, wheels up and I needed to hit the eject button to survive this crash.
Then my brain as the benevolent observer of my life came in.
What came next is a host of research which finally landed me in self coaching scholars. It was something I could learn and do at my pace, and since I felt very trapped, I was happy that I could do this from my own home.
The lessons I was learning and the relief I began to feel urged me to help others (you) to learn and change your own thinking and teach you how to get the life you want if the life you have is not working for you To find out more about how you can start taking these steps and book now.
I truly believe that I can help you right now, no matter where you happen to be in your journey.
I am a lifelong learner and I was certified as a life coach by The Life Coach School,
September of 2018, previously I have spent the past 30 years learning
and embracing different modalities of self-awareness, therapies, and support. All have led me to the present and to launching my business and aligning with my passion to always be helping others.
There is nobody who I have coached that has not been helped or enlightened, I think everyone can learn new tools to help themselves.
I embarked on this journey of becoming a coach because it has
always been my goal to help people and I finally found the best way I can to do
that as a coach.
For years I thought I could do it all, I had a career I loved, I could manage my time since I was self employed and my passion was to help people achieve their home ownership dreams!!! I still love doing this, it makes me joyful when the entire process works and everyone succeeds.
I decided in my late 20’s after many failed attempts at relationships to finally be super clear, and really focused and visualize, articulate and be sure about what I really wanted...
“If life is like a bowl of cherries what am I doing in the pits” Erma Bombeck.
I loved this book, her insight, her humour, in fact I am going to re-read it just to remind myself why I enjoyed it so much way back when I first read it.
Today I was inspired to share some of the more regular things I do to manage my life more effectively for myself.
The morning starts off great, full of wonderful intentions, plans for the day that are positive and satisfying all is well and then it hits... the second guessing, confusion, uncertainty, fear and that lovely day starts turning into a bit of a nightmare...and I have not even gotten out of bed.
In reality I was just doing my daily thought download and decided to share it, I doubt I am unique or alone either.
When I started doing this work, I realized I was only conscious of thinking about busy work and a laundry list of plans for the day for myself and everyone else around me. I thought this was enough and was not even aware of how limited and often negative my thoughts were. I imagined all sorts of bad outcomes or derailments and did my best to solve them ahead of time. How busy I was, saving myself and my loved ones from all those pitfalls. No wonder I needed help, what I got was even better. I got coached and found incredible tools and learned that without the pit there would be no cherry anyway, our lives are supposed to be 50/50. Learning this was a game changer for me. I began to be way more aware of the difference between facts and the stories I was telling myself about a situation, I also started to recognize that my brains unconscious default was to always see the negative and it was just my thoughts causing me the stress, pain and discomfort in my life. I learned to become aware first and then to change my story.
Today, as I more consciously think through my day, I savour the amazing joy of the fruit more and knowing they are there anyway I now carefully discard the pits one at a time. So much easier than worrying about breaking a tooth. Hope you get the metaphor, it made me laugh when I though of it.
The empty chair, the empty suite, no pitter patter of tiny feet, the nanacam is off and the meals don’t need to be on time. We miss her, our children have only known a life with her present. Fortunately, they have grown and one is away at university, while the other is adjusting to the changes in routine by becoming more independent in many ways. Life as we used to life it daily has changed and nothing will ever change it back. This is the part where we get to count our blessing. Our beloved Nana is still living, we can still see her whenever we want and no matter where she is physically, mentally she is just different now.
In life, things keep going along in a straight line and nothing really changes much until there is an interruption, so it was in our story. The progressing mental decline of my MIL and her advanced age of 94 along with the inherent loss of visual acuity, strength, and balance all converged in one mighty crash. On a chilly Friday afternoon just before dinner, while we were relaxing and getting ready for a weekend, there came a huge bang from above. My daughter and I heard it, without thinking, we raced upstairs. We found my MIL where she had fallen getting up from her easy chair. She was aware and in considerable pain.
Thank goodness that in that moment everyone was home, we called 911 and the paramedics came in about five minutes. Hauling her tiny broken body down three flights of stairs was another matter entirely, it was done on an old-fashioned cloth and pole stretcher.
The surgery was thankfully scheduled for Saturday, it could be performed without general anesthesia to which she reacted badly. The family rallied and sat with her around the clock. For a month we watched her recover physically and battled the administration to find her an appropriate placement in a memory care facility.
Over 20 years ago a series of interesting circumstances led me to become the scrap-booker I am now. The first was when I was in my 30’s and visiting my grandparents in Eastern Europe, I had an opportunity to ask my grandfather what one regret he had in his long and interesting life. His response quite surprised me, he regretted he did not value and save his family’s photographs when war forced him from his home as a young man.
The second occurred after the birth of our daughter and the beginning of my dearest friend’s home-based business with the MLM Creative Memories, a paper and album based scrapbooking company. At first, I wanted to support her success and after my first finished album I was hooked. I knew I was fulfilling my artistic passions in a way that was creative as well as archival. It reminded me of my grandfather’s words and his regrets.
When elderly family members become dependent on caregivers for personal grooming and care.
After my mother in law (MIL) moved in with us and became a permanent part of our daily life, it became evident that there were things that would change for our entire household. One of these was grooming. It became a job to drive my MIL to her monthly sessions at her old hairdresser in the next city a 45 minute drive away. We took turns taking her for these sessions, we tried to combine them with lunches with old friends, or appointments with other local caregivers like dentists. In time it became evident that driving so far for services would be frustrating, time consuming and tiring for everyone. Fortunately these outings lasted for only a few years until her stylist retired.
We attempted to find a replacement stylist locally but never found anyone who was just right for frequent visits. I remember thinking that she was never going to be happy with anyone new and did not much care how her hair looked anyway. I cared, I felt that how she looked reflected on how I cared for her. Eventually, I decided we could all win here. It did not take long to throw a few curlers into Nana’s hair and with her perm it held up well until her next hair wash. I learned to do a pretty good job and thus was born my alter ego Fifi. We now took bi-annual trips for perms only and the rest was done at home. Fifi was the resident hairstylist, she kept her hair looking lovely. It became a fun event at the house with friends and other family getting in on the action if they were around on a Fifi day. Out of necessity was born a latent passion and a lot of fun.
What I learned is that no matter what, taking those 15 minutes to simply do a small grooming task had the lasting and cumulative ripple effect that could not be measured but everyone got the benefits. I felt like a good caregiver and DIL, My MIL looked and felt great, her family loved that she was so happy and looked lovely and our children learned to be conscious of personal grooming and the overall benefits or caring for others. Everyone’s levels of frustration diminished considerably. As time went on, Fifi eventually retired, but not before being replaced by Leona, who kindly came to our home and did everyone’s hair professionally, it’s still a fun family time and friends still come by for a Leona day.
What used to be an hours long ordeal that I resented and eventually became a hassle for everyone, become a time of bonding, fun, and long term pleasure for my entire family. I challenge you to pick one place that you can find a way to change an ordeal into a win for everyone by simply making a shift in how you think and feel about it and change how it is executed.
